On December 26, 2022, Solana’s number one NFT project, y00ts, announced a bridge to Polygon (MATIC), the Ethereum-based Web3 infrastructure, to come in the first quarter of 2023. At about the same time, DeGods NFT, an earlier, also popular collection from the same team that developed y00ts, announced its bridge to Ethereum (ETH) in Q1 2023. The $DUST token linked to both DeGods and y00ts will be bridged to both Polygon and Ethereum.
y00ts will officially bridge to @0xPolygon in Q1 2023. pic.twitter.com/Mnz25dJko1
— y00ts (@y00tsNFT) December 25, 2022
With these moves, Solana’s biggest NFT developer has officially ended exclusivity with the blockchain.
The NFT project, y00ts, was developed by Rohun Vora, popularly known as Frank DeGods, who gained popularity building Solana’s biggest NFT projects like DeGods, which launched in 2021, and y00ts NFT. Y00ts launched explosively at number one on Solana this year, 2022. Now, DeGods and y00ts are bridging to Ethereum and Polygon respectively in the first quarter of 2023, breaking the exclusivity with Solana. The exit of the DeGods and y00ts NFTs come at a time when Solana is struggling to stay afloat, and a popular refrain in the crypto industry is that the blockchain may be dead or dying.
Solana’s big troubles began in November 2022, when news broke of FTX and Alameda Research’s bankruptcy and the then FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal troubles began. Sam Bankman-Fried had been one of Solana’s biggest supporters, and FTX it’s biggest investor and partner. Alameda and FTX had purchased close to $700 million worth of SOL. Thus, the collapse of FTX tanked Solana’s value by more than 70% almost instantaneously.
The major collapse of Solana and its SOL token saw developers exit the project in droves. Mango Markets and Cashio, two popular DeFi protocols, were some of the higher-profile exits from Solana following the crash.
Perhaps what continued to be Solana’s biggest draw despite the devaluation, was its NFTs. The highly successful exclusive NFTs, particularly DeGods and y00ts NFTs continued to supply the Solana blockchain with faithful users. Now, that exclusivity is ending, the big question is will crypto customers and NFT traders continue to use Solana when they can now more comfortably use Polygon and Ethereum? The online consensus among fans of the project says: not likely.
Solana blockchain loyalists on Twitter were quick to decry the announcement of the y00ts bridge with Polygon as a betrayal. However, Frank DeGods released a video on Twitter saying thank you to the Solana community for their support, but that they needed to explore new opportunities and take calculated risks to grow.
