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For those who don't already know, Publish0x is a sort of Medium alternative for blogging. A place where readers can tip writers whilst also taking a little bit of the tip for themselves. What I really like about it is the fact that articles remain up forever, with rewards dripping in over time. Of course, in practice, most of the tips come in a burst at the start, with very little coming in in the tail. Still, it is the thought that counts!

Anyway, I recently had a look at my withdrawals page to see I had enough to make a withdrawal. I'm the sort of person that doesn't consider crypto to be mine when it is in the form of an IOU, and I'm happier when it appears in my own wallet with my own privately held keys.

Recently, Publish0x have had to change up their payout timetable and limits quite significantly due to the incredibly high gas fees on Ethereum. Publish0x has always been paying out in Ethereum based tokens, currently it is ETH, AMPL and FARM. The mix changes up depending on their behind the scenes sponsorship I guess.

Even with the gas fees currently standing pretty low at around 100 gwei, it is still quite a bit when you are paying out quite a lot of writers. They always pay out on Mondays, and I have always wondered why they don't just do it on a weekend when the gas fees ARE noticeably lower.

I was surprised when there was a notice saying that there was going to be an "exciting" announcement coming on the 10th of March. Although, it could be that there is a new token being added... but I wouldn't really consider that to be "exciting" enough to suggest holding off for. Also, when they add a new token, it doesn't transfer the balance of the old tokens... you get what you get, you don't have a choice in the cryptocurrency that you are tipping or being tipped in.

If they are depreciating one of the tokens, all the balance will be converted into one of the other tokens (or a new one if they are replacing it). However, again, that isn't really a cause for holding off either! All the tokens that they have featured have all been Ethereum based tokens.

The only thing that I can speculate that WOULD be worth holding off for is the migration to a L2 for their distribution... or the migration to a new chain. This wouldn't be a big deal one way or another for authors, and wouldn't really make it worth holding off for a withdrawal. BUT it WOULD make a HUGE difference forPublish0x!

L2 migrations have been happening all over the place as Ethereum based dapps move to mitigate their gas costs to their users. However, it still requires a main-net transaction to move each token to the L2... which still stings. I've done it for a couple of dapps... but it's still not really worth it for most people.

Another possibility would be the announcement of a new chain partner. As mentioned previously, all the current and previous reward tokens have been Ethereum based. There is nothing that I can see that would stop them moving reward tokens to a new chain. Pegs for ETH and other ERC20 tokens already exist on competing smart contract mainnets and bridges are now starting to see more widespread use.

These are the only two options that I think are realistic (other than a wholesale buyout, integration or takeover, and I'm not sure that that is realistic!). L2 is more of a pain in the arse for most users, as it means that their tokens are still stuck on the Ethereum ecosystem. They would need to be migrated back to L1 and then moved... with all the attendant gas fees.

I'm suspecting that a new chain will start to be the preferred option for payouts. It would still be possible to keep the Ethereum tokens that have equivalent pegs in the new smart contract chain, but it would mean that Publish0x will stop hemorrhaging gas fees each week!

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