Quick answer: on April 30, 2022, Yuga Labs sold 55,000 virtual land parcels for its Otherside metaverse project at around $6,000 each, and demand was so overwhelming that it triggered one of the worst gas fee spikes in Ethereum’s history. Many buyers paid $3,500 to $5,500 in gas fees alone just to get a transaction through, and some paid over $13,000, more than double the price of the land itself.
What the sale was supposed to be
Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, priced the Otherside land sale at 305 ApeCoin per parcel, roughly $6,000 at the time. With 55,000 parcels available and enormous anticipation built up around the Bored Ape ecosystem, demand vastly outstripped what Ethereum’s network could handle smoothly at once.
What actually happened
The instant the sale went live, thousands of wallets attempted to mint simultaneously. On Ethereum, transaction priority is determined by how much gas you’re willing to pay; when everyone tries to transact in the same few minutes, gas prices spike as buyers effectively bid against each other just for the right to have their transaction processed at all.
That’s exactly what happened. Ethereum gas fees spiked to levels rarely seen before, and buyers ended up paying, on average, between $3,500 and $5,500 in gas alone, with some paying upward of $13,500. Collectively, the sale is estimated to have burned close to $180-200 million worth of ETH in gas fees, on top of the roughly $300 million Yuga Labs made from the sale itself.
Why it got this bad
Two mechanics compounded the problem. First, many buyers submitted duplicate or repeated transactions when their first attempt appeared stuck, further congesting the network and paying gas multiple times for what should have been a single purchase. Second, failed transactions still cost gas on Ethereum; a transaction that runs out of gas or reverts still consumes network resources and charges the sender, meaning a large share of buyers paid real money without receiving any land at all.
How Yuga Labs responded
Facing significant backlash, Yuga Labs committed to refunding gas fees for every failed transaction, a costly but reputation-preserving move. The company also stated publicly that ApeCoin would need to migrate to its own dedicated blockchain to scale properly going forward, an early signal of the project-specific blockchain trend (often called “appchains”) that several major NFT projects pursued afterward.
What this teaches NFT buyers
This event is one of the clearest real-world illustrations of a risk that’s easy to underestimate before you’ve experienced it: on a congested public blockchain, the price you’re quoted is never the full cost. Before participating in any high-demand mint:
- Check whether the project offers a “Dutch auction” or allowlist-based minting structure, both of which reduce the simultaneous-demand spike that caused this specific disaster.
- Understand that failed transactions still cost gas on Ethereum, so repeatedly resubmitting a stuck transaction can compound losses quickly.
- Consider whether the project mints on a lower-fee chain like Polygon or an Ethereum layer-2, which drastically reduces this exact failure mode.
The bigger picture
The Otherside sale didn’t damage Bored Ape Yacht Club’s long-term standing, but it became the textbook example cited whenever gas mechanics and mint design come up in NFT discussions since. For anyone new to minting rather than just buying on the secondary market, it’s a useful reminder that network conditions, not just the project itself, can be the biggest cost and risk factor on sale day.
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