Glass Protocol - A Return Journey From Solana to Ethereum

Glass Protocol, the pioneer Web3 video NFT platform, is ready to embark on a reverse journey back to Ethereum from Solana, its current blockchain residence. Notably, Glass will continue to use Arweave to store all video data.

The inception of Glass took place on Ethereum, but a shift towards Solana occurred in 2022. The official launch on the Solana platform occurred in September of the same year as we reported about it. Fast forward to June 2023, and the Web3 video NFT platform has now decided to return to Ethereum, its original blockchain home.

The Motive Behind the Shift

As pre Glass' Nick Villar’s blog post dated June 14, 2023, the decision to move back to Ethereum had its genesis back in December 2022. The decision wasn't taken lightly, and the impact it could have on their community was a crucial aspect considered during the decision-making process.

Following the launch on Solana, the Glass team conducted interviews with creators and collectors to gauge their perception of the platform. While the responses were generally positive, the team found a recurring question about the addition of support for ETH, highlighting the importance of interoperability in the Web3 ecosystem.

Creators sought to reward their existing collectors with early access “allowlists”, but the majority of their collector bases were on ETH. The process of linking these ETH collectors with their new Solana-based platform proved to be a friction-filled task.

While Solana allowed Glass to deliver a highly accessible experience, it isolated the platform from other existing Web3 applications. The lack of Solana's infrastructure limited Glass's potential to interact with a broader community and confined the Glass experiences to applications built in-house - which proved to be quite demanding for the Glass team.

Recognising these limitations, in January 2023, the Glass team decided to halt development on the Solana version and reallocate their resources to the creation of a new version on Ethereum. The team plans to build upon the insights gained so far to deliver a product that fosters collaboration and enhances scalability.

The Next Steps

The team plans to unite the videos across both platforms into a seamless, unified experience. Starting June 30, all actions on the Solana version of Glass will cease, with the website sol.glass.xyz retaining all data in a read-only mode.

To ensure that videos on SOL aren’t left in isolation and that the larger Glass community remains undivided, Glass is introducing a program enabling creators to re-mint their videos on ETH and provide editions to their existing collectors—essentially transferring their collection to Ethereum free of charge.

One Glass creator, Wayak, showed their concern with the matter on Twitter.

Glass has reassured creators through its blog post that it will cover the costs, saying:

We don’t want to isolate the videos on SOL or create barriers within the larger Glass community. To address this, we are rolling out a program that allows creators to re-mint their videos on ETH and provide editions to their existing collectors—effectively transferring their collection to ETH at no cost.

How Does the Process Work?

Creators wishing to re-mint their videos must fill out a form indicating which videos they'd like to re-mint. This registration phase is open until June 30. At the end of the registration, a snapshot of all collectors for each video will be taken.

The re-minting process commences in July, with Glass covering all costs related to publishing videos, creating editions, and providing them to collectors. However, collectors will need to claim the new editions, with further details about this process to be announced soon.

Glass aims to facilitate a smooth transition between blockchains and unite the community further through this initiative. Glass has already initiated partnerships with various ETH-based applications and is continuously working on optimising interoperability.