The Bored Ape Yacht Club creators took in $300 million for their digital land NFTs, crashing the ethereum network as demand surged

• The creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club raised $320 million in cryptocurrency over the weekend from metaverse real estate sales.
• Yuga Labs sold NFTs that give buyers access to virtual plots on land in the forthcoming game "Otherside."

Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs raked in about $320 million in cryptocurrency over the weekend for its sale of virtual land in one of the largest non-fungible token launches to date.

The Web3 company sold NFTs that act as deeds to 55,000 digital plots of land in Yuga Labs' upcoming metaverse game "Otherside." Each plot of land cost roughly $5,800 in ApeCoin.

High demand for the so-called Otherdeeds sent gas fees on the ethereum network skyrocketing. Gas fees climb higher when the blockchain becomes congested, as each transaction requires more tokens.

In fact, fees associated with minting Otherdeeds hit $123 million after the launch and required buyers to post two ether tokens, which is more than the cost of the actual deed being purchased, Bloomberg reported.

"We're sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while," Yuga Labs tweeted. "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."

The company added that some transactions didn't go through due to the high demand and that it will refund the gas fees for those that were affected.

Yuga Labs had originally planned to sell Otherdeeds at a Dutch auction so the value of the digital assets could decrease over time and counter congestion on the Ethereum network. The company ditched the plan last week and instead opted to limit the amount of deeds purchased per person, or wallet.