The creators behind the Bored Ape NFT collection, Yuga Labs, raised what was considered the largest NFT mint in history, or around US$320 million in crypto, by selling virtual land NFTs called “Otherdeeds.” This land will reportedly be used for the creator’s metaverse project – an upcoming multiplayer game called Otherside. A total of 55,000 of these Otherdeeds were sold at a rate of 305 ApeCoin, which was around US$5,800 during the purchase.
These Otherdeeds are minted, aka created, using Bored Ape’s own ApeCoin, but they still need what’s known as a gas fee, which is the fee of getting a transaction marked on the Ethereum blockchain. With that, the huge popularity of Otherdeeds caused gas fees to skyrocket because the network became crowded. Yuga Lab apologized for the situation after the mint ended.
Key comments:
“We’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while. It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale. We’d like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction,” tweeted Yuga Labs.
“We are aware that some users had failed transactions due to the incredible demand being forced through Ethereum’s bottleneck. For those of you affected, we appreciate your willingness to build alongside us – know that we’ve got your back and will be refunding your gas.”
“Yuga Labs’ virtual land sale has triggered one of the highest spikes in transaction fees on Ethereum. I have seen other NFT launches causing high gas fees, but this is definitely one of the highest,” said Jason Wu, founder of decentralized lending protocol DeFiner.
