The battle for gas fees cannot last for a long time. At present, the community also hopes to propose a long-term solution for fairer and easier NFT issuance, but it is still a wild west.
Original title: “NFT Drop triggered a gas war, here are 5 solutions”
Original Author: Chris Hamer
Compilation: Katie Gu, Planet Daily
Throughout 2021, NFT has been dominating the cryptocurrency market, and the market atmosphere in 2017 seems to have never happened. At that time, traders scrambled to jump on every car driving to ICO Avenue, lest they miss any wealth code. This is the same as the situation of today’s NFT drop. Users are not only worried that they will miss the big rise, they will miss the bottom hunt, and they will miss it. Private equity, missed stud (invest all the principal), missed missed, this kind of FOMO (missing anxiety disorder) psychology is covering many people.
Some NFT projects have already obtained more than 100 times the benefits, causing everyone in this circle to rush to invest in each project. This has caused many transactions to be carried out at the same time, which means that transactions are crowded and the gas fee price rises.
At some point, it is almost impossible to broadcast a transaction without ruining the house.
This is the battle for gas fees.
OpenSea’s growth
OpenSea is at the forefront of growth, with nearly 98% of NFT sales done through this platform . OpenSea seems to bear a large part of the cost of the entire Ethereum blockchain.
As of August 29, 2021, the number of OpenSea users has increased by more than 10 times compared with last year, and the monthly turnover has also risen sharply. Such growth has contributed to the further adoption of Ethereum and the NFT field, but on the other hand, it has also led to buyers competing for NFT in the form of a gas fee battle.
What is the battle for gas fees
The term gas fee battle is used to describe extreme gas price increases. Everyone wants to get transaction confirmation in a short time, which encourages users to raise gas prices higher and higher, thereby increasing the required Gwei, exceeding reasonable expectations .
When whales participate in NFT issuance, the problem is even more complicated. If the Gas is too high, many ordinary users may soon be squeezed out of the market, but whales may not be affected in the same way . Sometimes, they will increase the Gas fee to 2000-3000 Gwei to ensure that they get as much NFT as possible, which immediately pushes up the average transaction fee. Not only will it affect everyone who participates in the NFT drop, but also anyone who tries to send transactions anywhere on the Ethereum blockchain. These battles for gas fees have witnessed a sharp increase in gas prices, and they are usually short-lived, but anyone who tries to complete a transaction during this time will be crushed to pieces.
A good example is during the recent NFT Drop of StonerCats. The gas price during this issuance was so high that many people lost a lot of ETH only in terms of fees, and some people didn’t even get the NFT of StonerCats.
During this issuance, nearly 350 ETH was wasted in failed transactions . Although many people missed these NFTs, people who paid expensive Gas prices could get one, two, or even 100 NFTs. Those who win the gas battle can sell the newly received NFT at a higher price than the initial drop, and can get a generous return immediately .
This is the Ethereum Gas daily price chart for the week of August 26, 2021. Do you see those peaks? These are all NFT drop periods.
A similar chart shows the times of the day when Gas prices are higher on the Ethereum network.
What can all this tell us? If you need to do something unrelated to minting NFT on the Ethereum blockchain, you should avoid excessive hype about the time of NFT drop, and may try to avoid 9-17 o’clock (Pacific Standard Time) . If you need to monitor the gas price, you can check BlockNative’s latest gas estimate or monitor the gas price of ETH Gas Station.
Gas battle solution
In short, these gas battles cannot last for a long time . This will scare away those who cannot afford to pay high gas fees. But how do we solve this problem?
In order to reduce the impact of NFT drop and avoid FOMO-style madness, some solutions have surfaced. Some are still in the research stage, and some have already begun in some way:
- Booking: People book the transaction location in advance to avoid the rush of the casting stage. In addition, this will also limit the number of NFTs that each person can mint.
- Early supporter rewards: If you are one of the first 1,000 people in the Discord channel or one of the first to follow this project, and a veteran, then your support may be rewarded. A good example is Nifty Island, which provides early adopters of the project with exclusive NFT and exclusive casting opportunities.
- Invisible drop: The project may have a release date, but not a set time . They prepare everyone for an airdrop without anyone “queuing”. This is not a perfect system, because once there is news, Gas may soar anyway, although this situation may be rare.
- Lucky draw: simple and easy. NBA Top Shot has used this method for a long time , and this way of waiting is more fair.
- Minting Pass: These tokens can be used to buy and burn in future games. It may be difficult to find a casting pass for an item, but once it is in your collection, you can cast it for free within a large time frame without worrying about gas battles.
The battle for gas fees is not a joke, it adds a lot of unnecessary transaction congestion to Ethereum. However, it is too early for the NFT to fire the first shot of this war, and there is still room for growth and improvement of the release process of new projects. The community hopes to propose some long-term solutions for fairer and easier NFT issuance, but it is still a wild west.
Source: Mycrypto
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