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NFTs and Culturemetaverse

Bored Ape Yacht Club creator refunds gas fees for failed transactions during their chaotic metaverse land sale

Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
By
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Reporter
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
By
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Reporter
May 4, 2022, 3:15 PM ET

The company behind a hugely profitable and even more chaotic Bored Ape Yacht Club digital land sale this weekend says it has refunded fees to buyers who were shut out because of technical problems. 

Yuga Labs said it refunded transaction costs or “gas fees” to people whose were unable to buy digital land on the company’s upcoming metaverse, “Otherside,” which netted the company $320 million in sales over the weekend.

The company said in a Wednesday tweet thread that it reimbursed the fees on purchases that “failed due to network conditions caused by the mint.” It added that it has refunded the fees to “the wallets used for the initial transaction.” 

A spokesperson for Yuga Labs declined to comment further to Fortune. 

Yuga Labs’ sale of “Otherdeeds,” or virtual land deeds in their still-unreleased metaverse was the largest NFT mint in history. Although it was highly anticipated, the sale was plagued by overwhelming demand that congested and disrupted the Ethereum network, causing Yuga Labs to say afterwards that ApeCoin, a cryptocurrency which was used for the sale, needed its own blockchain.

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.

— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) May 1, 2022

The congestion from the sale pushed gas fees to record highs for those trying to purchase metaverse land, with some people paying several thousand dollars for an NFT they never received.

Yuga Labs tweeted on Sunday following the sale that it was working on refunding money from those with failed transactions. 

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About the Author
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezReporter
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Role: Reporter
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez is a reporter for Fortune covering general business news.

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