CyberKongz NFT Frenzy: $4M In Ethereum Burned From Minting Pixelated Apes Alone

What Happened: CyberKongz, a collection of pixelated ape NFTs, has burned over 1,430 Ethereum ETH/USD worth $4.68 million in the past 24-hours.

The NFT project now ranks first on the leaderboard of top ETH burners, burning more gas fees than NFT marketplace OpenSea and leading decentralized exchange Uniswap UNI/USD combined.

In fact, minting these NFTs alone reportedly used up to 2000 ETH worth $6.5 million, of which 1,400 ETH was burned, all in a span of 20 minutes.

As noted by one user on Twitter, traders on the V3 version of the largest decentralized exchange by volume, Uniswap, took an entire week to burn 65% of the amount burned by those minting CyberKongz NFTs.

The NFT collection had 3,000 pixelated apes, more than 600 owners, and a price floor of 1.2 ETH at the time of writing.

According to OpenSea, the first NFT in the newest ape-themed collection was offered for a price of 10,000 ETH or $32.7 million.

The recent ape-minting frenzy comes after CyberKongz VX went live with a minting event on Sunday at 19:00 UTC, resulting in 10,000 NFTs available to be minted and sold on the secondary market.

The project attributed the NFTs' popularity to the nature of the pixelated image and its specific use within the crypto community.

“The 34x34 pixel CyberKongz images achieved great popularity due to their suitability as profile pictures on Discord and social media, at a time when nobody was talking about profile picture projects,” said CyberKongz on its official website.

Last week, another Ethereum-based NFT project, Pudgy Penguins, exploded after selling more than $11 million worth of NFTs in 24-hours.

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