It’s time for a new Base
The last 2+ years have been one of the greatest journeys we’ve had as individuals in our lives. We started as an underdog, grinding to even get our project minted out, and then proceeded to slowly chip away and grow. Within months, we began to set records for sales, have unprecedented community engagement, and eventually become one of the top projects on Cardano, which we remain to this day.
However, it’s now time for a new step in this journey. In the coming weeks, The Ape Society will be bridging to Base, a builder-friendly ETH L2 that we believe will be one of the pillars of bringing the world onchain.
Base has a goal of onboarding their 100 million users from Coinbase, we aim to be a part of history.
When we first set out to create The Ape Society, we wanted to create a web3 country club that was boosted by unique creative abilities and our builder mentality. As time has gone on, we’ve realized that we need to take a new step to embrace a chain that more reflects what we are trying to accomplish as a project.
In this post, we’re going to cover the main points of our move and give an idea of what’s next. We’re going to continue to be active on socials and Discord in order to continue to communicate with the community without any confusion and prepare everyone for next steps.
What is Base?
For those unfamiliar, Base is a ETH L2 chain created by the Coinbase team and built on top of Optimism. There is no Base token, and the primary denomination is ETH. We’ve been following Base closely since its announcement early last year, and it has done remarkably well despite being in its early phases. By every metric, Base is outperforming the general market and has emerged as one of the ETH L2 leaders. It’s adding hundreds of thousands of new users each month, and with upcoming initiatives that number is poised to increase by orders of magnitude. The chain is already doing half a billion dollars of dex volume on a daily basis and is slowly climbing the rankings of NFT volume despite not yet having many collections. A builder-focused chain, the Base team is working on first-class tools to empower devs, putting resources towards hackathons and supporting teams, and creating the infrastructure to onboard millions.
Why move to Base?
The most important aspect of the move is SocialFi. An emerging sector in crypto, we believe the decentralization of social interactions on the web will be a huge part of this next crypto cycle. Base is shaping up to be one of the leaders of this movement. Our focus to start will be empowering the community to be able to push their brands/products to a market much larger than we’ve ever been exposed to before. The center of the plan will be around what we believe is part of the future of social media, Farcaster. Farcaster is a decentralized social media platform that has defied the odds to become an active hub of crypto that hosts some of the brightest minds. We’ll be sharing our Farcaster plan shortly, but if you want to get ahead join with this link (you’ll get some extra credits and also give the TAS account extra credits). We feel as though we are still early to this shift, and think the opportunity is ripe for apes to make a name for themselves through this platform. In the coming days/weeks, we’ll be in discord VC almost every day as much as we can, onboarding apes onto Farcaster, explaining what Base is, talking strategy, and getting set up.
In collaboration with the community, we’ll be executing this plan to build one of the strongest communities on the platform, focusing on art/growth/alpha/etc. As a top community, we are confident that we can now network with other large players in the space, allow our holders to qualify for amazing airdrops, and grow together. In addition, we believe the exceptional products that are in development by our community have a much larger chance of success on Base. The reality of success is you have to go where the users are. We’re going to be having 1on1s with our community builders to put them in a position to succeed at those ventures and provide some guidance on how to successfully transfer their efforts from Cardano to Base.
Another strong benefit is the potential for more resources for the DAO. A lot more liquidity and volume on Base, so if we are able to succeed in our transition, the DAO may eventually have a lot more funds to work with. More importantly, there is much better tooling around DAOs. DAOs can buy nfts/interact with smart contracts/pay people/send funds/etc all through advanced battle-tested multisigs and tooling. A few examples include Safe and Party. We can also automate a lot of the procedures that have taken us hours upon hours due to utxo congestion.
We also know that the DAO and community has had a lot of fun with IRL events and getting to know others. By joining Base, community members will have the opportunity to network with more people, attend a wider variety of events, and be able to make a stronger impression on those who are exploring the Base chain or EVM users in general.
Next is branding. We can now build a legit brand with multiple social media angles that have the chance to access the crypto and broader mainstream. Coinbase Wallet, especially the smart wallet (try it yourself here: https://www.smart-wallet.xyz/) that is launching in the coming weeks, has a realistic goal of onboarding millions. Users can sign up with no seed phrase and be onchain in seconds – it’s easier than signing up for an email address.
In addition, we can finally have our brand in the highest exposure areas – whether it’s primary Twitter spaces, top-tier marketplaces like Magic Eden and OpenSea, and more. Our marketing skills and networking abilities will be able to shine. We can also work towards real brand partnerships with large web2 brands that are much more likely to work with projects on a chain like Base. As we establish ourselves on the chain our goal is to become a community that is a frequent collaborator with those trying to experiment on web3.
In the past, we've been forced to focus too much on defi primitives, building out/adapting core blockchain tech, etc therefore deviating from the brand. Base lets us focus on what we can do best, which is being creative. One issue we ran into was a lot of our products were limited by speed and cost. We can mint/do transactions/play games/etc all for pennies in seconds at a scale that we’re unlikely to be limited by. Base also allows us to have better decentralization, as everything can be done onchain rather than using off-chain scripts due to utxo/concurrency limitations. We’re also less dependent on services run by relatively small companies that have single points of failure.
Finally, we want to be in a position where we are adjacent to success. The AF1 team has been following ecosystems closely for years and Base is one of the biggest opportunities that we’ve seen. Although we love to create fun experiences and products, it shouldn’t always be about apes. Naturally, an NFT community will engage the most with the projects (both FT and NFT) built on its native chain. Currently, we see Base as the place with the highest probability of success for many upcoming projects. Just being on the chain that is bringing the next wave of innovation will put opportunities in front of apes that can be life-changing.
Whats next?
The first thing will be the bridge of the Apes. You’ll be able to migrate your apes onto Base for no charge in the coming weeks. Migration will work for both CIP-25 and CIP-68 apes, so if you have not converted your ape, you can still migrate in the same way. We’re focusing on bridging first, and will in time rebuild the tailor shop on Base, so to begin you’ll be carrying your existing PFP to Base and won’t be able to make any changes for a little while. Before bridging, be sure you like the way your ape looks! We’ll have a very friendly interface, and the process will be very easy. All you’ll need on the Base side is a compatible EVM wallet like Rabby, Coinbase Wallet, or Metamask. Leading up to the bridge we’ll be helping onboard the community onto these wallets and helping teach the basics for those unfamiliar.
Other than apes, we’ll have to make changes in certain areas. The most pressing decision will be what to do with cabins and passports. We have a preferred move as a team but want the community to vote and discuss what should be done. We currently see three possible routes:
Option 1: Sapphires
For our next journey, we’ll stow some of the assets. We can’t bring everything to Base with us, but it doesn't mean the journey so far has been worthless. You’ll be able to exchange your cabins, passports, buildings, furniture, diamond hands trophies, crests, tickets, and regretonis for Sapphires. The amount of Sapphires you receive will be proportional to the level/type of the respective asset. For example, SLVD rating will determine the worth of the cabins. We’ll be revealing a guide before the bridge for how Sapphires will be calculated and how they will be stored if this is the option you vote for.
We understand this is a tough decision that may get some initial pushback but we need to take this opportunity for a fresh start. Moving over 30k+ assets to a new chain will destroy our chances of success and we are confident that we will be able to create a better experience for Sapphires than we would have with the original assets. The use of Sapphires will not be immediate, but we have several plans for excellent use cases. We strongly believe this option will put the project in the best position to succeed long term.
Option 2: DAO takeover of Cabins and Passports
In this option, the DAO would gain control over passports and cabins. Royalties moving forward on these two collections would 100% go to the DAO. The DAO can then develop whatever they feel like using that ecosystem.
Option 3: Something else
The DAO is free to discuss and come up with other options. However, this must happen very quickly, as we need to direct our attention to making moves on Base and don’t want this to spill over into the next phase. We want to make sure we’re early on the move, and that the community is in sync with this move.
The only rules are: that the assets can not be bridged to Base, the team is not building the landmarks, and AF1 can not be contracted for dev help. The plan is to vote in the coming days on which direction to go.
In any option, we’ll be eliminating the landmark system and the passport system on the side of AF1. We know this will be controversial, but we have several key reasons.
First, we learned from our previous experience that over-commodifying assets raises expectations to an extremely high level that isn’t sustainable and puts too much pressure on the price of the assets. In addition, it extracts too much value from the projects that are created by AF1 and places short-term revenue above user growth, hurting the overall experience with the project.
Second, we want to make sure that we simplify our ecosystem and don’t cross any regulatory boundaries — especially on a chain as mainstream as Base. We anticipate we’ll have new faces, new partnerships, and more, and we do not want to confuse new individuals with a convoluted loop of interconnected NFTs.
Finally, Base is a completely different type of ecosystem. The landmark system was designed around Cardano and the amount of volume and needs in the ecosystem. We also anticipated technical improvements within Cardano that did not come to fruition. The scale of 11 landmarks will be way too large in an ecosystem like Base. We’re going to continue to be creative and launch projects, but eliminating the landmarks allows us to be more ambitious in our ideas. We’re now not limited by volume, scaling, or tech, so we can venture into different fields and experiment more. We’re confident that our creativity will do more to increase the appeal of owning an ape than a landmark-type system ever would be able to.
$SOC will be bridged from Cardano to Base. It will be the second tech priority and happen after the ape bridge. $SOC will no longer be a DeFi token, and will be pivoting towards SocialFi and Culture. We’ve realized that a token that surrounds an NFT ecosystem should be correlated with its social growth and creativity rather than its Defi prowess. We made the mistake of mixing both on Cardano and are using this opportunity to make things right. We’re going to be doing another rebrand that will make the token more fun and emphasize its utility as rewarding those who participate the most in our social ecosystem. For hints on where that could go, you can investigate some of the Social tokens that exist on the Base network. (Note: social tokens are different from meme tokens). For staked $SOC tokens on Levvy, we’re going to create a system where users can withdraw and will be credited the “burned” penalty tokens to an EVM wallet.
When the bridge starts, frames, buildings, and passports will stop earning $SOC emissions. This will leave almost 200m $SOC in the staking and game wallets. We will be taking a small percentage, which will be airdropped to building owners and employees. In addition, we will hold some to airdrop to the earliest bridgers of apes. Finally, we’re going to bridge the rest that can be used for social ecosystem rewards and to grow the overall token. Shortly, we’ll release a full breakdown of the exact math behind these changes.
Levvy
Levvy has been one of our crowning achievements as a team and remains one of the best dapps built on Cardano. We are looking to move off of the chain, so are currently accepting bids on the platform over the next couple of weeks. It’s a proven profitable protocol and we’d love to see it in the hands of one of the strong builders on Cardano. Please reach out to our team if you are interested in acquiring the platform.
As far as other projects such as Plunge, Cabins the Game, the City, and more, we will be slowly winding those down as well.
What’s after that?
We want to be extremely clear about our intentions for the project without making the mistake of putting out a roadmap. With Base, a chain that has incredible onboarding and the potential to bring millions onchain, our full creativity is released. We are currently already working on several different projects of varying size — including one that combines Social and Gaming. We saw how much fun our holders had with crafting and Cabins The Game. We’re going to bring that to the next level with an order of magnitude more users, real decentralization, and infinitely more onchain flexibility. Our priority with these is to try and spread our brand as wide as possible and deliver value back to our community in the opposite direction, rather than promising that utility will come. One of these projects also may or may not involve s***s ;). We also are going to be experimenting regularly with Farcaster frames.
However, we do want to emphasize that the first priority is to establish our brand and our community as a social player in the ecosystem. For the immediate future, primary communications will all be about how we as a community can join the larger crypto universe and contribute towards the common goal of improving the space.
Final Thoughts
To sum it up, the reality is that our current chain does not have the volume and scalability to support the roadmap that we put out. We’re using this opportunity to start fresh. We’re not doing any immediate new mints on Base and the focus will strictly be on apes and the overall brand. AF1 will be able to build creatively alongside the community in an environment we feel our style will fit in more. We’re looking forward to creating a true Web3 country club and being able to unleash all our pent-up creativity and ideas. For the first time in a while, we no longer feel like there is a ceiling on our ability to grow. Look forward to us continuing to be present as well as releasing more information about immediate next steps.
This journey isn’t without risk, but a real journey never is. However, the beauty of this next step is that our success will be determined by how all of us come together behind a common goal. We’ve put a ton of thought into this, and are excited to talk to you all more about our reasoning and how we are going to succeed as a unit.
Apes Together Strong,
AF1
