Welcome to The Otherside: The Yuga Labs Metaverse

Yuga Labs, famous as the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club, are selling land in their exciting metaverse project. As a mastermind in the Web 3.0 space, and valued at $4 billion, with an impressive list of investment partners to its name, Yunga Labs has taken its innovation a step further and developed its very own space within the Metaverse known as The Otherside. 

What is The Otherside?

The Otherside is an open Metaverse Role-Playing-Game (RPG) that will be aligned with related blue-chip NFT projects that include Mutant Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks and Cool Cats. 

Essentially, it is a metaverse gaming platform in which users’ are able to use their NFTs as gamable characters within the space - giving their NFTs virtual life in their very own world. 

But Yuga Labs did not jump into this project without expert planning and execution. The renowned company partnered with Animoca Brands in the development of The Otherside. Animoca Brands is the core developer of the renowned Metaverse “The Sandbox.” 

The Sandbox Metaverse is one of the most respected and trusted blockchain virtual worlds and has spearheaded the shift in the gaming market by rewarding creators for their value. With Animoca Brands plating a role in The Otherside - everyone was quick to take notice. 

Otherside Land for Sale

This past Saturday, the brains behind BAYC and Yuga Labs announced that the Otherside was putting virtual land (known as Otherdeed) up for sale and this turned out to be one of the largest NFT mints in history. 

The Otherside explains:

“An Otherdeed is your key to the Otherside. Otherdeed holders can participate in prototype builds, demos, and tests that shape the final game design and experience. Every Otherdeed is also a dynamic NFT, built as a collection of elements — from resources to Kodas, and will evolve as you move component pieces around.”

There are 55,000 land plots for sale through KYC wallets only. Otherside land deeds could be purchased with ApeCoin, a Yuga Labs decentralized token that was recently released and runs on the popular Ethereum system. The deeds were sold at a price of 305 ApeCoin, the monetary equivalent of $5 800.

This community of coin holders are at the forefront of Web 3.0, with valuations skyrocketing ahead of this monumental digital land sale.  

How it Went

The auction sold out within three hours, and the Otherside metaverse land sale raised upwards of $320 million simply by selling 55 000 parcels of Otherside land. 

However, this did come with some very real consequences that brought about important conversation with The Otherside tackling it head-on by saying:

“This has been the largest NFT mint in history by several multiples, and yet the gas used during the mint shows that demand far exceeded anyone’s wildest expectations. The scale of this mint was so large that Etherscan crashed. We’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while. It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale. We’d like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction.”

Another challenge the company faced was an array of failed transactions due to the high demand being forced through Ethereum:

“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.”

​​“We know that the Otherdeed mint was unprecedented in its size as a high-demand NFT collection, and that would bring with it unique challenges. The hope was that those challenges would be assuaged via a rigorous gating mechanism in the form of an on-chain KYC, a max mint of 2 per KYC’d wallet, and a significant clearing price at 305 ApeCoin.”

The Solution

To prevent gas wars for the highly-anticipated mints, no sales will be made through Dutch auctions. The team has proposed other forms of minting mechanics, including selling the NFTs in waves.

In Wave 1, each KYC wallet will be able to mint up to two Otherdeed NFTs, on a per wallet basis. Wave 2 will begin once gas returns to reasonable levels. At this stage, each KYC wallet will be able to mint up to 4 NFTs. 

The waves will continue until all of the Otherside plots have been sold. Updates will be announced on the Otherside’s Twitter and Discord accounts. 

The Future of The Otherside

The Otherside plots are being auctioned off at present, without buyers knowing the full extent of the platform. Otherside are expected to integrate with other NFT collections, though there is little other information about what people can expect. 

Yuga Labs have purchased the IP rights to meebits and CryptoPink NFTs. Its flagship collection of NFTs (Bored Ape Yacht Club) has seen an increase in value, with the lowest listed at around $429,000. 

Virtual land sales are quickly becoming the norm and with Decentraland and Sandbox Metaverses establishing the concept of a virtual world and virtual real estate using NFTs, Bored Ape is quickly becoming a contender in this space. 

For more updates and to see the Otherdeeds, visit @OthersideMeta. To learn more about the Metaverse, reach out to us at Nexa.