Remember when BAYC said there would be no Dutch auction on the Otherdeeds land sale? According to the team, the intention was to avoid gas wars during mintage. Apparently, quite the opposite happened when the minting took place at 9 pm ET on April 30.
When the first wave of the sale began, the price of Ethereum gas shot through the roof almost instantly. Guess what? Many fans reported that they had to pay at least 2.26 ETH (about $6,200 at the time) in gas fees just to mint 2 parcels of Otherdeeds. That’s almost equivalent to the price of a parcel of land valued at $6,621 two days ago.
BAYC fans went crazy after paying high Ethereum gas fees to mint NFTs of Otherdeeds land
One thing for sure is that the Otherdeeds land sale was a huge success for BAYC. According to Watcher Guru, BAYC managed to pocket $245 million in revenue from the high-profile sale 2 hours after the launch. This is already more than half of the projected $455 million in revenue on the leaked launch pad if the two rounds of land sales were to go through this year.
Despite the fact that fans had to shell out a hefty gas fee for the mintage, many of them were simply grateful that the mintage was a success. “The 2.7 ETH of gas was the least painful transaction I’ve ever made,” said @Gruossome, one of the fans who successfully minted 2 Otherdeed parcels in the first wave of the sale.
In fact, owners have already listed their Otherdeeds for sale on OpenSea. Currently, the collection is trading at a minimum price of 7.89 ETH (about $21,900 per parcel). Given the above scenario, landowners could make a 125% profit in dollar value. Not a bad deal, even if you have to pay such a high gas fee, right?
What can we do to avoid high gas fees on future Ethereum NFT mintages?
Considering the high gas fees during Otherdeeds’ NFT minting, NFT Worlds co-founder @iamarkdev gave some suggestions. One of them is that Yuga Labs developers could have avoided using ERC721Enumerable in the smart contract. According to him, this would significantly reduce gas usage by 60% to 70% per transaction.
In addition, @iamarkdev also proposed using the ERC721A contract to help reduce gas rates. This is because, in an ERC721A contract, multiple NFTs can be minted for the same cost as minting a single NFT.
Yuga Labs’ metaverse project drops out of Dutch auction for Otherdeeds’ NFT sale.
What were Yuga Labs’ comments on high gas rates?
Of course, Yuga Labs acknowledged that the team did not expect such overwhelming demand for Otherdeeds NFT until they saw gas rates skyrocket. In fact, there were times when Etherscan crashed due to the sheer scale of the mint.
We wanted to say a few words about the mint tonight. 🧵
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) May 1, 2022
In fact, the team commented that ApeCoin may need to migrate to its own blockchain, in order to scale properly. Furthermore, the team would “like to encourage” the DAO to consider this proposal.
Finally, the team is also aware that some users encountered failed transactions during minting. If you were one of those affected, you can contact Yuga Labs for a refund of your gas charges.
Yuga Labs will no longer mint its Otherside metaverse NFTs in Dutch auction style this weekend, according to a post on its blog. The metaverse project said “NFT “Dutch auctions” are actually bullshit. They fail to mediate demand, nor do they really negate the highly anticipated mint gas wars.”
Apes, wallet pre-approval is open now.👇 Remember, you don’t need to pre-approve (or KYC) to claim with your BAYC or MAYC NFT — only if you’re KYC’d and planning to mint additional Otherdeeds. https://t.co/ttlgMc9u9f
— Bored Ape Yacht Club (@BoredApeYC) April 30, 2022
On Tuesday, Otherside announced on Twitter that the minting of Otherdeed NFTs will be in the style of Dutch auctions, where the selling price of NFTs starts high and goes down in intervals until all units are sold. This would result in a bidding or gas war in which those who own the most ApeCoins will be able to own an Otherdeed NFT.
Having taken into account the concerns of his community, Otherside decided to scrap his plan for a Dutch auction for the Otherdeeds mintage. He said a Dutch auction “is especially problematic considering that the Otherdeed mint may be one of the largest scale, high-demand NFT mints in history. All the usual problems of NFT gas wars would be exacerbated by the large number of NFTs that would be minted, which could result in a gas war of historic proportions.”
Instead, Otherdeeds will be sold at a fixed price of 305 ApeCoin ($6,900) each. Otherside has also allotted more time for users to set up ApeCoin pre-approval, starting at 9am ET on April 30. The pre-approval KYC’d wallets that will allow the smart contract to use buyers’ ApeCoin to mint during the auction.
The sale of Otherdeeds will not begin until 12 hours later at 9pm ET. A total of 55,000 Otherdeeds will be available for purchase by KYC’d wallets. To encourage wide distribution of NFTs and soften the potential for a massive gas war, Otherside has imposed a limit of two NFTs per wallet at the start of the sale.
Once the first wave of minting and gas prices begin to calm down, the purse limit will be increased to allow for the second wave of minting. Each increase will be announced on Otherside’s official Twitter and Discord channels.
Those who are happy with the number of Othersdeeds they have can stay out of the second wave, while those with more ApeCoins can mint more. A total of four additional NFTs can be minted in the second wave. The staggered minting and increased purse limits will continue until the supply of NFTs is exhausted.
Although Otherside has not yet revealed what exactly Otherdeeds NFTs are, many members of its community believe that NFTs are individual plots in the Otherside metaverse. If all NFTs are exhausted, the Yuga Labs and Otherside teams would raise $379.5 million.
In anticipation of Otherside minting to begin tomorrow, ApeCoin has seen a market price increase of 10.28% in the last 24 hours.
For those who do not know what a Dutch auction is, it is a type of auction in which the auctioneer starts auctioning with a high price, which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer’s price, or until the reserve price is reached, which is the minimum price accepted for that sale.
