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It's done. The Otherside is out. The project by Yuga Labs, creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club, to build out the metaverse was finally released this weekend. After a controversial mint, the team quickly delivered on revealing art, traits, and a demo of what to expect in this world.

A lot has happened this weekend, and I'm here to break down everything that went down in the last 48 hours.

Let's Enter the Otherside!

Disclaimer: I own a Mutant and three plots of land. This is not financial advice or suggestion for you to buy into this project.

Background and Mint

The project kicked off when BAYC's official Twitter tweeted, "something is brewing" leading to a mysterious website. The team mentioned that this was a partnership project with Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based gaming software company that is involved with many play-to-earn games and has been seven months in the making.

Upon entering the website, users had to fill out a KYC (Know Your Customer) form. Since Web3 epitomizes anonymity and privacy, naturally, many people complained. Many did not fill out the form and both Yuga Labs and Animoca received criticism.

Last week, the rumors surrounding a virtual real estate land mint were confirmed. Otherdeeds would be available to mint with 55k supply going to the public, 15k going to investors and contributors, and the remaining 30k supply going to MAYC/BAYC holders. Additionally, the mint would be a Dutch Auction exclusively in ApeCoin. Controversially, the only people allowed to participate in the public sale were those who filled out the KYC form.

The result? The biggest and most hyped NFT project in history that secured over $450 million in funding had an upcoming mint with an inherent whitelist available only to those who had KYC'd, which wasn't many.

Eventually, the mint turned from a Dutch Auction into a flat 305 $APE and 2 mints per wallet during the first wave of sales. Once sales settled and gas lowered, Yuga Labs would open up additional waves for users to mint more land.

Many people on Twitter speculated about the number of KYC wallets with enough $APE in their wallets, and the conclusion leading up to a few hours before the mint was that there was going to be a wave 2. Many thought a gas war would not occur at this point. Oh man were we wrong.

One of the worst minting experiences happened from this point. $180 Million in USD was spent on gas to Ethereum while tens of thousands of people were unable to successfully mint.

Now, I'm not here to tell you what the mint should have been or how Yuga Labs should have responded. I'm here to discuss the background and expectations built up to this mint so we can evaluate The Otherside. After all, this is the Ready Player One experience that we've all been waiting for. The chance to own a virtual life that could one day be more meaningful than your real life.

Let's see what's waiting on the Otherside now.

The Otherside

Described by Yuga as a "blend of mechanics of an MMORPG and the virtual Web3 metaverse", The Otherside aims to become a world where NFTs are characters and items, and users can interact with tens of thousands of others at the same time.

In this world, players are encouraged to give feedback, prototype and develop new ideas, and have a voice in building out this world.

Much of the information has yet to be released, so keep in mind that the information below is strictly from what I observed in the initial few days of the launch.

One thing I like is that Yuga Labs is partnering with experts who have developed metaverse gaming experiences before. Specifically, they have partnered with both Animoca Brands and Improbable to deliver an experience like no other.

Something we should be able to expect is a highly scalable game, seamless experiences with ideal frame-rates and graphics rendering, and even natural voice chat to communicate with people.

The Setup

Land, Artifacts, and Kodas

At the center of this universe are islands in the form of NFTs known as Otherdeeds. Specifically, there are five tiers of different settlements available:

• Tier 1: Infinite Expanse
• Tier 2: Cosmic Dream
• Tier 3: Rainbow Atmos
• Tier 4: Chemical Goo: These were reserved for Mutant Apes to claim. They hold ids 10k to 29999 and are second closest to the central Clubhouse.
• Tier 5: Biogenic Swamp: These were reserved for Bored Apes to claim. They hold ids 0 to 9999 and are closest to the central Clubhouse.

Along with each land comes a few various attributes. Specifically, we see:

• Land Name / Sediment
• The rarity of the land tiered 1-5 (5 is best)
• An artifact if your land has one
• The token id of a Koda if your land has one
• NSWE resources with rarity tiers 1-3

The team has mentioned that these are dynamic NFTs. The attributes of the land could change over time as we play the game and progress throughout the metaverse.

Nothing has yet been revealed about what the type of resources are best, what land environments do, or the effect of each artifact, but people have been speculating and buying NFTs that they presume to be "rare". Let's go over some of these speculations.

Close to the Clubhouse

Before the rarity of each Otherdeed was even revealed, people were spending 200-300 ETH on plots closest to the central clubhouse. Specifically, plot #9 sold for exactly 300 ETH. The rumor was lower serial numbers would be closer, and these serial numbers were handled sequentially to those who minted first.

Ultimately this was confirmed to be next to the clubhouse, but we still do not know what benefit this has.

Chaos Land/Environment

Each NFT comes with an environment type, which is separate from the sediment type. There are 29 different environments and most range between 3000-6000 NFTs with the same type. For 28 of these environments, there isn't much distinction between the floor type between them.

However, there is one type, Chaos, which is only present in 107 of the 100,000 NFTs. The floor for the Chaos Land is at a staggering 90 ETH, which is over 20x the floor of the current collection.

#82785

Created by OthersideDeployer • Otherdeed for Otherside

Artifacts

No doubt artifacts are rare. We aren't sure what each one does yet, but these seem to be fairly scarce. 74 different artifacts exist, with the most frequent artifact, the Ancient Coin, only appearing in 964 different NFTs. We definitely see a jump in floor price when we head to the artifacts with < 130 supply.

Something interesting to note is that these objects are scattered throughout the lands of Otherside, but only some cannot be crafted by other means. This may mean as we learn more about the game, certain artifacts may be added or created by players.

Kodas

But what is a Koda? Since first seeing Kodas appear in the Otherside trailer, everyone has been speculating that a few lucky holders would find a Koda on their land.

Per the leaked investor deck, Kodas are celestial beings that gave birth to the Bored Apes. While it's currently unknown what they do, people have quickly assumed that Kodas will be important. They even flipped the floor price of Mutant Apes!

Among the Kodas are a series of 100 Mega Kodas. This is denoted by looking at token ids 9900-10000. While this is mostly something the community has speculated, the unique design and variation of these Kodas definitely stand out. A recent Mega Koda sold for 280 ETH!

#1890

Created by OthersideDeployer • Otherdeed for Otherside

Something to also consider is that Yuga Labs plans to airdrop a separate NFT collection of Kodas later this month. This would encourage secondary trading and possibly include customizing Kodas on any land you own!

The Characters

The idea behind Otherside is that anyone can create their character. BAYC/MAYC/BAKC and CryptoPunk holders will be given 3D models of their NFTs when the game launches. These models will be your character/avatar in this universe.

Additionally, Yuga Labs is developing an SDK for a user, or NFT project, to transform any NFT into a playable character. This means owners of projects such as Cool Cats, Cryptoadz, and World of Women will be able to use their NFT in the Otherside. A great, and possibly first, way to introduce multiple different projects into the same ecosystem! As many have converted their Twitter/Discord identity into their profile-picture NFT, I'm excited to see what happens.

What about the next 100k Lands?

This weekend, 100k lands were released, but Yuga is set to release an additional 100k lands sometime in August. The exact drop details haven't been released, but Yuga has hinted that "the drop will be exclusively rewarded to users who hold Otherdeeds and contribute to the development of Otherside."

This suggests that holding Otherdeeds could be more valuable since it would allow you to expand and gather more land in the future. Those who aren't already in the ecosystem can be eligible by contributing to the ecosystem through the SDK (which they stated doesn't require coding or technical experience). Some of these contributions could be creating skins, contributing to their marketplace, or possibly other tools.

While I think incentivizing contributions from the community will be good for the health of the game, I do feel that the last mint was a bit unfair. We saw probably the biggest gas war in NFT history and did not receive transparency from Yuga Labs on their end. I hope Yuga rewards these people somehow in the next mint.

Licensing

Yuga Labs paved the way for what it means to own an NFT through their licensing rights for both BAYC and MAYC. Unfortunately, the licensing agreements for Otherside are definitely more restrictive. If you want a full understanding of the licensing agreement, Punk6529 breaks it down in an awesome way.

The tl;dr:

• Otherdeeds are non commercial rights as this seems to be a part of Animoca's policy
• After Punk6529's post, it seems that owners should have full commerical license to the art of that Koda including derivative work
• You cannot fractionalize a Koda
• Otherdeeds are sold by Animoca and you have agreed to Animoca terms (no commercial rights, HK jurisdiction)
• Kodas are sold by Yuga and you have agreed to Yuga terms (revocable commercial rights ex-NFTs, USA jurisdiction)

Concluding Thoughts

Aside from the horrendous minting experience, Yuga Labs have done a tremendous job with the release of this project. While there isn't a timetable for when the 3D models or actual gameplay experience will be released, the art reveal went smoothly, the website explore page looks great, and the depth of content truly shows that this project has already been many months in the making.

I'm excited for what's to come on the Otherside.

If you like learning about Web3, blockchain, NFTs, and tech, subscribe to our free weekly newsletter! And if you haven't yet, follow me on Twitter!