DeGods Ditch Polygon, Moving y00ts to Ethereum and Returning $3 Million Grant

DeLabs’ NFT profile picture (PFP) project y00ts has already made one migration, from Solana to Ethereum scaling network Polygon earlier this year—and it’s about to take another trip, migrating over to Ethereum mainnet to live alongside the startup’s more prominent DeGods collection.

The news was announced late Wednesday afternoon in the run-up to the reveal of DeGods’ “Season 3” content. DeGods is a valuable PFP collection that also previously migrated over from Solana this past spring. DeLabs has yet to reveal a date for the migration, which was a surprise move given all of the buzz around the original shift away from Solana.

“Polygon Labs has been a truly incredible partner for y00ts,” said DeLabs founder Rohun “Frank” Vora, in a press release. “But ultimately, we believe it makes the most sense for y00ts to be on the same chain as DeGods.”

Polygon Labs, a company that supports the development of the Polygon blockchain and projects built on it, had given DeLabs a $3 million grant as part of the agreement to move from Solana. The funds were going to be used to expand the DeLabs team, which had agreed to help incubate and support other Polygon projects.

Today, DeLabs said that the entire grant will be returned to Polygon Labs as the project departs the Polygon ecosystem. Polygon Labs, for its part, said that $1 million of the returned funds will be put towards supporting “Polygon-native builders and creators,” with details to be revealed at a later date.

“We tried our best to make it work, but we just need to bring our two communities together,” Frank added in a tweet. “I would appreciate it if everyone remains respectful of all parties involved. It’s all love.”

In a press release, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal pointed to what he says is significant growth for the Polygon PFP ecosystem, noting that DeLabs “played a huge role” in driving that.

“We will continue to nurture this community that’s tripled in size this year by redeploying the y00ts funds,” said Nailwal, “and more to support our native creators and projects we believe have the vision and conviction to help evolve NFTs, both as an artform and as a key to boundless utility.”

The market has reacted positively to the news, apparently, with the floor price—or the price of the cheapest listed NFT in the project—on the OpenSea marketplace jumping from 1.7 ETH (about $3,150) earlier today to about 2.09 ETH ($3,880) shortly after the news broke, although it has settled slightly to about 2 ETH ($3,710).

DeGods is one of the most valuable NFT projects on the market. According to data from NFT Price Floor, it’s the third-most valuable PFP project on the market for a collection with at least 10,000 pieces, at an entry price of 8.75 ETH—about $16,240 worth as of this writing.