The Bored Ape Yacht Club's Otherside NFT deeds sale burned a whopping ETH amount amid failed transactions and apologies

Yuga Labs, the NFT behemoth behind the celebrity-endorsed Bored Ape Yacht Club set managed to break the Ethereum blockchain with its new metaverse project called Otherside. The scheduled sale of Otherdeed NFTs - virtual plots of land in Otherside - created such a popular demand that Yuga netted more US$300 million from the primary launch sale of the plots with a nominal value of US$5,800.

In the process, however, the instant transaction pileup created a bottleneck in the ETH blockchain that lasted for hours and forced some buyers to pay more than double in gas, i.e. transaction fees, than the Otherdeed's starting price. With the secondary market sales, the Otherdeeds NFT haul was more than US$560 million in the span of the first 24 hours. 

Not only were Otherdeed transactions extremely expensive, but some failed completely, depriving the buyers of their hard-earned crypto. In the end, the payments managed to destroy more than US$157 million worth of ETH for unprecedented amount of time.

Yuga Labs now vows to automatically refund the gas fees to those unlucky buyers whose Otherdeed purchase remained in limbo, but advised patience and cautioned against clicking any links that may turn out fraudulent. NFT transactions have traditionally been responsible for the lion's share of burned ETH as they trade on the Ethereum blockchain, but the Otherside sale was literally out of this world in that regard.

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