After a month of intense debate, it appears ApeCoin will stay on the Ethereum blockchain.
According to a recent vote, a slim majority of ApeCoin DAO members voted to keep Bored Ape founder Yuga Labs’ ApeCoin on Ethereum. At the close of the six-day voting period, 53.62 percent of ApeCoin holders voted to remain on Ethereum rather than move to another blockchain.
A new CoinTelegraph report found that community members used 7.1 million ApeCoins to voice their opinion on this significant issue. 3.8 million of these votes favored staying on Ethereum, while the remaining 3.3 million wanted to explore other options.
To understand why the ApeCoin DAO considered moving to another chain, it’s essential to review the Otherdeed NFT mint. Last month, Yuga Labs raised about $300 million from these land NFTs for its upcoming “Otherside” metaverse — marking it the largest NFT mint in history.
People who wanted to mint an “Otherdeed” had to buy their NFT with 305 ApeCoins. However, since these NFTs are on Ethereum, customers also had to pay gas fees with ETH.
Due to the massive demand for Otherdeeds, activity on Ethereum spiked, and gas fees soared. Most reports suggest that people who participated in the Otherdeed mint spent $177 million in ETH for gas.
Shortly after this controversial launch, Yuga Labs tweeted that the ApeCoin DAO should move to “its own chain” to “properly scale.” The ApeCoin DAO formally allowed community members to submit proposals on this question on May 2nd.
ApeCoin DAO member BAYC 2491 (aka ASEC) submitted the pro-Ethereum proposal that recently passed: AIP-41. Despite Ethereum’s scalability issues, ASEC suggested it would be too costly to move to another blockchain. ASEC also pointed out that Ethereum still has the largest community for NFT collectors, and it’s where all of Yuga Labs’ iconic Bored Ape NFTs reside.
While ApeCoin will stay on Ethereum in the short term, that doesn’t mean it will remain on this blockchain forever. After a three-month grace period, the ApeCoin DAO could revisit this issue.
If ApeCoin left Ethereum, where would it go?
Before AIP-41 passed, a few rival blockchains tried to lure ApeCoin away from Ethereum’s main chain.
For instance, the Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution Immutable X sent a migration proposal to the ApeCoin DAO. The competing layer 1 blockchain Avalanche has also publicly expressed interest in helping ApeCoin scale.
Considering the value of the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s ecosystem, there’s probably no shortage of blockchains that would help ApeCoin transition from Ethereum. However, it’s worth mentioning that Ethereum developers are hard at work on a significant upgrade this summer (aka “the Merge”).
Ethereum’s upgrade to proof of stake will make it more energy-efficient and may resolve some of its scalability issues. The success of Ethereum’s update might quell some of the fears Yuga Labs has expressed in recent months.
Only time will tell whether the Bored Ape community feels comfortable leaving ApeCoin in the Ethereum ecosystem.