Has This Week Been The Biggest Week For NFTs in 2022?

May 03, 2022

Gm. Over the weekend the NFT world had some huge developments! This might well be the biggest news in 2022 so far. Grab your popcorn let's start.

The estimated read time of today’s email is 3 minutes.

Without delay, let's get into it. We’re talking about:

  • 💸 YUGA labs launched the Otherside NFTs and raised a whopping $285 million.

  • 📉 Ethereum Network crash.. Will APE become its own blockchain?

  • 😳 Microsoft follows the big tech giants into the Metaverse space.

BAYC launches the Otherside NFTs and raises a whopping $285 million!

BAYC is the darling of the NFT world, its a project much loved by the NFT community and highly revered by its competitors. This collection has led the way in the NFT space, and that trend continued over the weekend.

The owners of BAYC Yuga Labs held its long-awaited digital land sale on Saturday evening – a public debut for its “Otherside” metaverse project. As expected, the demand was huge! During the sale, investors snapped up a limited supply of 55,000 “Otherdeeds” NFTs, representing titles to virtual land plots in a forthcoming 3D social space.

They cost about $7,000 each and were only available for purchase in ApeCoin ($APE), Yuga Labs’ official cryptocurrency. In anticipation of the “Otherdeeds” NFTs, the price of ApeCoin went sky high during the week; it reached $20 in value and currently has settled at around $15. The following is not financial advice. ApeCoin is well worth buying, and it would not be a surprise if the price reaches $100 and beyond in the future. As with any investment, always do your research!

On secondary marketplaces like OpenSea, the lowest listed price for an Otherdeed NFT is around 4Ξ (~$11,000). While the resulting land rush generated approximately $285 million for the company, it also created some of the highest gas fees in the history of the Ethereum network: Investors have spent over $176M on fees alone. That has led to Yuga Labs seeking to launch its own blockchain. We'll cover that in more detail below.

High gas fees from the Otherside NFT launch leads to BAYC launching its own blockchain.

"We broke OpenSea" is a common phrase used by NFT projects. It used to brag about how the demand for its project was so high that OpenSea could not handle the volume of users. Perhaps projects need to start using phrases such as "We're too big for Ethereum." This is precisely what happened with the "Otherdeeds" NFTs.

The demand was so high that it led to extraordinarily high gas fees. Currently, Ethereum uses a mechanism called "proof of work" to complete its transactions. This is where many computers in the blockchain need to complete a complex puzzle to allow the transaction to become validated. This ensures there is no fraud and that all actions are legitimate. But such a mechanism is slow as it's only possible for 15 transactions to occur every second. The net result is that when there is a huge demand to carry out transactions, the "mining cost" (the gas fee) goes through the roof! Some investors had to pay as much as 2.5Ξ($7500) in gas fees!

As you'd expect, this is terrible for customers! Imagine paying fees that exceed the cost of the item you are buying? Ethereum simply cannot handle huge projects such as BAYC. This has led to Yuga Labs seeking to launch their own blockchain to make the user experience smoother and less costly. Obviously, this is a new announcement, and we don't know how things will proceed. But chances are Yuga Labs will launch a sidechain such as Polygon, which carries out the transactions on its own blockchain before registering the details on the Ethereum blockchain. The net result will lead to the BAYC and its associated assets becoming more valuable.

Microsoft follows the big tech giants into the Metaverse space.

In recent months many tech giants announced their plans for the Web 3 evolution we are witnessing. Early this year, we saw YouTube make its plans public, and at the end of last year, Facebook took the extraordinary step of renaming its company Meta.

This week saw the announcement of the virtual experience stage called Mesh becoming integrated into Microsoft Teams. Microsoft HoloLens is something that's already in existence. This is a headset that allows augmented reality to take place. If you are wondering what augmented reality is, it's an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects present in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated information (such as sound, videos, graphics). Microsoft's Mesh in Teams will utilize HoloLens, allowing users to have a personal virtual presence on any device. In effect, it adds to the real-world experience offered by Teams.

Additionally, Microsoft announced a virtual reality experience for this Xbox gaming console. While Xbox is mind-blowing, there is not much in the way of a virtual reality experience. This new announcement is set to bring Xbox to the Metaverse.

To bring up our last email, what did you predict $APE performing at after the launch? Were you a bull or a bear?

Also, do you think there will ever be a coin that takes over ethereum? With what just happened with the Otherside launch, how do you think it will last with there being so many other coins out, with more efficient code? Something to think about, that could be a really big development in crypto in the near future. Let us know your opinion.

Did you enjoy what you read today? Be sure to check out our next email, which is going to be packed with all the latest developments!

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