Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), raises a whooping $285 million, selling virtual plot of lands in its “Otherside” metaverse.
This comes on the heels after Yuga Labs secured a funding of $450 million in March 2022 to develop its NFT metaverse project, “Otherside”. The funding round which was led by one of the leading venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), valued Yuga Labs at $4 billion, post the capital raise. The fundraising also witnessed participation from Hong Kong based gaming giant, Animoca Brands, cryptocurrency exchange behemoth, Coinbase, and the leading financial technology company, MoonPay.
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
Otherside- The Gamified Metaverse
On May 1, Yuga Labs sold NFTs called “Otherdeeds”, which it said could be exchanged as plots of virtual land in a future Bored Ape-themed online environment called “Otherside“. In the sale, 55,000 Otherdeeds were sold and the project raised close to $285 million.
The sale allowed users to trade with the Ape ecosystem’s native token, ApeCoin (APE). The virtual pieces of plots were quoted around a mammoth price of $305 APE each. On other NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, the cheapest listed price for an Otherdeed was around 7 ETH.
According to the Yuga Labs team, the Otherside metaverse will be a multi-player gaming environment and believes that the game will stand out from other Metaverse projects which are less competitive. The metaverse be a virtual world made up of 200,000 plots of land, which will be purchased, owned and traded as NFTs.
All of the land will be distributed in two waves, the initial phase of 100,000 went live on Saturday and another 100,000 will be rewarded to those who “contribute to the development of Otherside” over the coming months.
Why Did Ether Gas Price Skyrocket?
The demand for the Otherside metaverse deeds flung Ethereum (ETH) gas fees to a new high, causing the average ether gas fee to rise dramatically. According to the analytics platform, Etherscan, investors spent over $176 million on fees alone in the Otherdeeds sale.
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.
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) May 1, 2022
In the wake of the fee related chaos, Yuga Labs issued a public apology stating that some users had failed transactions due to the incredible demand being forced through Ethereum’s congestion. However, the company assured that the affected users will be duly compensated. Yuga Labs, tweeted,
