Otherside Review

Otherside is the metaverse project from Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, and Meebits. It was supposed to be the ultimate convergence of major NFT IPs into a shared virtual world. Instead, it's become a cautionary tale about selling land before building the house.

Otherside is a metaverse platform being developed by Yuga Labs in partnership with Improbable (the SpatialOS engine company). The vision is a massive multiplayer world where players can use their BAYC, MAYC, CryptoPunks, Meebits, and other NFTs as playable characters in a persistent, interoperable virtual world.

The project centers around Otherdeeds, 200,000 land NFTs that represent plots in the Otherside metaverse. These were sold in a Dutch auction on May 1, 2022, raising over $300 million in APE tokens.

The Otherdeed mint on May 1, 2022, was one of the most chaotic events in Ethereum history. The mint required APE tokens and happened on Ethereum mainnet. Demand was so extreme that gas fees spiked to unprecedented levels:

• Over $180 million in ETH gas fees were spent, with many transactions failing
• Users paid $5,000-$15,000+ in gas for a single mint
• Failed transactions still consumed gas, meaning people lost thousands with nothing to show for it
• The event temporarily crippled the entire Ethereum network

Yuga Labs later apologized and announced they would move to their own chain. The land sale raised over $300M for the company but left a bitter taste for many participants.

This is the central problem. After raising $300M+ and having years of development time, Otherside has produced:

• First Trip (July 2022): A tech demo where ~4,500 players simultaneously explored a basic environment. Impressive from a networking standpoint (thanks to Improbable's SpatialOS), but there was no real gameplay.
• Second Trip (March 2023): A slightly more interactive demo with basic objectives. Reactions were mixed: the scale was impressive, but the actual moment-to-moment gameplay was shallow.
• Legends of the Mara: A 2D strategy mini-game released as a stopgap. It was not the metaverse people paid $300M for.

As of 2026, there is no persistent, playable Otherside metaverse. The demos were brief events, not an ongoing game.

ApeCoin (APE) launched in March 2022 via airdrop to BAYC and MAYC holders. It was positioned as the governance and utility token for the "APE ecosystem," including Otherside.

• ATH: ~$26.70 (April 2022, pre-Otherdeed mint hype)
• Decline: Down 95%+ from ATH
• The problem: APE has no real utility. It was supposed to be the currency of Otherside, but without a functioning metaverse, it's a governance token for an ecosystem that barely exists.

The ApeCoin DAO distributes grants and funds projects, but the token price reflects the reality: without Otherside delivering, APE has no demand driver.

Yuga Labs has experienced significant leadership changes:

• Greg Solano (co-founder) stepped back from day-to-day operations
• Nicole Muniz served as CEO before departing in mid-2023
• Daniel Alegre (former Activision Blizzard president) took over as CEO, bringing traditional gaming experience
• Staff layoffs reduced the team as Yuga narrowed its focus

These changes suggest internal struggles with scope and direction. Building a massive multiplayer metaverse is genuinely hard, and even studios with decades of MMO experience struggle with it.

Otherside attempted to sell the vision before building the product. The land sale created enormous expectations while the technology was still in early development. Metaverse building is one of the hardest challenges in gaming, and no one has done it well yet, including Meta with billions of dollars.

Yuga Labs has the financial resources to keep developing, but the gap between what was sold (a revolutionary metaverse) and what exists (a couple of brief demos) is the widest in crypto gaming.

If you already own Otherdeeds or APE, you're locked into watching this play out. New investors should be extremely cautious because this is a bet on a metaverse that may take years more to materialize, if it ever does. The team has resources, but the track record of delivery is poor.

For the broader industry, Otherside serves as a warning: selling virtual land before the world exists creates pressure and expectations that are nearly impossible to meet.