Proposal to Migrate to Base Blockchain

Migration is a huge step for any project. To provide readers of this proposal with the proper context to make the most informed decision possible, this will be broken into two parts:

1. The relevant historical context in terms of which blockchain the project was built on, the hurdles that the project now faces as a result of the network, and the thought process behind migration
2. The core of the proposal — what a yes vote on migration would mean, in simple terms

Part 1

Historical Context

When the project was in the planning stages in 2021, the debate was moreso should the project launch on Ethereum or a cheaper layer 1 alternative, with the flavor-of-the-month option at the time being Binance Smart Chain. Between the two it was never really a contest in terms of which blockchain was superior, except for the major issue of sky-high gas fees on Ethereum. While some in the community may have advocated for BSC, part of the thought process for ultimately launching on Ethereum was that the future outlook was positive in terms of potential updates to drastically reduce gas fees.

At around the same time in 2021, Ethereum layer 2s were beginning to officially launch. At the time it was not clear exactly how important a role these would play. If Ethereum had been able to solve the scaling issues independently, clearly the future would have been significantly limited for L2s. This was simply a complete unknown at the time, and so L2s weren’t seriously considered as an option.

While Ethereum remains the vastly superior network in just about every metric when compared with something like BSC, a seriously drastic gas fee reduction on mainnet ETH seems like it may never materialize. In fact, the vision of what a scaled Ethereum network looks like has shifted quite a bit since 2021. Layer 2s now look to be the current and future solution to scalability when it comes to everyday transactions and we indeed believe the future of Ethereum is projects living on L2s. The question then is which L2. We believe Coinbase’s Base network is the best bet. Why? In short, it has the backing of Coinbase and thus a support structure to make it a long-term success; Unlike other L2s, it still uses ETH and has no plan to issue its own token, making the name Pawthereum continue to make sense; Coinbase is putting great effort into making on-ramping and off-ramping as easy as possible, which could be a huge advantage over other L2s.

Current Hurdles / Thought Process for Migration

There are quite a few positives to Ethereum, especially considering its ecosystem as a whole. All things considered, I personally would not change the decision to launch on Ethereum in 2021. However, with the future looking so bright for L2s, and with the challenges created by years of high gas prices mounting, we appear to be at an inflection point: Stay on Ethereum despite high gas prices (potentially hoping they are drastically reduced at some point in time) or migrate to Base.

The current hurdles on mainnet ETH, and what we will likely continue to face for the foreseeable future if we stay, can be summarized as the following.

High gas, causing severe limitations, including:

• Inability to (practically) develop certain features and applications resulting in missing out on potential engagement, interest, and project growth
• Inability to put the project on a path toward decentralization resulting in less growth, weakened sustainability, and negative impact in achieving long term goals
• Negative impact in general in terms of attracting a high volume of users

These can all be fixed by moving to a low-fee network, which is what is being proposed with the migration to Base.

There are also advantages to migration unrelated to gas fees. These generally include:

• Fully upgrading / updating the new contract with the latest and greatest standards that have become available in the several years since the original contract was developed
• The ability to dramatically improve our situation in terms of funds that are available for development/marketing/listings (more on the mechanics of this below)
• The opportunity to reach an entirely new audience and grow on Base, a blockchain which rewards projects who create utility and value on-chain

Downsides of migration include:

• Loss of chart history may occur, but the extent of what this means depends on the 3rd-party charting service in question and exactly how they track migrations
• The challenge of transferring all liquidity, which will require coordination for the locked portion

If you haven’t already, and you would like more details in terms of pros and cons from the core team’s perspective, you can read the previous article discussing the topic of migration here.

Part 2: Core Proposal

Considering the above context, including: the detrimental impact of high gas fees on our project, the lack of a clear solution in sight to fix the gas fee problem on mainnet Ethereum, the emergence of L2s as a clear scaling solution, and the advantages and opportunity created by migration, it is proposed that Pawthereum migrates to the Base network and begins taking the necessary steps to complete that process as soon as a yes vote passes.

In simple terms, voting yes to migrate means you agree with the following:

• Creation of a new Pawthereum (PAWTH) token smart contract on the Base network
• Transferring liquidity from the current liquidity pools to a new pool created for the new PAWTH token on Uniswap — the initial price will be set to roughly what it was the moment before liquidity was sold
• The liquidity transfer process would include the core team redeeming the unlocked LP tokens (held by the multi-sig dev wallet) for the underlying PAWTH and ETH/BNB. The PAWTH will be sold in the current liquidity pools, and ultimately all ETH (BNB will be converted to ETH) extracted from this process will be bridged to Base and used for the new liquidity pool
• A snapshot of holders will be taken after the unlocked liquidity is sold. Everyone on this snapshot will receive the new token 1:1 to their holdings (i.e., if you hold 1M PAWTH during the snapshot, you will be airdropped 1M PAWTH on Base to your wallet address). This includes both ETH and BSC holders
• An optional hand in period will be set if/when this vote passes, to last around 3 weeks. All tokens received as part of this process will be sold in the current liquidity pools to extract the maximum amount of locked liquidity as possible in order to best position the new token for success. Instructions and a hard deadline will be provided if/when this proposal passes
• After the deadline passes for the hand in period, the new Pawthereum token will launch on Base and holders will receive their tokens via airdrop based on the above referenced snapshot
• Those who participated in the hand in process will receive an additional reward — staking tokens that will earn them additional Base PAWTH — and may be eligible for future rewards for the crucial role they will play in making this migration as successful as possible
• Once the new token is launched, and all holders are airdropped 1:1, ~14% of the 1B supply will be “unowned” as they had been “burned” on the PAWTH ETH contract. With the new PAWTH BASE token, we will need to make a decision as a community on how to allocate these tokens. Considering the crucial need to fund project operations in order to add value to the project as a whole, and as part of this proposal, with a yes vote for migration it will be agreed that those tokens (~14% of the supply) will be allocated for development/marketing/listing costs to be held and secured in the multi-sig dev wallet for those purposes

Voting Instructions and Deadline

Vote here in Snapshot to have your voice heard on this pivotal proposal: https://snapshot.org/#/pawthereum.eth/proposal/0xc19f4895f248a344d8bd761d477a17ee00c78f74ce7810f69edcb8a1551efe22

The deadline for this vote is Saturday, March 23rd at noon ET (5 pm UTC).

A huge shoutout to everyone who participated in the discussions. We started talking about this idea as a community in late January. We’ve had much thorough discussion to lead us to this point and we should be proud as a community for ensuring this crucial part of the decision making process is honored.

Pawthereum is, and will always be, a community-driven project. All votes are important, but this could be a pivotal point in the future of the project, so have your voice heard by voting.