Drones, trucks nfts, and more. Let’s dive in…
Otherside Mint Fail
Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club and Crypto Punks, released their newest NFT project, the Otherside, on Saturday. The mint went live at 9:00 PM ET for pre-approved wallets but the overwhelming demand created a gas war that crippled the entire Ethereum network. According to chain data, users burnt nearly $200 M in gas within an hour of the release, leaving many NFT enthusiasts SOL.
Snap’s Pixy
On Thursday Snap launched its second hardware product–Pixy, a pocket-sized flying drone that can take off, film users from the air, and land back in their palm. Video and photos from Pixy stream automatically to the memories section of the Snapchat app, where footage can be easily edited and shared with friends. Pixy retails for $299.99 in the U.S. and France, with additional batteries available for purchase at $19.99 each.
Elon’s Twitter Buyout
After weeks of anticipation, Elon Musk successfully purchased Twitter Inc. The board accepted his offer of $54.20 per share (approx. $44 billion) which will give him complete control of the company, now private. On Musk’s roadmap are improvements to free speech and identity: . . “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”
Ford Boosts F-150 Lightning Production
Ford is planning to ramp up the production of its flagship electric truck, the F-150 Lightning. While the initial target for 2022 was 40,000 vehicles, Ford now plans to triple the production to 150,000. The trucks will be rolled out first to commercial buyers and then to the 200,000+ people who’ve joined the waitlist.
Jordan 1 “Stage Haze”
Jordan is back with another clean retro colorway. The Stage Haze features a simple but elegant white, gray, and black design that makes the kicks a staple for anyone’s wardrobe. As an added bonus the tongue features a splash of pink. The pair is set to release sometime in June 2022 for a retail price of $170 (official date tbd).
Solana Network Goes Dark
On Saturday night bots swarmed the NFT minting tool Candy Machine, forcing the network to go offline for 6 hours and the SOL price to crash to $83. With over 100 gigabytes of data passing every second and over four million transaction requests, the bots pushed validators out of consensus and made block production impossible. Services have since been restored, and developers are diagnosing the issue.
Fun fact: Snapchat currently has 330 million daily active users.
