The decision to return to Ethereum goes back to December 2022. We know this is a big transition that will affect our community. That’s why we want to be as communicative and transparent as possible as we make this move. It’s essential to us that you, our community members, are aware of why this is happening, how it’s going to happen, and what you can expect. We’ll cover all of that in this post.

The Background

Shortly after launching the Solana version of Glass, we began interviewing creators and collectors to better understand the community’s perception of Glass. What did they like about our system? Where could we improve? While responses were generally positive, with special praise for the Glass user experience and innovative features like the Circle, one question kept coming up:

“Are you planning to add support for ETH?”

We quickly realized the importance of interoperability in web3.

Creators wanted to reward existing collectors using early access “allowlists” (pre-sales), but most of their collector bases are on ETH. One of our most frequently asked questions from creators was “How do I let my ETH collectors claim this video?” to which we would have to reply “Can you get us their SOL addresses?” The friction involved for both creators and collectors was too high.

Building on Solana allowed us to deliver best-in-class onboarding and accessibility, but left us on an island when it came to working with existing web3 applications. It limited our ability to acquire creators and, due to SOL’s lack of infrastructure, confined Glass experiences to applications that we built ourselves.

As this became clear, it also became clear that we had to make a change in order to truly support our community. Our goal is to create an ecosystem that empowers both creators and collectors - the technology we use should reflect that.

So, in January 2023, we decided to pause development on the Solana version of Glass and dedicate our engineering resources to the creation of a new version on Ethereum.

We want to take everything we’ve learned about releasing videos as NFTs and distill our insights into a product that maximizes expansibility and facilitates collaboration. By enabling integrations with other applications built on ETH, we can leverage and contribute to a growing media ecosystem—without having to build everything ourselves from scratch, which is a slow and difficult process.

This is how we can best support the Glass community - and that’s why we’re making the switch.

What’s Next

We plan to unify the videos on the different versions of Glass into a single, cohesive experience. The first step to doing that is to consolidate the creation process to a single website. So, starting June 30, all actions on the Solana version will be removed. All the data displayed on sol.glass.xyz will remain available as read-only, but no new videos will be published or exchanged.

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 it Works

Creators first need to fill out this form indicating which videos they would like to re-mint. The form will remain open until June 30. At the end of the registration phase, we’ll take a snapshot of all collectors for each of the videos requested.

The re-minting process will take place in July. We will cover all costs for publishing videos, creating editions, and providing them to collectors. Collectors will be responsible for claiming the new editions. Additional details on that process will be announced in the coming weeks.

We ask creators to support us in contacting eligible collectors to ensure they are aware of the program.

The purpose of this initiative is to ease the transition between blockchains and unite the Glass community. We encourage all SOL creators to participate as we work to expand and improve Glass for everybody.

Since moving back to building on ETH, we’ve already initiated partnerships with various applications and plan to continue optimizing interoperability. As always, thank you for your support. We’re working tirelessly to create an ecosystem that truly supports our community. We can’t wait to share what’s next.