On Saturday, blue-chip startup Yuga Labs opened up the mint for its Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) Otherside Metaverse lands, dubbed “Otherside.”
Otherside is considered the biggest expansion of the BAYC universe the industry has seen to date. More specifically, Otherside is characterized as an MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role-playing game, which is connected to the BAYC ecosystem.
Its Saturday mint included 55,000 parcels of Otherside land, known as “Otherdeeds,” which would be made available to purchase on the blockchain. Upon the opening of the mint, Otherdeeds were selling between $6,000 and $7,300. The only way for users to be able to access the mint was through ApeCoin, the primary settlement token for all of Yuga Labs’ products and service.
It also serves as a governance token for the ApeCoin DAO ecosystem, which allows APE holders to vote on proposals made by community members. Within 45 minutes of launching Otherside, BAYC had sold over $100,000 worth of digital real estate, bringing in a grand total of $320 million.
ApeCoin prices surged leading up to the sale
Upon its March 17 launch, ApeCoin first sold at $5, rallying over 200% within 24-hours, to $16.47. It has since reached an ATH of $26.70 as of April 28.
Initially, Otherside was to sell its Otherdeeds through a Dutch auction, but instead opted to limit the number of NFTs that could be held in a single wallet.
ApeCoin’s spectacular crash
Following Saturday’s Otherside sale, ApeCoin crashed from $24.86 to $16.73, according to data from Coingecko.
The crash seems counter-intuitive, as the ApeCoins in the sale are locked, which reduces the number of coins in circulation.
One of the reasons could be the congestion caused on the Ethereum blockchain through the minting of Otherdeed NFTs, resulting in some failed transactions and services like Uniswap being slowed down. However, ApeCoin hopes to mitigate this by refunding gas fees for failed transactions and creating an ApeCoin blockchain.
