NFT launch breaks the Ethereum blockchain, thousands lost to fees

On Saturday, a new NFT collection launched, and due to the demand for the project, the Ethereum blockchain broke.

The new NFT collection comes from famed developers Yuga Labs, known for creating the extremely popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project. Yuga Labs released a new NFT collection that featured 100,000 land deeds for the upcoming Bored Ape metaverse called “Otherside“. With Bored Ape’s being the most popular NFTs, the land deed drop from Yuga Labs was expected to have high interest, but very quickly, the developers and users attempting to purchase the land plots learned that there was very high demand on the Ethereum blockchain.

Users attempting to purchase the land plots were met with exorbitant gas fees, which caused many users to be forced into paying thousands in failed transactions. Notably, CNET reports that the Ethereum network was “unstable for hours” following the launch of the NFT collection, and Yuga Labs even took to its Twitter account to announce that the developers “we’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while“.

For those that don’t know, to perform transactions on the Ethereum network, you will be charged a gas fee, which is basically a fluctuating fee that is determined by the strain on the network during that time of performing a transaction. Usually, gas fees range between $10 and $100, but during the NFT drop, they rose up to $7,000. According to CNET, one user spent $44,000 on gas to purchase two plots of Otherside land, with each plot of land costing $5,846.

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