Saturday’s highly anticipated ‘Otherdeeds’ Land sale for Yuga Labs’ upcoming ‘Otherside’ metaverse is hitting headlines for reasons other than its record breaking revenue generation. With a ‘botched’ mint strategy, unoptimised smart contract, and unprecedented demand, the mint’s gas war ultimately caused investors into pay over $176 million with of ETH in gas fees alone.
The staggering accumulation of fess predominantly came through the ludicrous cost of gas throughout the mint which, at times, ranged between 2.6 ETH ($6,500) and 5 ETH ($14,000). In addition, over $4.4 million worth of ETH was lost in over 15,000 failed transactions. Overall, the Otherdeeds contract burned more ETH than MetaMask’s swap router and Ethereum Name Service had done in their entire histories.
In response, Yuga Labs have made a public apology, whilst also making hints that they will refund traders’ gas fees. As expected, the wasteful mint has also raised questions over Ethereum’s long term viability as a host for large scale projects, which further prompted Yuga Labs to consider building its own dedicated blockchain.
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
For community members, Yuga’s apology was done in vain, as many are angry at its attempts to deflect blame onto the Ethereum blockchain, rather than simply owning up to its mistakes. That being said, the secondary sales figures of ‘Otherdeeds’ NFTs don’t suggest any signs of lingering angst, as rare ones are selling for over 250 ETH, whilst the collection’s overall trade volume has exceeded 186,00 ETH (making it the one of the most traded NFT collections ever, despite only being active for a matter of days).
Putting all such controversy to the side, Yuga Labs can be extremely happy with the popularity of the mint, as its 55,000 Otherdeeds NFTs all sold out in around 3 hours, with each costing 305 $APE (around $5800) to mint. In total, the mint generated roughly $320 million, however this figure has since dropped to around $285 million due to the consequential fall in $APE.