The Bored Apes Had a Wild Night – And There Was a Gas War During The Minting Event

Let’s talk Bored Apes. Where were you on April 30th? Did you manage to buy your land at the Other Side? For those who are not sure what we are talking about, just to ensure we are all on the same page. The Bored Ape Yacht Club, the biggest and most successful NFT project so far, recently launched its own coin (APE coin), and a metaverse that is called “Other Side”. On April 30th, Yuga Labs (Who are behind the BAYC project) started minting land in their metaverse: They sold 55,000 land deeds (the rest were given to BAYC holders) that are called Other Deeds. Every other deed was sold for 305 Ape coins, which means that every deed was sold for about 5,800$ (according to the current Ape coin rate). Yuga Labs raised over 300 million dollars on the day, and the entire sales (including secondary sales) are currently more than half a billion dollars.

Unprecedented Demands

The problem was that in light of the crazy project hype: The bored apes project have an excellent rep, so naturally everyone wanted a piece. The Hype created an anticipation for price surging, and in light of the fact that they were all sold at once, the blockchain was in overload. As we know, usually the solution for this type of situation is what is called whitelisting, which allows the dispersing of minting actions, and reduces gas fees. Yuga Labs didn’t allow whitelisting for this sale. Instead insisted buyers to use KYC Crypto wallets instead, thinking that would relieve some of the pressure.

However, there were exceptional overloads on the servers, in what was the biggest minting event so far. The simultaneous demands created large-scale gas wars, which brought the gas prices to thousands of dollars per transaction. Furthermore, some of the buyers that paid those enormous fees didn’t even get their purchase, since the overloads created the blockchain to collapse (Yuga labs have announced that they will reimburse those who were damaged by the breakdown).

We wanted to say a few words about the mint tonight. 🧵
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) May 1, 2022

By the way, even those who managed to buy land at minting night, didn’t know what they were getting: The Other deed boxes were sealed. Buyers were just going in blind and hoping for the best. Now, territories have been unveiled: Floor prices are now about 3.8 ETH, but there are bids on some territories that go up to 70 ETH.

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