NFT Issuer Doublejump.Tokyo Ditches Ethereum for Flow Blockchain

Japanese non-fungible token (NFT) issuer Doublejump.Tokyo plans to build new projects atop Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain and plans to move portions of its Ethereum-based game catalog there as well.

The company, which manages titles including the digital trading card games My Crypto Heroes and My Crypto Saga, had relied on Ethereum since launching in 2018. But scaling and friction issues prompted Doublejump to relocate ahead of projects with larger partners, the firm said in a press release Thursday.

My Crypto Heroes is hardly a kingmaker in NFT circles: It saw a paltry $7,716 (3.2 ETH) in peer-to-peer trading over the last seven days, according to CryptoSlam. Dapper’s hyper-popular NBA Top Shot enjoyed $15.5 million over the same period. (My Crypto Heroes’ all-time volume is $4.6 million, good enough for ninth-best, per CryptoSlam data.)

But the company’s relocation to Flow nonetheless speaks to the trade-offs NFT developers must weigh in deciding where to host their projects. Ethereum is the biggest and most visible platform but also comes with sky-high transaction fees. A handful of upstart chains, including well-funded Dapper Labs’ Flow, hope to woo hesitant devs away from the market leader with promises of a smoother platform.

“I think most NFT developers are looking for alternatives for their projects,” Dapper’s chief of Blockchain Partnerships, Mickey Maher, told CoinDesk in an interview, “whether it’s experimenting with different layer twos on Ethereum to try to stay there, or looking for a new platform altogether because it becomes impossible, at scale, to manage an NFT experience on Ethereum.”

To date, developer activity on Flow has been minimal. Aside from Dapper’s own NBA Top Shot, only one other dapp is active to the public, according to data compiled by DappRadar. According to internal Dapper Labs data seen by CoinDesk, a test dev environment has clocked 7,500 unique users since March 4, 2020.

Doublejump.Tokyo will run a Flow blockchain node in Japan, according to the press release. It will be Flow’s first node in the region. 

UPDATE (April 22, 20:27 UTC): Corrects the scope of Doublejump.Tokyo’s Flow integration plans. Adds information about Flow developer activity.