While the Yuga Labs and BAYC community saw the world’s largest nonfungible token (NFT) mint, Ethereum gas costs skyrocketed, and users experienced failed transactions owing to network delays.
Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, has begun selling Otherdeed nonfungible tokens, which represent digital land titles, on its latest initiative, the Otherside metaverse.
Yuga Labs made $319 million when 55,000 NFTs sold out almost instantaneously, with each piece of land selling for 305 ApeCoin (APE), or roughly $5,800 at the time of the sale.
While Otherdeed NFTs were exclusively available in APE, they did require Ether (ETH) for gas costs.
Yuga Labs’ minting mechanics envisaged the selling of NFTs in stages, anticipating a brief increase in gas costs, which would subsequently slow down the number of people minting the NFTs:
“This pattern of mint → bump limit → mint → bump limit will continue until NFT supply is exhausted. This approach is expected to prevent an apocalyptic gas war, while also encouraging as broad a distribution as possible.”
Yuga Labs witnessed a gas unlike never before
Users witnessed gas fees unlike ever before which also affected their ETH holdings in the surge to own a plot of Otherside Metaverse. According to Etherscan statistics, several users paid gas fees ranging from 2.6 ETH ($6500) to 5 ETH ($14000).
Yuga Labs noted, citing some of the challenges with using Ether during its NFT launch:
“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.”
Yuga Labs has offered to return the gas value to customers who have lost their ETH holdings in gas owing to unsuccessful transactions.
Due to the inflow of ecosystems hosted on the blockchain, particularly NFTs, Ethereum’s famed gas costs have been a long-standing source of anxiety within the community.
To reduce the overall transaction call data gas cost across the ETH network, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested a new block-wide restriction on total transaction call data in November 2021.
While the community accepted the idea, implementing EIP-4488 on Geth’s Ethereum-sidechain testnet took almost four months. Qi Zhou, a member of the community, verified the news on Wednesday.