Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Video Game Sale Ends In Another NFT Scam

Screenshot: Yuga Laboratories

Something serious is happening in the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the year-old NFT collection owned by blockchain technology company Yuga Labs. Bad things seem to happen almost daily in the NFT sphere and in the cryptocurrency community in general, which unfortunately are both frequent targets of multi-million dollar hacking initiatives and equally expensive fraudulent hijinks. Yuga Labs recently contributed to blood in the water with its Otherdeed for Otherside collectionan NFT-related gaming initiative that saw buyers pay thousands of dollars in failed transactions and later, once again, become scam targets.

On OpenSea, Yuga Labs described its Otherdeed collection as “the key to claiming land in Otherside”, a game project to win supported by the new ApeCoin token. Described as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game in a report from The Vergethere are very few publicly available details about Otherside, which was supposed to launch in April but has not materialized yet. Some reports have tossed around the word ‘metaverse’, but from Otherside’s fairly obtuse trailer (though, credit where due, high production value), it’s unclear exactly what the project will entail. in addition to bringing together NFT holders of varying origin like CryptoPunks and World of Women in addition to BAYC.

It’s non-fungible Pixar.

Although details about the BAYC video game are still pending, the project has so far failed to win anyone’s affections. The Otherdeed sale, which launched on April 30 and which Yuga Labs called “the largest NFT currency in history“, created an accumulation on the blockchain. NFTs could only be minted in ApeCoin, although this coin exists on the Ethereum blockchain, so the transaction of Ethereum “gas costs” have been increased by demand. Some buyers had to pay up to $14,000 in gas charges, and others were still charged for gas even though their Overdeed transactions failed.

“We are aware that some users have failed in their transactions due to the incredible demand imposed by the Ethereum bottleneck,” Yuga Labs said. said on Twitter. “For those of you concerned, we appreciate your willingness to build alongside us – know that we’ve got you covered and we’ll refund your gas.”

Then, on May 4, Yuga Labs announced that it has “reimbursed gas costs to everyone who made a transaction that failed due to network conditions caused by the mint.” However, several responses indicate that not everyone received a refund. And just to really smash the faces of BAYC fans into the ground, a fake Otherside website scammed some holders of NFTs valued at $6.2 million.

Other NFTs look like elaborate Minecraft blocks with biological, earthy designsand, uh, this one looks like he’s covered in cartoon cum. The art reinforces the idea that buyers are grabbing land with their purchase, though we don’t yet know how relevant land ownership is to Otherside as a project. The NFTs also include descriptions of their image’s artifact, N-resource, E-resource, W-resource, S-resource, and Koda, though again Yuga Labs hasn’t yet released details of what these descriptors mean for NFT holders or Otherside as a game. Well, except for “Koda”. They’re original sprite-like characters – you can spot one flying the Otherside trailer’s protagonist over volcanoes. You know, Kodas are exactly the kind of Web3 innovation you dream of seeing in games. Mushroom guys worth thousands of dollars for no good reason except, maybe, they slightly resemble KAWS figures. This is the future, people!

Despite the huge financial losses suffered by some holders and potential buyers, the genuine Otherdeed collection continues to see sales. According to NFT ranking site CryptoSlam!, Otherdeed has generated Yuga Labs $791,688,432 or 271,425 ETH in sales so far. And on the official Otherside Twitter, the conversation seems to be dominated by people talking about their Kodas and how some of them can fart. All is well again in the world.