Exclusive: DeGods’ Kevin III Talks Bitcoin Branch, y00ts Future

In the past year, DeGods has defied expectations to become the ultimate NFT comeback story. Born on Solana, the large-scale PFP endeavor and its counterpart, y00ts, have continued to drive conversation surrounding the cross-chain compatibility of generative avatars while simultaneously planning to branch over to Ethereum and Polygon, respectively.

Now, DeGods has decided to take its multi-chain endeavors a sizeable step further by bridging a select set of NFTs from the original Solana collection over to Bitcoin as Ordinals Inscriptions. Dubbed “DeGods on Bitcoin,” this latest venture will introduce a first-of-its-kind minting experience on Bitcoin and is said by Dust Labs CEO Kevin Henrikson (AKA Kevin III) to serve as an intentional extension of the DeGods project vision.

“Our goal is to be the number one NFT community on each chain,” Henrikson said in an interview with nft now. “First Solana, now Bitcoin, and soon Polygon and Ethereum once we migrate and grow on those chains. We aren’t just trying to go to every chain but are being thoughtful and purposeful on how it can extend our vision.”

DeGods on Bitcoin

In recent months, it has become increasingly common for established projects and IP to capitalize on the Ordinals hype by bridging over to Bitcoin. With names like CryptoPunks, Yuga Labs, and OnChainMonkey leading the pack for the ETH brigade, original endeavors on BTC, like Taproot Wizards, have begun to flourish as well. Now, DeGods has added its name to the growing list of Bitcoin-centric NFT players, partnering with Luxor Mining to bring its latest venture to life.

With a tentative mint scheduled for the afternoon of March 17, DeGods on Bitcoin will feature a total of 535 NFTs, each of which was previously burned from the blockchain as part of the “Paper Hands Bitch Tax” experiment. Although a mint price has yet to be set, as per a notice from the official DeGods Twitter account, potential participants will want to have at least 0.444 BTC in a self-custodial wallet ready to go.

But there’s more than meets the eye to this small-batch BTC collection. Because while 500 will be available to users on a first-come-first-serve basis, the remaining 35 will be auctioned off in $DUST (the community’s utility token), with proceeds of the DUST-auctioned DeGods to go towards the DustDAO, a DAO for DUST token governance to be erected post DeGods and y00ts merge.

To kick things off, Rohun Vora (known better as Frank III) auctioned off DeGods #2428 on March 16 — which acted as his original Twitter profile picture upon the launch of DeGods — for a whopping 44,256 DUST (nearly $80,000).

Why expand to Bitcoin?

While this latest DeGods expansion has surely come about due to the recent advent and subsequent hype of Bitcoin Ordinals, it’s apparently one that carries deeper meaning with its progenitors. In speaking about how he and Vora landed on branching out to Ordinals, Henrikson said that their already longstanding affinity for BTC fueled the move.

“The first crypto project Frank and I learned of was Bitcoin. We like to say Bitcoin is the best brand in crypto. It just is. So the potential for digital collectibles on Bitcoin is magic,” said Henrikson.

“When Ordinals came out, we followed it closely and watched. We wanted to do something, but it had to be special. Having the previously burned DeGods come back as DeadGods in this fashion was just perfect. Doing it as art in one block is just special and unique.”

Of course, with two collection merges impending, there’s surely a lot to look forward to for the DeGods community. And to Henrikson, this latest move to Bitcoin isn’t meant to overshadow the potential of y00ts but to uplift the entirety of the DeGods and y00ts ecosystem, both of which still have a lot on the horizon.

“Y00ts will move to Polygon in the coming weeks. We are very excited about the brands we’ve been talking to and starting to work with both y00ts and Dust Labs, our software company. Polygon has been a force signing the biggest brands coming into Web3, and that is a perfect match for the diverse and passionate community we’ve built so far with y00ts,” said Henrikson.

“We will also be launching an incubator and accelerator to help grow the Polygon ecosystem and bring more creators and brands into Web3.”

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