Welcome to This Week in the Metaverse, where Fortune rounds up the most interesting news in the world of NFTs, culture, and the metaverse. Email marco.quiroz-gutierrez@fortune.com with tips.
A big change in the world of NFTs is imminent, and Solana may end up the biggest loser. In December, DeLabs, creator of the popular y00ts and DeGods projects, announced that both collections would be moving from the Solana blockchain.
DeGods was to be bridged over to Ethereum to join the likes of other popular projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, DeLabs founder Rohun Vora, aka Frank DeGods, said at the time. Meanwhile the Ethereum-scaling network Polygon won over y00ts in part because of a $3 million non-equity grant from Polygon Labs as part of the agreement to move over y00ts.
On Monday, DeLabs announced the y00ts migration to Polygon, and, according to Decrypt, more than 75% of NFTs in the collection had been migrated to Polygon in just 24 hours.
On Friday, the even more valuable DeGods collection is starting its migration to Ethereum, and the excitement was already evident on Crypto Twitter.
If users migrate NFTs in the first 24 hours, the gas fees associated with the move will be covered by the company. And if holders at least start the process on the first possible day, they’re eligible to win a Bitcoin DeGod NFT.
In a slight to NFT marketplace OpenSea, DeGods chose up-and-coming competitor, Blur, as their “recommended marketplace experience for DeGods on Ethereum,” according to a tweet by the project.
We’re partnering up with @blur_io as our recommended marketplace experience for DeGods on Ethereum.
— DeGods III (@DeGodsNFT) March 30, 2023
We will be hosting a 1:1 Twitter Spaces with Blur founder @PacmanBlur & @frankdegods on Saturday.
Set reminder: https://t.co/oVmlEqQx4g pic.twitter.com/icJbU4ho8r
Suffice to say, it’s not great for Solana, which already took a hit to its credibility after the downfall of FTX and Alameda Research and of Sam Bankman-Fried’s close ties with the Solana Labs, the company that builds products and tools to further expand the Solana ecosystem. Plus, SBF’s companies were big holders of SOL.
That said, SOL has still doubled since Jan. 1, and even with the news of two massive NFT projects exiting, its price didn’t take a big hit, according to CoinMarketCap.
Austin Federa, the Solana Foundation’s head of strategy told Fortune that he wasn’t concerned about y00ts and DeGods’ move away from Solana. He pointed to projects like Claynosaurz and OKBears as projects that are emerging as top projects on Solana and, more importantly, he said they may at some point expand beyond being just PFP (profile picture) projects.
“The projects that are are excited about building on Solana a lot of them have a game somewhere in their future,” Federa said. “They have some vision of the technology they’re building where they really need the scalability of Solana. If they don’t need the scalability of Solana—like I would obviously prefer they stay here—but if they get offered a bunch of money to do something else and their community is OK with that, that’s a decision that I can understand.”
Thought bubble
Argentinian low-cost airline Flybondi conducted one of the most interesting applications of NFTs to the traditional business world that I’ve seen in a while.
This week, the airline became the first in the world to offer blockchain-based NFT tickets for all domestic routes. The “Ticket 3.0” launch means that, for a fee, customers will now be able to change the name on a ticket, transfer it, or give it away for someone else to use all without having to deal with the hassle of involving the company.
The airline teamed up with NFT ticket company TravelX for the initiative, which FlyBondi said cost its partner $7 million to develop. The company doesn’t take a cut of the initial NFT ticket sale, TravelX’s chief blockchain officer told CoinDesk, but the company and the airline take a 2% cut when the tickets are traded on the secondary market.
The tickets can be bought with fiat and managed through Flybondi’s website, a clear sign the functionality is meant for mainstream adoption.
In other news
Web3 domain company Unstoppable Domains is bringing A.I. and NFTs together with a new PFP collection. For $14.99, the company will analyze 10 to 20 images of your face and make 200 A.I.-enabled renderings of it. You can then turn your favorite into an NFT. There are also some featuring the profiles of famous people available on OpenSea as of this week for, at the lowest, just above 900 bucks.
Canadian musician Claire Boucher, aka Grimes, launched a Gen 1 Avatar NFT collection, in partnership with digital art platform Zora, following a performance at the Ultra Music Festival last week. The free collection is the first of a series of virtual A.I. avatars within what Grimes is calling the “A.I. Oracle Neural-Network.” (Look out Neuralink?) The avatar has already been minted 43,000 times. The last day to mint is Friday.
NFT marketplace Magic Eden is set to open its Ethereum marketplace, Eth Genesis, on April 6, the company announced this week. Although the marketplace originally was limited to Solana collections, it’s since added support for Polygon and most recently Bitcoin NFTs, called Ordinals. Magic Eden will have more than 10 new collections at launch, including Hashflow, CNWAFUKU, and KaijuKingz. All ETH NFT collections traded on native listings will include creator royalties.
