As the community witnessed the largest NFT mintage to date, Ethereum (ETH) gas prices surged to unprecedented levels, as well as users experiencing failed transactions due to blockchain bottlenecks.
YugaLabs, creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club, launched a sale of Otherdeed non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which represent digital title deeds in his new venture, the Otherside metaverse. With every piece of land sold At 305 ApeCoin (APE) or nearly $5,800 at the time of the sale, Yuga Labs made $319 million after 55,000 NFTs sold out almost instantly.
The Otherdeed NFT mint is sold out – we are awestruck at the demand shown tonight. Apes and Mutants, the opening of the 21-day claim period is being delayed until the price of gas drops to reasonable levels. We’ll tweet when the claim opens. https://t.co/iRz64lklbv
— OthersideMeta (@OthersideMeta) May 1, 2022
All minted Otherdeed NFTs have been sold – we are amazed by the demand shown tonight. Apes and Mutants, the opening of the 21-day claim period is delayed until the price of gas drops to reasonable levels. We will notify you on Twitter when the claim is opened.
While Otherdeed NFTs could only be minted in APE, ETH was also required for gas fees. The minting mechanic established by Yuga Labs provided for the sale of NFTs in phases while anticipating a momentary rise in gas prices, which would then slow down the number of users minting NFTs:
“This pattern of minting → bump limit → minting → bump limit will continue until the NFT supply runs out. It is hoped that this approach will prevent an apocalyptic gas war, while encouraging as wide a distribution as possible.”
The screenshot above was shared by Redditor u/jeux99 sharing their experience of high gas rates at the time, asking:
“Why is gas at $450 right now? I’ve seen high gas rates, but nothing like this before!”
As another Redditor, u/johnfintech, rightly pointed out, Etherscan data shows that numerous users paid between 2.6 ETH ($6,500) and 5 ETH ($14,000) as gas fees.
Citing some of the issues surrounding the use of Ether during their NFT launch, Yuga Labs declared:
“We’re sorry to have turned off the lights on Ethereum for a while. It seems pretty clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to scale properly.”
For those who lost their ETH holdings in gas due to failed transactions, Yuga Labs has promised to refund the amount of gas back to users.
Ethereum’s infamous gas fees have been a long-standing concern among the community due to the influx of blockchain-hosted ecosystems, including NFTs.
In November 2021, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a new block-wide cap on total transaction calldata to decrease the global cost of transaction calldata gas on the ETH network.
Although the community accepted the suggestion, it took more than four months to implement EIP-4488 on the Ethereum-sidechain testnet at Geth. Community member Qi Zhou confirmed plans to update the testnet within a month on April 27.
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