Yuga Labs finally held the long-awaited Otherside sale on the Ethereum network, which was not without new records and shocking gas prices. On April 30, Yuga Labs released the first round of Otherdeeds NFTs, making 55,000 NFTs available to pre-approved wallets. Priced at 305 APE apiece, which was worth just under $20 at the time of the coins, the drop brought more than $310 million into Yuga's treasury. In less than 24 hours, Yuga Labs raised over $561 million from the Otherdeed NFT sale alone at Otherside. Each Otherdeed NFT should be the “key to land in Otherside,” an upcoming Yuga Labs game.
A total of 55,000 NFTs were submitted at 305 APE each, which means that each Otherdeed was worth about $5,800, given the price of Apecoin (about $19) at the time of the minute. Thus, Yuga Labs earned more than $318.7 million from this mint alone. According to CryptoSlam, Otherdeed's total secondary trading volume has already exceeded $242 million, of which more than $190 million came from OpenSea.
It is widely believed, although not confirmed, that the Otherdeed NFTs will represent the earth in the Otherside Metaverse. Other documents could only be bought in ApeCoin (APE) and until recently their real price was unknown. This predictably drove up APE prices in the weeks leading up to the mint.
Due to the large number of tokens, as well as the hype around the project, the Otherdeed mint immediately caused huge gas prices on the Ethereum network. In addition, the Etherscan blockchain explorer also collapsed during the mint. Otherside is the highly anticipated Metaverse world, featuring brands from various well-known NFT favorites, most notably Bored Ape Yacht Club, but also Meebits, Cool Cats, CryptoPunks and many more. The project was developed by Yuga Labs in partnership with Animoca Brands, the Hong Kong-based venture capital firm behind the popular but as yet unreleased game Metaverse The Sandbox.
Similar gas price situations on the Ethereum network occur when a sudden increase in demand for fast transactions clogs the network, causing fees to skyrocket as users struggle to buy up tokens. Thus, gas fees in the amount of thousands of dollars per transaction were fixed. While some were able to complete their transactions within hours for a couple of hundred dollars, others reported paying up to $4,000 per transaction. The Otherdeed NFT projects were sold at a fixed price, although it was originally planned to launch the project at a Dutch auction. However, this plan was ultimately abandoned to avoid a "gas war of historic proportions" during one of the largest NFT mints in history.
At the time of writing, more than 64,000 ETH in gas fees have been spent on other transactions, which is almost $180 million. Some point out that fees shouldn't have been so bad if Yuga Labs had implemented a few backend optimizations.
Will Papper, co-founder of SyndicateDAO, wrote last night that Otherdeed's smart contract has "nearly zero gas optimization." He claimed that just “changing a few words would save $80M+” in fees. However, those with NFT BAYC or NFT Mutant Ape Yacht Club will be able to get NFT Otherdeed for three weeks, allowing owners to avoid high gas fees.
Yuga Labs promised that it would refund money to those whose transactions failed. The past mint was criticized by many influencers in the NFT community. While Yuga Labs countered the high demand during the sale and its aftermath, there were those who took advantage of the situation and posted phishing links to the Otherside project. The scammers posted at least a few phishing links and many users lost their ApeCoins.
