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Migrating is hard.
Whether you’re an animal seeking warmer weather (that’s a lot wing flapping, swimming, or walking!) or a professional in charge of switching business tools for a company, it takes a significant amount of time and effort do this smoothly.
Two (very) different types of migration
But migrating a 10k collection to a different blockchain? That’s arguably a harder endeavor when the holders are responsible for making that move.
On Christmas Day last year, Frank, founder of DeGods and y00ts, announced that the collections will be migrating from Solana over to Ethereum (DeGods) and Polygon (y00ts).
This was a big announcement. One of the most established collections on Solana was leaving for strategic, financial, and operational reasons.
Fast forward 3 months later, the y00ts migration has been under way for a few days.
As of this writing, 78% (11,711 out of 15,000) of y00ts have been migrated over to Polygon, which I consider impressive. How did the team create aligned incentives that encouraged holders to migrate so quickly?
In the first 24 hours of the migration window being open:
Migration gas fees were free and covered by Magic Eden
Staking fees were free (staking allows holders to earn points which lead to other benefits in the ecosystem)
If holders list their migrated y00t on Magic Eden, they receive a $5 USDC reward
The team will airdrop one lucky migrator a BTC DeGod worth ~$26,000
In the first 30 days of the migration
There will be 0% trading fees (assuming this means royalties) on Magic Eden for the collection
Starting 3/26: Royalties for y00ts on Solana increased to 3.33%
Starting 3/27: Staking points, airdrops, and community access would cease for y00ts Solana holders
Starting 4/3: The collection will enforce a Paper Hands Bridge Tax. Royalties for y00ts on Solana will increase to 33.3%
This combination of positive and negative reinforcement led to a large majority of holders to bridge over. I imagine the y00ts that are left largely consist of inactive holders which will trickle over in time.
Putting this together, what do we get?
y00ts leads with benefits and incentives while reinforcing with consequences. What I find particularly interesting with this announcement is the fact that consequences exist for not migrating.
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Airdrops for early adopters of a crypto product
Consequences are a concept that largely exist with institutions (government, the law, work, school) or at home (kids, pets).
In this case, the incentives greatly outweigh the consequences. It doesn’t seem like there has been much, if any, backlash with the migration. Plus, the migration was announced months in advance.
This is something to consider for builders and operators in web3 and beyond when considering large-scale changes within a community or product . How can you create strong incentives for taking the desired action while creating thoughtful negative reinforcement for the stragglers if appropriate?
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Earlier today, DeGods (the genesis collection) announced details around its migration to Ethereum beginning tomorrow.
Tomorrow, you will be able to migrate your DeGods to Ethereum.
The y00ts incentive model was also applied in a simpler manner.
In the first 24 hours of the migration window being open:
Migration gas fees will be covered
The team will airdrop one lucky migrator a BTC DeGod
Royalties will be 0.33% on ETH
I’m not sure why the incentive model was simplified. Possibly because the team learned that the incentives were more effective than the consequences, or other reasons?
As I read through the DeGods Twitter thread and compared it with the y00ts thread, I noticed a theme (links below are to the specific tweets in the thread):
“Gas fees will be completely free, covered by Magic Eden.”
“For 30 days, buy/sell y00ts on ME Polygon with 0% trading fees.”
“Our goal is to make the Polygon migration simple & secure. On March 27th, go to the official y00ts website. You'll just need to click a few buttons. It's that easy. We recommend using the Phantom multi-chain wallet for the smoothest experience.”
“We worked closely with Wormhole to craft the most secure & elegant migration experience possible. Wormhole & Dust Labs teams will publish a technical breakdown of how the migration works behind the scenes.”
“We're partnering up with Blur as our recommended marketplace experience for DeGods on Ethereum. We will be hosting a 1:1 Twitter Spaces with Blur founder Pacman and Frank on Saturday.”
“If it's your first time using Ethereum, we recommend you continue to use
Phantom multi-chain wallet. Use access code: "DEGODS". The Phantom team is available to answer any questions directly in DeGods Discord. Look for "Phantom Support" role.”
Dust Labs (the company behind DeGods and y00ts) created an ad for 4 different companies in a sneakily smooth way.
Basically the opposite of this (I’m excited for the Australian GP this weekend though!). How many companies can you count plastered on these race suits?
I have no clue on the details of the partnerships between Dust Labs and those respective companies, but this is food for thought for the builders looking to find partners and the partners looking to find more users.
As the migration was happening, Frank announced his personal entrance to the Ethereum NFT ecosystem:
'@frankdegods just went on an ETH NFT shopping spree
With each major ETH NFT purchase, Frank tweeted.
Frank is aware that he and the DeGods/y00ts collections are the new kids on the Ethereum block. He is putting his best foot forward to show respect to the teams and brands who have been around for a while.
What does this do?
Builds goodwill from the Ethereum NFT community as a whole
Provides direct access to these NFT communities. As a respected founder in the ecosystem, Frank can easily find time to meet with his new peers. However, he can now poke into holder-only channels for deeper insights.
Creates more awareness directed towards what he’s building.
Gamed the social algorithm by bringing a concentrated amount of attention to his Twitter account. Based on his tweets, Frank made most of these purchases in an 8 hour period.
JPEGs are the cookies when it comes to greeting new internet neighbors.
See you next week!
