While the Otherdeed NFTs could be minted only in APE, it also required ETH for gas fees.
While the community was witness to the largest NFT mint yet, Ethereum (ETH) gas prices rose to unprecedented levels, in addition to users experiencing failed transactions due to blockchain bottlenecks.
Bored
Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs launched a sale of Otherdeed
non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that represents digital land deeds on their
new venture, the Otherside metaverse. With each piece of land selling
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.
While the Otherdeed NFTs could be minted only in APE, it also
required ETH for gas fees. The minting mechanics set by Yuga Labs
envisioned the sale of NFTs in phases while anticipating a momentary
rise in gas prices, which would then decelerate the number of users
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.”
The above screenshot was shared by Redditor u/jeux99 sharing their experience on high gas fees at the time, asking:
“Why is gas $450 right now??? I've seen high gas fees, but nothing like this before!”
As rightly pointed out by another Redditor, u/johnfintech, Etherscan data shows that numerous users paid anywhere between 2.6 ETH ($6500) to 5 ETH ($14000) as gas fees.
Citing some of the issues related to using Ether during its NFT launch, Yuga Labs stated:
“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.”
For those that lost their ETH
holdings in gas due to failed transactions, Yuga Labs has promised to
refund the gas amount back to the users.
Related: Vitalik Buterin proposes calldata limit per block to lower ETH gas costs
Ethereum’s
infamous gas fees have been a long-standing concern among the community
owing to the influx of ecosystems hosted by the blockchain, including
NFTs.
In Nov. 2021, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a
new block-wide limit on the total transaction calldata to decrease the
overall transaction calldata gas cost over the ETH network.
While
the community embraced the suggestion, it took over four months to
implement EIP-4488 on the Ethereum-sidechain testnet on Geth. Community
member Qi Zhou confirmed on 27th April about plans to upgrade the
testnet within a month.
source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/eth-gas-price-surges-as-yuga-labs-cashes-in-300m-selling-otherside-nfts
