ApeCoin DAO, a governance system serving the democratic rights of ApeCoin holders – a digital asset tied to the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem – published an official proposal on May 2 to debate whether the asset should remain on Ethereum, transition to a layer-2 alternative, or perhaps explore the possibility of chain migration.Â
The ApeCoin improvement proposal (AIP) titled “AIP-41: Keep ApeCoin within the Ethereum ecosystem,” was authored by BAYC 2491, known as ASEC, and drew inspiration from a number of incidents, including the turbulent Otherdeed mint, and subsequent Yuga Labs reaction.Â
The calamitous fallout of Yuga Labs’ Otherdeeds metaverse land sale intensely scrutinized the financial limitations of Ethereum’s gas fee mechanics, and prompted the leading members of the ApeCoin community to vocalize their concerns around ApeCoin’s fixed supply contract, and scalability potential.Â
The overwhelming deflation of the gas wars, and lack of financial inclusion or integrity, was then further compounded by Yuga Labs’ poorly-calculated tweet insisting that “it seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale”, and that “we’d like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction.”Â
Despite the imploring suggestion from Yuga Labs, AIP-41 passionately advocated against the migration from Ethereum, stating that “such a decision is currently too complex and costly to make”, and potentially could damage their deep-rooted presence on the network with the largest volume and cultural adoption of NFTs.Â
“We the ApeCoin DAO believe that, at least for the time being, ApeCoin should remain within the Ethereum ecosystem, and not migrate elsewhere to an L1 chain or sidechain not secured by Ethereum.”Â
The total votes of the proposal equated to 3.8 million for and 3.3 million against – a 53.59% split. This outcome is not entirely definitive, and can be further deliberated with the submission of new proposals within a three-month grace period.