Leaving Ethereum ecosystem entirely would be a terrible idea. Community was born here, Apes should stand their ground. Rollups will eventually capture most if not all transactional execution on Ethereum. And this is good for us. There is a clear trend is blockchain specialization: consensus layer, execution layer, data layer. Ape should not focus on consensus, it should focus on users and their interactions.
From all the Web3 companies Yuga is best positioned to drive the open metaverse. They do not just own some tech, they own the product that everyone want. And this is the only way to reach mass adoption. IMHO all the steps they took, were taken entirely for that reason. Why else would you buy IP rights for the first NFT collection on Ethereum and give it back to the community?
Udi had a great take on that:
$APE is the hottest girl in the club, everyone wants it to be on their platform. We need to control our own narrative, and we have power to do so. Launching on zkSynk or ImmutableX will be a weak play, it will put us in the same basket with the other projects on its platforms. We need to own the platform, and the value flow from our platform should accrue to $APE.
I personally think, StarkEx could be the best solution for us (ApeX sounds cool btw). In this case StarkWare will function only as a service provider. Our brand value will not be diluted. And we will receive support from the best guys in this business. Liron from StarkWare team has actually proposed APE Community to have a DAO voting to deploy on StarkEx:
StarkEx has several benefits that are very applicable for us. It would allow us to define the business logic for our platform: useful in the context of NFTs, metaverse, GameFi. Transactional costs will scale logarithmically with the transaction count: crucial for mass adoption. Different data availability modes: we can launch with a completely decentralized Rollup Mode (higher transactional costs) or somewhat centralized Validium Mode (lower transactional costs) where Yuga and StarkWare together can serve as committee. I think, there is a possibility to have a mix of both, where some core features with low transactional requirements are deployed in Rollup Mode, while potential on-chain games and experiences are deployed in Validium Mode giving minimizing the transaction costs for in-game interactions.
I think that we need to ask StarkWare team to provide a detailed specification and roadmap for such deployment and proceed with the AIP if the conditions of such deployment look reasonable.