- The Aavegotchi game is moving to Coinbase's Base.
- Aavegotchi's founder cites a lack of support from Polygon.
- Polygon says Aavegotchi received a grant ahead of the migration proposal.
Aavegotchi, the crypto game, will leave the Polygon blockchain after members voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to migrate to Coinbase’s Base blockchain.
The open source game involves players using so-called Aavegotchis, which are like digital customisable versions of the Japanese Tamagotchi toys, to earn valuable tokens.
The Aavegotchi community, including the game’s founder Daniel Mathieu, say they are unhappy with Polygon’s lack of support for crypto games.
“Polygon has not shipped any significant updates or features to PoS to enable better ecosystem coherence or discovery for gaming,” Mathieu, who proposed the migration to Base, said in an X post.
A whopping 93% of the game’s community voted in favour of the move.
It’s another vote of confidence in Base, which under Coinbase’s stewardship has grown into the biggest Ethereum layer 2 with $3.6 billion in deposits, and the sixth biggest blockchain overall, since its 2023 launch.
But for Polygon, it’s yet another setback as the blockchain struggles to stay relevant in an increasingly competitive industry.
Polygon’s DeFi deposits, which peaked at $12 billion in 2021, have shrunk 14 times to just $850 million as it loses ground to newer competitors like Base and Arbitrum.
A spokesperson for Polygon told DL News that it respected Aavegotchi’s decision, and that the gaming venture may have received a $500,000 to $1 million grant from Base prior to announcing the migration.
DL News could not confirm the grant or its details. Mathieu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Aavegotchi is a somewhat niche game, but it’s loved by many DeFi diehards because of its connection to top DeFi lender Aave. Aside from riffing on Aave’s branding, the game counts the lending protocol’s founder Stani Kulechov among its advisors.
Mass migration
Base wasn’t the only blockchain Aavegotchi considered for its migration. Mathieu also looked at moving the game to the Arbitrum or Ronin blockchains.
He said he ultimately decided on Base due to the Aavegotchi team’s close relationship with the Base team, and the blockchain’s strong ties to Coinbase and crypto social media platform Farcaster.
Now the Aavegotchi community has endorsed the move, work can begin on the migration.
The plan is to permanently lock the Aavegotchi smart contracts on Polygon, then clone all contracts and assets and deploy them on Base, a process that should take four to six weeks.
Mathieu said much of the migration work has already been done due to a previous plan to move the game to its own dedicated layer 3 blockchain.
It’s not the first falling out between Aave’s community and Polygon.
In December, two major Aave DAO delegates told DL News they would vote to shutter the lending protocol’s Polygon version over a proposal to invest $1 billion in idle crypto on the Polygon-Ethereum bridge with a competitor.
Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron told DL News at the time that the proposal was in a preliminary stage and many months from becoming a reality, and characterised the Aave delegates’ proposed response as “anti-competitive.”
Aave currently accounts for around 38% of all DeFi deposits on the Polygon blockchain.
Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.
