Yuga Labs refunds fees for failed ‘Otherdeeds’ transactions

On April 30, Yuga Labs, creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club launched a virtual land sale of their Otherdeeds NFTs on the company’s upcoming Metaverse ‘Otherside’, bringing in US$ 320 million in sales. The sale marked the largest NFT mint in history. 

The spike in the demand has overwhelmed the Ethereum blockchain and ramped up transaction costs or “gas fees”. Many investors anticipated gas wars going into the mint but 100 - 200 x the normal gas fees came as a surprise. Around 640 investors exited the mint empty handed because the parcels of land were limited and too highly coveted.

As a result, Yuga Labs spent a grand total of 90.57 ETH (around US$ 265,000), according to Etherscan. The largest individual refund was 2.6 ETH (around US$ 7,500) while all refunds in gas fees were 0.26 ETH (around US$ 783). 

“We have refunded gas fees to everyone who made a transaction that failed due to network conditions caused by the mint. The fees have been sent back to the wallets used for the initial transaction.”The company tweeted. 

YugaLabs hinted at potentially moving its Metaverse and native token Apecoin from Ethereum to its own blockchain; no details have been clarified in regards to this statement. 

What are Bored Ape Yacht Club ‘Otherside’ and ‘Otherdeeds’? 

The brainchild of Yuga Labs bought and sold with APECoin, which ranked 40th in market cap during its launch and has since reached 28th. It is the APE ecosystem’s governance token and provides access to its platforms, including the upcoming ‘Otherside’ Metaverse game. 

In partnership with game developer Animoca Brands, Otherside is a gamified, interoperable Metaverse under development and will bring together leading NFT projects, including the Apes, CryptoPunks, Cool Cats and more on its multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and Web3 virtual worlds. 

Meanwhile, Otherdeeds are the NFTs for Otherside are capped at 55,000 and can be used to exchange parcels of virtual land in Otherside. 

The Otherside sale shows how NFT mints can favour the wealthiest investors who can afford high gas fees. Reports show that some investors were paying as much as US$ 7,000 in gas fees to process transactions. Someone even spent US$ 44,000 on two Otherdeeds, which is three times the normal price of the NFT.  

“We’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while,” Yuga Labs said. “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.” according to another tweet by YugaLabs.

Photo: OpenSea