On Tuesday, Polygon’s co-founder Sandeep Nailwal engaged the ApeCoin community in talks about building a dedicated ApeCoin zero-knowledge-based Layer-2 (zk-L2) chain. Dubbed ApeChain, the proposed network will be built using Polygon’s CDK. But that’s not all, the co-founder is asking for a development fund of approximately $200k annually from the DAO’s treasury.
Nailwal argues that ApeChain will “accelerate the growth and development of the ApeCoin ecosystem.” Notably, it could open a potential revenue stream to the DAO through sequencer fees and staking rewards while attempting to solve the ecosystem’s inherent scalability issue.
“This chain will provide dedicated, ultra-premium, and inexpensive blockspace for ApeCoin DAO-affiliated and/or -incubated experiences […] that will ultimately bring not only more users into the ApeCoin ecosystem, but also additional activity and creation of all types of value,” he wrote.
The proposal has been widely received by the ApeCoin community. However, some members of the group have raised concerns over the need to pay Polygon Labs or its implementation partner $200k to build a native chain. A user who goes by the name “BAYC” said:
Makes no sense to pay $200k a year for $APE’s own chain when $APE could just use polygon chain or a similar tech for free. Also being on a chain that’s already built will have more users. Every project I know that has done their own chain or subnet, it has worked very poorly.
Another user slammed Polygon for allegedly paying a major Solana-native NFT collection to migrate to its chain. “Hard sell asking for significant monetary contribution from the DAO after giving out gigantic grants to other projects in the past, namely y00ts,” Hank stated.
Although the community appears to be already taking sides, the proposal may eventually be voted on after a thorough discussion within the DAO.