ApeChain launch and Ethereum ecosystem development

Early this year or late last year, the Boring Ape community announced that it would release its own second-layer extension, ApeChain. At that time, I shared this news in an article, and I thought that this move was a last resort to boost the popularity of the community.

The Boring Ape, once the No. 1 player in the NFT ecosystem, was once regarded as the top luxury item on the chain and even the entire metaverse ecosystem at its peak. In order to maintain that unattainable position, it tried a lot:

It issued several new NFTs, issued tokens, and made games (more than one)...

At the time, it did everything it should do in line with the ideas of IP and entertainment.

But it couldn't withstand the sluggishness of the entire crypto ecosystem. All these measures basically had no obvious effect, and the popularity continued to dissipate and the value continued to disappear.

In addition, due to the lack of innovation in the application of the crypto ecosystem itself, Boring Ape did not take a new path of independence in application.

So in the end, this project fell from grace, dragging down all the assets of the entire project. At the lowest point, the Boring Ape NFT had only more than 10 Ethereum, the Mutated Ape NFT had only more than 2 Ethereum, and the token ApeCoin fell below $1 at its lowest point.

Later, when Ethereum's second-layer expansion technology gradually matured and showed signs of becoming a tool for many projects to compete to develop their own ecosystems, Boring Ape finally began to consider releasing its own second-layer expansion.

Now, ApeChain is finally online.

The website of ApeChain (https://apechain.hub.caldera.xyz/) is very interesting. It clearly marks that its data availability (DA) is Ethereum, the network uses Arbitrum One, and the Rollup technology stack uses Arbitrum Nitro. The entire system is built on the technical framework of Arbitrum.

I remember that when the community first proposed to build ApeChain, there were two opinions: one was to start from scratch and build a L1-level main chain, and the other was to build a second-layer extension based on Ethereum based on the OP framework.

In response, the OP team also publicly expressed on Twitter that they were willing to support the project party to build a second-layer extension based on their own technology stack.

At that time, I really hoped that the project party could take the second path, so that they could keep their own ecology in Ethereum as much as possible, which would not only help the Ethereum ecology, but also allow the project itself to continue to grasp the flow of Ethereum.

Now it seems that the project team is taking the second path, but they did not choose OP's OP Stack but chose Arbitrum's Nitro architecture.

In fact, no matter what technology is chosen, as long as it can stay in the Ethereum ecosystem (such as becoming a second-layer expansion like now), I think it is the best solution for the project team and users.

In addition to the official launch of ApeChain, a more interesting approach of the project team is to directly launch its own MEME coin sales platform: Ape Express, and directly mark it as Pump Fun on ApeChain.

Some well-known KOLs (such as Beeple) and media (such as NFT NOW) in the circle have commented on Ape Express on Twitter.

Stimulated by these news, both the Bored Ape NFT and the project's token Ape have risen to a certain extent in a short period of time.

However, I still think that these price increases driven by emotions are not easy to last. ApeChain will eventually obtain continuous valuable traffic and TVL, and it still needs to continue to find ways to innovate applications.

But doing these is better than doing nothing. In addition, judging from people's comments and attention on Twitter, Bored Ape still has a considerable weight in the minds of many old players. If the project party can really launch some interesting innovations, I believe the popularity of the project will soon rise again.

During this period, watching the vigorous emergence of Ethereum's second-layer extensions one after another, although I think many of them are not innovative or bright, I can still feel that Ethereum's potential is continuing to accumulate.

Perhaps when this little bit of "inconspicuous" or even "mediocre" second-layer extension ecology accumulates to a certain extent, the Ethereum ecology will usher in its own leap from "quantitative change to qualitative change".