ETH gas fees are up. What's new? However, this time it's because the creator of BAYC, Yuga Labs, launched the Otherside NFTs and sold them for over $300M.
While the Otherdeed NFTs could be minted only in APE, it also required ETH for gas fees. The minting mechanics set by Yuga Labs envisioned the sale of NFTs in phases while anticipating a momentary rise in gas prices, which would then decelerate the number of users minting the NFTs:
“This pattern of mint → bump limit → mint → bump limit will continue until NFT supply is exhausted. This approach is expected to prevent an apocalyptic gas war, while also encouraging as broad a distribution as possible.”by Redditor u/jeux99 sharing their experience on high gas fees at the time, asking:As rightly pointed out by another Redditor, u/johnfintech, EtherscanData on biggest contributors to gas fees. Source: nansen“We're sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while.
For those that lost their ETH holdings in gas due to failed transactions, Yuga Labs has promised to refund the gas amount back to the users.Ethereum’s infamous gas fees have been a long-standing concern among the community owing to the influx of ecosystems hosted by the blockchain, including NFTs. In Nov. 2021, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a new block-wide limit on the total transaction calldata to decrease the overall transaction calldata gas cost over the ETH network.
While the community embraced the suggestion, it took over four months to implement EIP-4488 on the Ethereum-sidechain testnet on Geth. Community member Qi Zhou confirmed on 27th April about plans to upgrade the testnet within a month.