Tomorrow, “Worst Case” LDAs will be migrated to the Polygon blockchain, to ensure holders can get all the benefits of other LDAs, including trading on our new marketplace.
Over the coming months, we’ll kick off a process to migrate my other Ethereum-based assets to Royal, allowing holders to claim LDAs and begin earning royalties, from Everything & the Ultraviolet album NFTs to Faces & Flux!
Here’s how it will work for “Worst Case”:
A snapshot will be taken on Tuesday, Dec 20 at 3:00pm ET.
Your “Worst Case” LDA must be in a self-custodied wallet at the time of the snapshot to be eligible.*
Later on Tuesday, Dec 20 (by 8:00pm ET), a new Polygon LDA will be airdropped based on the snapshot and all rights ownership will be transferred to the new LDA. The Polygon LDAs will be airdropped to the same addresses, on Polygon, that held the original Ethereum mainnet LDAs.
*Owners of tokens held in smart contracts can contact support@royal.io to claim their LDA(s) following the airdrop (after verifying ownership). After 180 days, those unclaimed will return to the artist.
What happens to the original “Worst Case” tokens?
The original tokens on the Ethereum blockchain will still exist, and their metadata will be updated to reflect these changes. They are the genesis tokens for Royal, and due to their importance in Royal’s history, they will continue to offer holders certain benefits on the Royal platform.
Why now?
When I first set out to build Royal and the future of on-chain music ownership a year and a half ago, blockchain infrastructure was still early in its development. We started out by creating the very first set of limited digital assets (LDAs): a collection of 333 ERC-1155 tokens representing ownership in my single “Worst Case.” The genesis of Royal LDAs with the minting of the “Worst Case” token on the Ethereum blockchain was a historical moment for on-chain music ownership, and much of the technology it pioneered powers Royal today.
Creating a new standard of co-ownership that aligns incentives between fans and artists means making it accessible, and we quickly realized that creating tokens on Ethereum was not going to be sustainable. Due to the growth in ETH prices and network usage, a simple transaction regularly required tens of dollars in gas fees. So in late 2021, our team decided to migrate our LDA infrastructure to the Polygon blockchain, a scaling solution built on top of Ethereum, where transactions typically cost fractions of a cent.
Since then, we’ve continued to build out our platform, including launching the music rights marketplace we set out to build since day one and building the infrastructure for artists to share royalties with collectors. With those systems in place, I’m excited to finally bring all of my assets onto Royal, starting with “Worst Case.” I’ll share more info on the other assets later.
I am excited to continue building for all of you as we close out 2022. As always, thanks for your support and belief.
