The Otherside Game: All About BAYC’s Metaverse

After much anticipation, Bored Ape Yacht Club’s (BAYC) metaverse Otherside is set to release this week. Otherside will officially launch this Saturday, April 30 at 12 pm ET, Otherside announced on its Twitter page this weekend.

Yuga Labs has also launched Otherside’s official Discord server, a move that has, to say the least, broken Discord. The server already has nearly 138,000 members and it’s still hard to get in. So what exactly is Otherside, and how does one get in?

BAYC’s Otherside metaverse: What we know so far

Yuga Labs, BAYC‘s parent company, released a teaser of Otherside in mid-March. Since then, cryptocurrency Twitter has been abuzz with rumors about Otherside and all that it might entail. The teaser showed an ape wearing flip-flops and a hat, smoking a cigarette. He then pulls a potion out of the water and consumes it, which sends him to Otherside, a place filled with lava and submarines.

In addition, there were other NFT avatars inside the submarine. These included a CryptoPunk, a Women’s World avatar, a Mutant Ape and a Cool Cat. There is now speculation that the metaverse may support other NFT collections.

At the same time, Yuga Labs announced its partnership with Animoca Brands to build the metaverse. However, the two companies stated that the first phase of the project will require KYC verification. Needless to say, the announcement created a stir on Twitter.

But, here’s the thing. Otherside has announced that only those whose KYC has been approved on its announcement website will be able to participate in the upcoming mint. However, current BAYC and MAYC holders can claim the NFT up to 21 days after the auction and do not need to have their KYC approved. Mind you, they will also need to be KYC verified to mint during the auction.

Earth and Kodas? Speculation is growing

Also, although Otherside has not mentioned it, many BAYC holders believe the mint could be for “Kodas”. Apparently, Kodas even made an appearance in the teaser. A tiny alien-looking avatar, resembling the Otherside logo, is the one that brought the ape to Otherside.

“Okay, but what the hell is a Koda?” tweeted BAYC earlier this week. Well, we’ll find out this Saturday!

The mysterious avatars of the Otherside, Koda NFTs.

On April 30, 12 pm ET, the Otherside metaverse will finally make its grand entrance. Within the official Otherside teaser that broke the NFT space, everyone noticed a cute, yet fierce-looking creature in multiple scenes. Aside from Otherside’s logo, which resembles a Koda, the celestial creatures were also spotted in BAYC’s leaked launch cover. Here’s what we know so far.

Koda NFTs: The next big PFP?

According to the launch deck, there aren’t many celestials left, and without their energy, the universe will collapse. Fortunately, there is still one race of celestials left: the Kodas. The Kodas used their cosmic energy to birth one last microverse in our dimension. They then identified and removed the perfect candidates, casting them into a strange new land. In the official video, we see exactly how this scenario plays out. The Bored Apes and other notable NFTs arrive in The Other Side.

A few days ago, BAYC’s tweet teased, “What the fuck is a Koda?”, and said nothing else. Intriguing, but a little annoying when everyone is dying to know what it is. If there are no significant changes from the launch deck, players will only be able to get a Koda NFT by buying a plot in the Otherside metaverse. But there is only a small chance of getting one.

What Yuga Labs’ leaked launch deck says about the Otherside launch

There will be a total of 200,000 plots, half of which will be released with the fall of Genesis. 30% of the 100,000 plots will go to BAYC/MAYC owners, while 70% will be for public sale. The leaked pitch deck indicates that they will be for sale at 1 ETH per plot.

This is the juicy part. Each plot will have the possibility of containing natural resources, rare artifacts and, for the lucky few, a Koda! This means that if you’ve been left out of the Boring Monkeys Yacht Club, this may be your chance to get in at a much lower price.

However, there is only a 10% chance of getting them, or even less, depending on how Yuga Labs acts. If all 10k Kodas are in the genesis drop, then there will be a 10% chance. If the 10k PFP’s are randomized among the 200k plots, then the chances are further reduced.

In the voice of Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games: Happy Koda Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

On the other hand, several rumors point to a possible metaverse land sale. On April 20, Twitter user renegademaster claimed to have information about the Yuga Labs land sale from a “reliable source.” According to them, the sale will be a Dutch auction starting at $600APE. Moreover, while the land will be sent to BAYC and MAYC holders, CryptoPunks, Meebits, Cool Cats, Nounz, WoW and Toadz will automatically get whitelisted.

Later, they shared that there will likely be a total offer of 100k lands, with a maximum of 55k for the public mint. They also changed the starting bid for the auction to $300APE.

In a similar vein, NFTBeliever on April 27 shared screenshots of a “leaked land deal” on testnet. “So far everything is playing out similar to what that contract showed. All the monkey currency and KYC required for some of the mines.”

They also said there will be a 100k supply, with each direction having a 45 mint limit. In addition, a maximum of 20 mints per transaction is allowed. Apparently, during the Dutch auction testing, they started with about $300APE.

However, Yuga Labs has not made any announcements in this regard. At this point, any information about a land sale or the fall of NFT kodas is mere speculation. But, if the auction is indeed for the Otherside lands, given the project’s profit history, the NFTs on the lands could offer many future benefits.

Things to keep in mind for the next mint

Aside from KYC verification, another important point to keep in mind about the upcoming mint is that it will be exclusively in ApeCoin. However, you will also need some ETH to pay the gas fees. The mint will be a Dutch auction, which means that the price of ApeCoin will decrease over time. The project will announce the initial auction price later this week.

In addition, Otherside will block all ApeCoin earned at the auction for one year. In other words, the coins will also not be used to vote in the ApeCoin DAO.

The auction will go live on the Otherside website. On Saturday morning, you will be able to pre-approve your KYC-verified wallet on this site. This way, the smart contract will use your ApeCoin to mint during the auction.

“BAYC/MAYC holders do not need to approve their wallets to claim – only to mint during the auction,” OthersideMeta tweeted. “No need to pre-approve before – you can approve your wallet after the launch at 12pm ET, but doing so a few hours before will save you time and gas costs.”

Remember, there will be no surprises, no presales, and no giveaways. With scams on the rise, be sure to follow updates only from official Otherside pages.

It’s safe to say that Otherside metaverse is this year’s most anticipated drop – we can’t wait to find out what the project has in store!

Yuga Labs launches Otherside Land Pricing

Yuga Labs has finally announced the Otherside land price and each plot will be sold at $305APE. Considered as Othersdeeds, there will be a total of 55k plots of land for purchase by KYC’d wallets in this round. In fact, there will be no Dutch auction at the sale. In this regard, the team has proposed another form of minting mechanics to combat gas wars.

Latest updates on Otherside land sale and minting details

As @OthersideMeta tweeted, Dutch auctions really suck. And we couldn’t agree more. Furthermore, Otherside’s land NFTs, now called Othersdeeds, will be on sale for a fixed price of 305 APEcoin (about $6,621 at the moment). Not to mention there are only 55k plots for sale in this round.

These few data are slightly different from the leaked pitch deck from Yuga Labs. According to the pitch deck, there were supposed to be 100k plots of land in Otherside for sale in the first round, and each plot of land should come with an estimated price of 1 ETH (at around $2910). According to the latest announcement, Othersdeeds will be 2.3 times more expensive in terms of dollar value.

Apart from that, Yuga Labs has abandoned the Dutch auction in the Otherside land sale. Why? Because the team doesn’t believe this method can help quash gas wars at the long-awaited mines. Instead, the team will conduct the NFT sale in waves.

The NFT sale will be carried out in waves

How it works is as follows: during the first wave, each KYC wallet will only be able to mint up to 2 Otherdeed NFT. Note that this is per wallet, not per transaction. Once the gasoline returns to a reasonable level, the team will start the second wave, where each KYC wallet will be able to mint up to 4 NFT. This will continue in subsequent waves until all Otherside parcels are sold.

According to Yuga Labs, this should help reduce the occurrence of gas wars. In addition, the team will update the increased limit per wallet on Otherside’s official Twitter and Discord channels tomorrow. So if you’re one of the anons trying to get your hands on some Otherside plots, be sure to keep an eye out for any official updates.

ApeCoin is now the most valuable metaverse token as BAYC’s floor price rises to a new all-time high

The price of the ApeCoin $APE token has soared to a new all-time high of $19.46, making it the most valuable metaverse token with a market cap of about $5.5 billion.

Yuga Labs is preparing to launch its highly anticipated Otherside metaverse on April 30. This has created bullish sentiment around its products, including NFT collections and the ApeCoin $APE ecosystem utility token.

On Wednesday, the price of $APE soared to a new all-time high of $19.46, making it the most valuable metaverse token by market capitalization. Apecoin has soared to trade at about 0.00659 per ETH.

Apecoin has overtaken industry heavyweights Decentraland’s $MANA and The Sandbox’s $SAND, finally dethroning Axie Infinity’s $AXS from the top spot.

At the time of writing, $MANA had a market cap of $3.4 billion, $SAND stood at $2.9 billion, while $THETA and $AXS rounded out the top five with $2.7 billion and $2.3 billion, respectively, all trailing $APE by at least $2 billion in market value, according to CoinMarketCap data.

OthersideMeta, Yuga Labs’ official Twitter handle for its metaverse ecosystem, tweeted on Sunday that its platform will debut later this month, prompting the current spike in the price of Apecoin.

However, the positive sentiment did not stop with the price of the token, Yuga’s main NFT collections have also seen a significant increase in floor prices. On Wednesday, the floor price of Bored Ape’s Yacht Club soared to a new all-time high of 144.03, an equivalent of $412,157.

On the other hand, Mutant Ape Yacht Club hit a new all-time high of 36.99 ETH, before retreating to 35.20 ETH, while Bored Ape Kennel Club had climbed to 11.38 ETH before retreating to the current level of 10.50 ETH, according to @Sealaunch’s dashboard at Dune Analytics.

However, recent NFT and metaverse acquisitions Meebits and Cryptopunks did not experience the same sentiment.

Cryptopunks has now erased all the gains made at the end of March, falling to the lowest level this year, while Meebits remains below its ATH of 7.50 ETH despite rising to a new 7-month high of 6.75 ETH on Wednesday.

Yuga Labs has unveiled plans to launch its unique NFT marketplace, suggesting it could add more third-party tokens, thus boosting its ecosystem offering. Thus, it appears that Apecoin is just getting warmed up.

10 ways BAYC could have improved its land sale contract and minting mechanics

BAYC launched its long-awaited metaverse project, The Otherside, two days ago. And NFT’s fall collapsed Etherscan in a big way. In total, NFT buyers shelled out over $70 million in Ethereum gas fees just to mint some of these land-exclusive NFTs. In light of the gas price craze, many took to Twitter to share ways on how the BAYC team could have improved its land sale contract and minting mechanics.

Needless to say, many agreed that the high gas rates are unnecessary, as the BAYC team could have simply optimized the land sale contract and minting mechanics with a few tweaks. Therefore, we have compiled several useful suggestions from top Web3 devs in this article. This includes submissions coming from Twitter users such as @CaptainDefi2, @iamarkdev, and more. let’s take a look!

First, the BAYC team could simply remove the “SafeTransferForm” feature from the ground contract. According to @CaptainDefi2, since BAYC is transferring funds to the same contract, they wouldn’t need this feature at all. Therefore, this would save them a call function to the same contract.

Next, according to @CaptainDefi2, if all KYC addresses are not contracts, then the BAYC team could simply remove the “nonReentrant” function. Revising it to “msg.sender == tx.origin” will suffice.

Since we know that the above addresses are not contracts, BAYC could simply remove the “safeMint” function as well. This would reduce multiple checks when executing the entire contract. According to @WillPapper, they can also change from _safeMint() to _mint().

If we know that the sum of a variable will always stay in the safe range, using unchecked sums would be sufficient. @CaptainDefi2 also proposed to use “unchecked {i++}” in the BAYC land sale contract, to save gas at each check.

On the other hand, @iamarkdev suggested that BAYC developers should avoid using ERC721Enumerable in the contract. This would help save about 70% of gas rates.

Apply ERC721A standard in BAYC land sale contract

Now, using ERC721A contract for minting would also save us a ton of gas. With this type of ERC standard, multiple NFTs can be minted for the same cost as minting a single NFT. Based on the table above, we could save up to 86% in gas rates when the number of mintages increased to 5 on an ERC721A contract.

However, in the original land sale contract, BAYC used ranges to distribute land NFTs to BAYC and MAYC holders. For example, parcels 0-9999 would go to BAYC holders, and parcels 10000-29999 would go to MAYC holders. Therefore, the ERC721A format was not suitable for the original smart contract. But if the BAYC team avoided the use of ranges, it could save users a ton of gas costs according to the table above.

Better coining mechanics

According to @WillPapper of the Syndicate, gas optimization is only part of the equation. The BAYC team would also have to come up with better minting mechanics to avoid everyone minting at the same time. For example, opting for batch minting by allowing a certain number of coinage addresses to mint NFTs at the same time.

According to @ether_dr, the BAYC team can also use the lottery method to prevent a large number of NFT buyers from minting at the same time. In fact, this mechanism can also ensure some kind of fair distribution to NFT buyers.

Finally, @ether_dr also proposed to limit the number of mintages using off-chain methods. How it works is that a secure, well-encrypted server will issue codes based on specific mint rates. Then, the server will queue the next item to mint. The server will then pass these codes to the smart contract with Merkle’s proof for verification, before you mint the NFTs.

Final thoughts

All in all, the BAYC team could have performed gas optimization in many ways in their land sale contract. Not to mention, the team could have used some sort of batch minting or permitting list to avoid gas wars.

But instead, the team blamed the lack of scalability of the Ethereum network and proposed migrating APEcoin to its own blockchain. Given this, there was speculation on Twitter that the misspelled smart contract was part of the team’s plan to bring out its own blockchain. Whether this is true or not, we’ll leave that to your discretion.

Missed the KYC or missed it? Otherdeed land is close to the mint price now

You missed Otherdeed land sale on April 30 due to high gas rate? Or couldn’t KYC in time? Thanks to falling NFT (and cryptocurrency) prices, it is now possible to buy Otherdeed land near mint price.

At the time of writing, Otherdeed land is trading at a minimum price of 2.83 ETH on OpenSea. That amounts to a value of about $6,800. According to our previous report, the mint price of each Otherdeed parcel was $6,621 in value. Along with ETH and $APE prices falling lately, it’s time for prospective buyers to do some bargain hunting.

What is Otherdeed NFT land?

For starters, Otherdeed is the key to claiming an NFT plot in Otherside, which is an MMORPG by Yuga Labs. In essence, each plot has its own unique environment and sediment. While some of the plots may contain resources and powerful artifacts, only a few rare ones come with cute alien avatars called Kodas.

Should you sweep the “floor”? Or go for the premiums?

It depends. Some collectors with a lot of money might prefer to sweep the NFTs from Otherdeed’s land that are now trading near the price of the floor. But for those looking to buy undervalued parcels, it’s best to turn to data analytics service providers like MetaMetrics for help.

According to MetaMetrics, there are price arbitrage opportunities that investors can take advantage of right now. For example, as of yesterday, Otherdeed’s Tier 1 lands with Chemical Goo are trading at lower prices than Tier 3 lands with the same sediment type.

In addition to the above information, the platform also provides a detailed analysis of Koda traits to look for.

WARNING: This is an informational article. Geek Metaverse is a media outlet, it does not promote, endorse or recommend any particular investment.