Traders have already spent more than $176 million in fees alone as a result of the virtual land rush for the ape-centered metaverse project.
The long-awaited Public Land Sale of Yuga Labs’ “Otherside” metaverse project took place on Saturday evening, after much anticipation. In the past 24 hours, investors have spent over $176 million solely on fees as a result of the land rush, which generated roughly $285 million for the company.
This is another major product launch from the company that created the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT (non-fungible token) collection. 55,000 “Otherdeeds” NFTs were purchased during last night’s sale, which represent rights to plots of virtual land in a 3D social world to come.
Their price was about $7000 each, and the only way to buy them was with ApeCoin (APE), Yuga Labs’ official cryptocurrency. At the time of publication, the cheapest listed price for an Otherdeed was around 7 ETH (roughly $19,000) on secondary markets like OpenSea.
“This has been the largest NFT mint in history by several multiples, and yet the gas used during the mint shows that demand far exceeded anyone’s wildest expectations,” reads a statement posted to Twitter.
Ethereum’s long-term viability as a host for large-scale NFT projects was cast into doubt by the expensive evening; Yuga Labs even floated the idea of building its own dedicated blockchain at the end of the apology thread:
“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.”