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- Yuga Labs plans to move off Ethereum after its Otherside minting debacle this weekend
- The sale of the Otherdeed NFTs was in such demand that Ethereum crashed
- Gas fees hit astronomical levels as users battled to secure their Otherside plots
Yuga Labs, the creators of the Bored Ape franchise, is planning to migrate to its own blockchain after demand for land in its Otherside metaverse crashed the Ethereum network over the weekend. The Otherside NFT land sale, which proved to be the largest NFT mint to date by some distance, saw gas prices surge to insane levels and Ethereum network congestion made it basically unusable by all other apps on the network. As a result, Yuga Labs has publicly tasked the Bored Ape DAO to start planning a proprietary blockchain to alleviate such issues in the future.
Otherside Demand Crashes Ethereum
The Otherside NFT land mint was easily the most hyped up NFT mint the space has ever known, with the price of APE coin rising 145% in three weeks in the build up. However, the launch itself was a very messy affair, with gas prices hitting four figures as wannabe Otherside landlords pitched to get their slot:
FUN FACT: A user spent 16 #ETH ($43,000) in gas fees, to mint 2 of BAYC Otherdeed plots.
— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) May 1, 2022
This impacted every other dApp using the Ethereum network, meaning that not even the most basic Ethereum transaction could take place while the mint was going on. Yuga Labs addressed this in a tweet thread following the mint:
We wanted to say a few words about the mint tonight. 🧵
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) May 1, 2022
Yuga Labs expressed how they had hoped that the 305 APE bar would be high enough to ensure that there wasn’t a rush for the doors, but it seems they underestimated the amount of people who were holding $5,800 worth of APE. The company noted that “the scale of this mint was so large that Etherscan crashed”, and went on to say that it was obvious that the project had outgrown Ethereum already:
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.
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) May 1, 2022
Yuga Labs also promised to refund the gas fees for those who didn’t manage to secure their plot of Otherside land, which is a nice gesture that goes some way to mitigating the inconvenience that its launch caused.
Otherdeeds, which were the NFTs actually being bought in the sale that unlock the potential for Otherside goodies, currently have a floor price of 4.6 ETH ($13,100) on Rarible, which for many will just about cover the minting fee and the Ethereum fee.
