The ApeCoin governance mechanism, also known as the ApeCoin DAO, voted 53.6% in favour of staying within the Ethereum ecosystem, according to a snapshot vote that ended today. The vote was close, with 3.8 million APE voting in favour and 3.3 million voting against the proposal.
“Migrating to a different chain is a costly, risky, and complex endeavor with many moving parts that may, if not thoughtfully considered, result in catastrophic loss, or at worst, abandonment by Yuga Labs,” according to the proposal.
Some large token holders that voted had a significant impact. One investor who voted against the proposal was holding 1.2 million APE, accounting for 17% of the total vote. The top 13 voters controlled 56% of the tokens in the poll.
Why is the DAO voting on this?
Yuga Labs, the creator of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), initiated the vote after kicking off a discussion about the future of its native token ApeCoin, which is currently running on the Ethereum blockchain. It blamed the Ethereum network for not being able to handle demand after selling parcels of land in its yet-to-be-built Otherside metaverse for $317 million in April.
“It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale. We’d like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction,” Yuga Labs said on Twitter at the time.
This sparked a flood of proposals from other blockchain projects to migrate ApeCoin — and even the entire Otherside metaverse — to their ecosystems.
Ava Labs, the team behind Avalanche, made the first proposal. It claimed that Otherside and ApeCoin should be launched on an Avalanche subnet, a type of blockchain that operates on the Avalanche network. This would allow it to control its level of decentralisation and security as well as use its own token for transaction fees.
The second proposal came from Immutable X, an Ethereum-based platform for creating and trading NFTs. It asserted that using its platform would provide a faster and more seamless experience while remaining within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Neither of these proposals has yet been put to a vote. It’s also worth noting that ApeCoin DAO only has direct control over ApeCoin, whereas Yuga Labs retains control over its other projects, such as Otherside, in collaboration with partners like Animoca Brands. While the DAO can influence Yuga Labs’ decision-making process, it can’t force its hand.