Otherside Metaverse from Yuga Labs: Everything You Need to Know
by corporate trash
5/2/2022
Otherside is an ambitious metaverse project created by Yuga Labs, who created the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, in partnership with Animoca Brands. The ambitious “MetaRPG” is on the Ethereum blockchain, along with Yuga Labs other NFT collections Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, Bored Ape Chemistry Club, CryptoPunks, and Meebits.
In the Otherside land sale on Saturday, April 30, Yuga Labs sold over $250 million worth of virtual real estate to their upcoming metaverse with their native ApeCoin token. Since the sale, the Otherside land has generated about $500 million in sales on the secondary market.
From a highly-scrutinized teaser trailer released on Twitter to the unprecedented gas war launch, NFT collectors have been extremely engaged in Yuga Labs’ plans for the metaverse. And on April 30, the hype came to fruition, as the Otherdeeds minting mint clogged the entire Ethereum blockchain for several hours.
What is Otherside Metaverse?
Otherside is a gamified metaverse which is still in development, created by Yuga Labs in partnership with Animoca Brands. It is expected to be a combination of games like World of Warcraft and other Web3 virtual worlds. The vision is that “players own the world, your NFTs can become playable characters, and thousands can play together in real time.”
The NFTs are dynamic and change as you interact with the items and resources on your land. Otherside is expected to include other NFT projects like Cool Cats, CryptoPunks, Cryptoadz, World of Women, and more.
On the Otherside website, it states: “Land owners are creators, and can participate in demos, prototypes, test builds, in-person events, and contests that help bring the Otherside to life.” The metaverse is built in partnership with Animoca Brands and Improbable. There is a total of 200,000 land plots.
100,000 plots were allocated and sold in the first wave, and the next 100,000 plots of land are still to be released in the future. The Otherside website states “the second 100,000 Otherdeeds will be exclusively rewarded to Voyagers who hold Otherdeeds and contribute to the development of Otherside.”
Otherside Metaverse Licensing Agreements
Licensing agreements for land holders are very different than what Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club collectors are used to. There are no commercial rights to holders and Koda rights are revocable. Punk6529 did a thorough thread about the license.
KYC Process for Otherside
The hype leading up to the launch on April 30 was unprecedented in the NFT space. Otherside was the first opportunity for many to mint a collection from Yuga Labs, since many of the others have mooned to very high floor levels and Mutants were sold in late August 2021.
In order to mint, you had to go through a know your customer (KYC) process with Animoca Labs, who is a partner of Yuga.
This process occurred a full month earlier than the launch in order to have time to process the demand. Those who went through the process were not told what it was for, only that Animoca Brands was involved.
It involved verifying holders’ personal information, photo and identification. Many chose to not participate in this KYC process as they wanted to remain anonymous in the space — common in the Web3 world.
Otherside Land Sale
It was announced closer to the Otherdeed mint that it would only be payable in ApeCoin, Yuga Labs’ native currency. This news created a new demand for ApeCoin, which pumped up the price over a few days to higher than $25. However, many chose to sell after the $APE-only mint was over, sending the price much lower.
The mint of 55,000 public Otherdeeds was originally supposed to be a dutch auction in $APE, available only to wallets who had previously KYCed. However, soon before mint, Yuga Labs changed to a flat 305 $APE per NFT, with each wallet allowed two mints in the first wave.
Even at the current price of $APE, which has dipped since the sale, Yuga Labs brought in over $200 million in revenue with the land sale.
While they prepared for additional waves of sales, the Otherdeeds sold out in a highly-contested Wave 1, meaning two NFTs were allowed per KYCed wallet. The remaining 45,000 lands in the first wave are claimable by Bored Ape (10,000) and Mutant ape (20,000) owners, or saved for Yuga Labs and other project developers (15,000 lands).
Otherside Mint Gas War
Although the Otherside mint was only available to KYCed wallets, buyers ramped up their gas and priority fees as high as 12,000 Gwei or more, which was about 4 Ethereum in gas fees for each NFT. For most of the mint, it remained around 6,000-7,000 gwei — or about 2 Ethereum per mint.
Gas wars like this occur when an increase in demand for transactions clogs up a proof-of-work network, like Ethereum, requiring users to increase gas fees to confirm their transaction on the blockchain.
This amount of traffic on the Ethereum essentially rendered the chain useless for any other transactions except Otherside land mints and buys for over two hours.
In fact, an estimated $100 million amount of gas was burned during the mint, and more was sent to miners. Etherscan even crashed from the giant spike of traffic on the network.
Community Reaction to Otherside Mint
The launch ultimately divided the NFT community. Some found the gas war an unnecessary waste and a brutal barrier for new members who had hoped to buy in. Some peoples’ point of view was that those people should have been better prepared for a massive gas war. Many experienced Ethereum developers pointed that the contract could have been better optimized and saved tens of millions of dollars in gas fees.
Yuga Labs tweeted about this controversy and announced they would refund people for “out of gas” contract errors. Yuga Labs earned $318 million from the initial launch and has already done about $500 million in secondary market sales as of writing.
Otherdeed Claim for Bored Apes and Mutant Apes
Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club members were able to claim a free-plus-gas Otherdeed after the public sale ended; the claim is open for 21 days. These land plots are closer to the center of the circular Otherside map, with Bored Ape land the closest to the center.
The location, as well as distinction as Alpha and Beta land, make these land plots more valuable than the publicly minted Otherside land. On the island closest to the center, prime Otherside land has already sold for hundreds of Ethereum each.
Types of Otherside Land
Otherdeed traits revealed the day after the mint, on May 1. The traits include environment, environment tier, sediment, sediment tier, resources (northern, eastern, southern, western), artifacts, and Koda.
There are five types of land sediment types, which tiers the Otherside land:
- Biogenic Swamp (BAYC holder airdrop)
- Chemical Goo (MAYC holder airdrop)
- Rainbow Atmos
- Cosmic Dream
- Infinite Expanse
These lands also have five tiers, 1-5, with five (Biogenic Swamp) being the rarest. The land has different types of environments with varying rarity. Each plot also generates up to four types of resources that owners can use: Anima, Ore, Shard, and Root. Some are rarer than others. Artifacts are another part of the lands, which are objects that appear and have many different uses.
As of now, there is no context to how the sediment and environments will play a factor in the development of Otherside.
In the future, anything that you buy in a primary sale in the Otherside ecosystem is payable in ApeCoin only ($APE). OpenSea also added $APE to their payment options for any NFT that enables it on their secondary platform.
Kodas: Yuga Labs new NFT collection?
Kodas are the highly-desired beings that appear on only 10 percent of the first wave of Otherside land plots — 10,000 in total. Lands with Kodas command a high premium price on secondary markets (around 25 Ethereum) as collectors speculate that they will be valuable to their land.
They all share “an affinity” with the environments in the Otherside, some more than others.
Kodas are rumored to be the new NFT collection from Yuga Labs in a leaked pitch deck which detailed the Otherside launch. In the deck, the Kodas are crucial to Otherside lore, called the “one race of celestials” that still remain. One of them also appeared in the trailer for Otherside.
While their utility is ultimately to be announced, lucky Otherdeed minters are more than happy to have a Koda on their land.
Otherside Technical Capabilities
Otherside is powered by Improbable’s M2 gaming technology, which means that more 10,000 players will be able to interact seamlessly within the virtual world. It will be able to operate at half a billion of operations per second, compared to other metaverse limits of 10,000 operations per second.
In early April, Improbable raised $150 million to support its metaverse endeavors.
It also promises to break barriers of rendering and bandwidth, allowing great detail of characters, even in large crowds. The world will use advanced physics and AI to power next-level social interaction between characters in Otherside.
3D models of BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, and CryptoPunks NFTs will be given to holders when Otherside launches, with Meebits coming later. Creators can build for Otherside via the SDK and sell them within the game’s marketplace. They can sell characters, structures, games, tools, and outfits.
TL;DR — Otherside Metaverse Launches
The expectations for Otherside continue to be high. Yuga Labs has proven themselves as one of the leaders of the NFT space, and they aim to drive innovation for their projects as well as others. They have hundreds of millions of dollars on hand to help fund this vision, which is all encompassed within the Otherside universe.
Holders of Yuga Labs projects are likely to have additional opportunities and utility throughout Otherside. The game’s roster of investors and developers is stacked, and the entire NFT community is excited to see what they’re going to do next.
Though there is no estimated launch date yet for a playable Otherside metaverse, the land will continue to be a popular asset as people seek to claim their space. After all, it’s Yuga’s world, and we’re just living in it.