The big migration
As part of the Season 6 update of the NFT Mythical Beings collection, this week we are performing a migration of several tokens on both the Ardor and Polygon blockchains. This is one of the final steps in preparing for the next season, and in this article we explain what it is and what its goals are. In addition, the Bridge will be paused for the next few days to allow for a clean migration.
The history of Mythical Beings has been built over time, starting from a very basic initial vision and adding layers as the enthusiasm of the development team took hold and new ideas enriched the project. This has resulted in a number of tokens that do not conform to standards, which has caused problems for the project’s growth plans, especially in terms of expanding to other blockchains.
The migration aims to standardize the tokens and provide a solid foundation on which to build. It will affect GIFTZ tokens, which are closed packs of random cards, and cards in Polygon.
Closed packs, aka GIFTZ
From Season 6 onwards, these card packs will play a vital role in the collecting dynamic, as they will be the only way to acquire cards. And it just so happens that the GIFTZ token has always been a “currency” in Ardor’s Monetary System, rather than an “asset”. All other tokens in the ecosystem are assets, and the whole infrastructure is built to work with assets, so this exception became very annoying. For example, Ardor’s internal DEX does not support currencies that have their own exchange system, API calls, etc.. But also, since GIFTZ is going to be the way for all collectors to acquire NFT, we need to make it available on Polygon, our second blockchain. And again, the bridge to Polygon is built to be crossed by assets, not currencies.
So we created a GIFTZ asset and we did a 1:1 airdrop to the accounts that had a GIFTZ currency balance. Users of the Mythical Beings wallet won’t notice the difference, but those familiar with the Block Explorer or the official Ardor wallet will have noticed the reception of this token. So it’s not a scam! It’s just a metamorphosis of the good old GIFTZ. It will still have the same use as before, so you will be able to open it and discover the three cards inside once Season 6 begins. Instead, the old GIFTZ currency has become useless and will no longer serve any purpose.
Creatures heading for new pastures
The second and most important migration takes place in Polygon. When we created the bridge, we also had to create the NFTs on that blockchain, and we used the service of the leading NFT marketplace, OpenSea. This made things easier and put us directly into a very relevant marketplace, but it had its drawbacks. OpenSea’s service creates all collections under a single OS-controlled contract, making the trail of each collection indistinguishable from the others. This caused three problems that became very annoying for Mythical Beings.
- Firstly, it was not possible to access other marketplaces because there was no contract to list. Our mythical creatures were confined to OpenSea, and being caged is not in their nature.
- Secondly, the NFT collection ranking and statistics sites cannot technically list us and publish our data, as there is no contract whose activity on the blockchain reports the users, trades, prices, volumes, etc. of our collection on Polygon. With all that this implies in terms of visibility.
- And thirdly, all the tools built around web3 and NFT are based on the premise that collections have their own contract. For example, the Guild.xyz requirements system, or the plugin that automates discounts in online shops for cardholders of a collection.
So we need to move to our own contract. This is complicated because we have almost 500 holders at Polygon, each with many different cards. In addition, each card has its own market with buy and sell orders. After considering several options, each with its pros and cons, we have decided on the following option:
- We have created a new contract in Polygon for the collection.
- We will airdrop 1:1 to the NFT holders in Polygon so that they have the same balance in the new contract as they had in the OpenSea contract.
- We will ask OpenSea to de-register the collection issued with their contract.
What do NFT holders have to do?
If we have chosen this option, it is mainly because the holders do not have to do anything. They will still have the same NFT balance as before, without having to use bridges or burn old NFTs. In other words, nothing needs to be done.
The downside of this option is that the old NFTs will still exist on the blockchain. As they are not listed on any exchange, it will be difficult to move them or try to sell them, but it is important to be aware of this possibility in any case.
On the other hand, there are open orders for old NFTs on OpenSea. This could lead to problems selling old and worthless tokens after the migration. Fortunately, at the moment all orders are sell orders, not buy orders, so there is no opportunity for post-snapshot fraud, and we expect OpenSea to close the collection immediately. However, we urge all NFT holders on Polygon to cancel their sell orders in order to have as clean a migration as possible.
One small detail that will cause some problems is that the new cards will appear in the “Hidden” section of OpenSea and other marketplaces by default. This is because the NFTs will not have been minted directly from the user’s account, but sent from a central account. To fix this, each user must manually ‘unhide’ the cards.
