On Saturday, the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Yuga Labs, revealed the Otherside metaverse virtual land sale which turned out to be one of the largest non-fungible token (NFT) mints to date. The Otherside metaverse virtual land sale raised close to $320 million by selling 55,000 parcels of Otherside land.
Otherside Metaverse Sees $320 Million Raised, Ether Fees Rise, and Etherscan Crashes
The Otherside metaverse virtual land sale took place on Saturday, and a large number of people bought Ethereum-based NFTs dubbed “Otherdeeds.” Demand for Otherside metaverse deeds has propelled ethereum (ETH) fees higher, leading to a dramatic increase in average ether gas fees.
When the sale finished, 55,000 Otherdeeds were sold and the project raised close to $320 million from the sale. The BAYC collection’s creators Yuga Labs wrote about the mint after it was completed and discussed some of the network issues that took place.
“We know that the Otherdeed mint was unprecedented in size as a high-demand NFT collection, and it would bring unique challenges,” the team wrote. “The hope was that these challenges would be assuaged via a rigorous trigger mechanism in the form of on-chain KYC, a maximum mint of 2 per KYC’d wallet, and a meaningful clearing price at 305 Apecoin.”
However, the on-chain KYC did not curb demand and virtual land plots started selling immediately after at 9 p.m. (ET) on Saturday. Ethereum fees leveraged to mint the non-fungible tokens cost roughly $166.2 million or 60,234 ETH. Furthermore, the mint saw so much demand it crashed the blockchain explorer Etherscan.
“This was the largest NFT mint in history by multiple multiples, and yet the gas used during the mint shows demand far exceeded anyone’s wildest expectations,” Yuga Labs said. “The scale of this mint was so large that Etherscan crashed.” The creators of BAYC added:
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.
After explaining that Apecoin has to operate on a different blockchain, Yuga Labs mentioned that the team is aware that some users failed in the sale. “For those of you concerned, we appreciate your willingness to build alongside us – know that we have your back and will refund your essence,” Yuga Labs concluded.
At the time of writing, secondary Otherside NFT sales have been live for over six hours now on Opensea’s NFT marketplace. The Otherdeed collection’s floor value today is 7.88 ether or $21,754 USD, at the time of writing.
