Saturday’s Otherside NFT launch and sale event by the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) teams broke the Ethereum blockchain due to the rush to mint the NFTs by many people.
Yuga Labs, creators of the top-selling Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT series, launched the Otherside NFTs collection on April 30 as part of its upcoming Bored Ape Metaverse. The launch attracted significant attention as many people tried to mint quickly to obtain the virtual plots.
The sales event caused the Ethereum blockchain to crash because of its inability to handle the load and the rapid rate at which people were attempting to mint the NFTs. Many users paid thousands of dollars in transaction fees without successfully minting the Otherside NFT. Ethereum Blockchain gas fees also skyrocketed as buyers bid for extremely high gas fees of up to $7,000 (2.5 ETH) to quickly process their orders.
Otherside NFT collection consists of 200,000 plots of land, of which 100,000 will be used to reward those who contributed to the development of Otherside. From the remaining 100,000 plots, 50,000 plots were sold for $7,625 each, with the remaining 45,000 plots were airdropped for free to holders of Bored Ape and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
Although the Otherside NFT sales event was a massive success for Yuga Labs, the sales did not improve its reputation, including that of the Ethereum blockchain, as many users took to the internet to complain about the instability of the Ethereum blockchain, excessively high gas prices, and failed transactions caused by the Otherside NFT sales. Notable figures like artist Bryan Brinkman also tweeted about their failed transactions.
Against this background, Yuga Labs apologized on Twitter for causing the Ethereum blockchain to be unstable during the event and promised that all gas fees for failed transactions would be refunded. Additionally, according to the tweet, they also noted it as an indication to create and migrate to their chain.
Many expressed their disappointment with how Yuga Labs handled the Otherside sales. Their tweet has generated many views as many believe they could have handled it better with the Layer 2 rollup and better optimization of their contract. Some also think that Yuga Labs is trying to use the event as an excuse to create its blockchain.
