Time Magazine NFT Collection Sees Sky-High Demand And Ethereum Network Faces The Gas Pain

TIME magazine’s non fungible token drop on the OpenSea marketplace has sent transaction fees on Ethereum ETH/USD soaring sky-high.

What Happened: The “TIMEPiece” collection comprising of 4,676 NFTs was each priced at 0.1 ETH or nearly $313.

As the tokens became available for sale, they were gone like the proverbial hotcakes in a matter of minutes.

As per TIME’s President Keith Grossman, the NFTs were sold out in less than two minutes to 1,294 unique wallets.

On behalf of @TIME, TY to the entire NFT Community for your support!

-40 Artists
-4,676 pieces
-1st 24 hrs, 1M PVs on https://t.co/xJahOB7nSo & 20K+ min engaged w/ art on https://t.co/JYrtWg4ZXf
-Sold out in <2 min to 1,294 unique wallets
-Broke POAP!https://t.co/UWBPDBongf

— KeithGrossman.eth (@KeithGrossman) September 23, 2021

The rush for the tokens led to a soaring transaction or gas fees on the Ethereum network, with one buyer shelling out 22.59 ETH or $70,198.65 to purchase a single TIMEpiece NFT.

Buyers spent nearly four times the cost of the NFTs on gas, as per a data tracker from Banterlytics.

At press time, Ethereum traded 0.72% higher at $3,096.16 over 24 hours. The average ETH transaction fee stood at $24.03, as per BitInfoCharts data.

Why It Matters: TIME’s plan to sell the NFTs at a set time led to scalping with 100 addresses owning about 24% of the total supply of the digital art, CoinDesk reported, citing Etherscan data.

See Also: Is This Mysterious $17M Ethereum NFT Whale Actually Snoop Dogg?

This came despite the fact that buyers were reportedly unaware of the exact art they were purchasing as the collection just pointed to a red TIME logo.

Grossman said that the high fee and unequal distribution of NFTs were “not ideal,” as per CoinDesk.

“I think we learned a lot about gas in general,” Grossman said. “There are things that you can’t control for in the gas space.”

The TIME president told CoinDesk that the next time the magazine conducts an NFT sale they will make sure that “everything that we have seen that went wrong or that didn’t go as we planned, is fixed.”

Last month, a fast-rising NFT project “Cool Cats” announced a collaboration with TIME magazine.

Grossman’s help was a notable factor in the formation of the collaboration between the NFT project and the publication.

Some of the top NFT projects recently by sales volumes have included Axie Infinity AXS/USD, Art Blocks, Crypto Punks, and Bored Ape Yacht Club. 

Read Next: EXCLUSIVE: What The CryptoDads NFT Project Co-Founders Are Planning Next