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Ethereum crashes as Yuga Labs sells land for Otherside

On Saturday, April 30th, the Ethereum network crashed due to the volume of transactions reaching thousands during Yuga Labs’ sale of plots of land for their upcoming project in the Metaverse named ‘Otherside’. This caused the blockchain network to become unusable for several hours, drove gas fees to a new all-time high and left users with several failed transactions whose fees have already been paid for.

The crash also led to gas fees on the network increasing to ridiculous amounts to the point where the transaction fee costs more than the NFT artwork itself. 

One of the most notable transactions that showed how inflated the transaction fees were during the sale was when an individual paid 5 ETH for transaction fees alone which are equal to roughly US$14,000. This expensive transaction fee was on top of the piece of land in Otherside itself which cost about $11,228. After the sale, the total transaction fees throughout the sale surpassed $100 million. 

Yuga Labs issued a statement on Twitter regarding the crash they have caused in the Ethereum network stating ‘We are aware that some users had failed transactions due to the incredible demand being forced through Ethereum’s bottleneck. For those of you affected, we appreciate your willingness to build alongside us – know that we’ve got your back and will be refunding your gas’.

They also added ‘It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain to properly scale. We’d like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction.’ The company also apologised to the affected users, adding ‘We’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while.’

Yuga Labs is famously known for its work in one of the most famous NFT collections the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). This influenced the success of their latest project ‘Otherside’ which already surpassed $558 million in sales despite only launching last April 30, Saturday according to data from the NFT ranking site CryptoSlam. These statistics made Otherside the best-selling NFT collection in the past month.

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