Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), one of the high-profile NFT collections, caused peak Ethereum gas prices over the weekend. The long-awaited metaverse land distribution to eligible avatar holders happened through a basic smart contract that had no gas-saving mechanisms or whitelisting.
The rush to mint new land plots led to heightened competition to buy the plots, with many users running out of gas or ending up paying extremely high fees. Reports surfaced of users having to pay 2-3 ETH just to see their transactions move through Ethereum. 200K ETH tokens were burned in a day, because Yuga Labs choose a raw competition over land.
BAYC owners are generally wealthy market participants, but the latest event also raised gas fees for general users.
Ethereum Remains Peak Blockchain for Avatar Collections, Games
For now, the collection has signaled it intends to keep using Ethereum, while also planning the launch of a metaverse and possibly a P2E game. The high gas also caused discontent with the Otherside Meta sale, causing users to launch a parody meme collection on OpenSea.
The BAYC gas fee overload also coincided with another raw-competition mint on Solana. On Saturday, too many bot calls to buy NFT from the NFT Candy Machine hub caused the network to stall for seven hours.
Despite everything, the metaverse land sale was a success, raising an estimated $285M for the BAYC team. Digital land from the project was in high demand, with reports of plots immediately reselling at 27 ETH.
Otherside Meta Aims for Top Simulated Land Game Status
Otherside Meta may thus become one of the top metaverse-style venues with potential games. The project already accepts APE tokens as its native currency. Recently, The Sandbox also greeted the new project on its success.
Despite the competition, the mint almost filled its quota of 200K land plots. There are a few slots available, with a total of 196,286 plots already held by new owners. Claims were limited to participants in several high-end NFT clubs, which held their assets for a chance at securing exclusive free airdrops like this one, barring the need to pay for gas fees.
