Otherside virtual land value falls as interest recedes

Yuga Labs‘ Otherdeeds NFTs are already selling below the initial purchase price on OpenSea due to waning interest, Bloomberg News reported.

After the highly anticipated minting during which Yuga Labs made $320 million, interest in the NFTs has decreased, leading many buyers to try and cash out at a loss.

Many paid as high as $6000 in Ethereum (ETH) gas fees. Add this to the actual cost of the NFT, which was $5,800, and the overall cost amounts to around 4.21 ETH. But, some buyers are now offering them for sale on OpenSea for as low as 2.1 ETH.

Otherside, NFTs sales are the biggest ever in the space, with 55,000 NFTs selling out.

The Otherdeed NFT mint is sold out – we are awestruck at the demand shown tonight. Apes and Mutants, the opening of the 21-day claim period is being delayed until the price of gas drops to reasonable levels. We’ll tweet when the claim opens. https://t.co/iRz64lklbv

— OthersideMeta (@OthersideMeta) May 1, 2022

But it appears that not everyone is happy with how the whole thing turned out. A crypto investor and writer, Aaron Brown, said:

I think the Otherdeeds sale was botched, leading to user backlash. It remains to be seen whether it can recover user trust and enthusiasm.

Most of the backlash appears to be due to the high gas fees and failed transactions. 

Tbh I would rather have the land then the refunded gas. I woke up at 5am my time, registered at 6am when I could. I had 1.4e ready and 610 ape. I set everything right at the start transaction pended for the whole duration of the sale. Wish you closed entries sooner

— dontfeedthewolf.eth (@dontfeedwolfeth) May 1, 2022

Yuga Labs’ reaction

Yuga Labs acknowledged some of these issues in its tweets post mint. It claimed that it tried to prevent some of those issues by setting a clearing price, limiting mint to two per wallet, and implementing an on-chain KYC gating mechanism.

We wanted to say a few words about the mint tonight. ?

— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) May 1, 2022

Yuga Labs’ is refunding gas fees for users that faced failed transactions. The company sent the refunds to the wallets used for the initial transactions.

Well done guys, that’s one step forward ??

— Remy Ryy (@Ryy_Wills) May 4, 2022

Yuga Labs also stated that there’s a need for ApeCoin to have its own chain.

We’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while. It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its chain to scale properly. We’d like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction.

Beyond the high gas fees, another reason that might be responsible for the drop in the value of Otherdeeds NFTs is the fall in the price of ApeCoins. After trading as high as $27 before the mint, the token is currently at $16.