OpenSea, a major non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, is struggling with the spike in traffic after the platform announced digital collectibles were dropped by renowned artist BossLogic.
After several complaints by the NFT enthusiasts on Twitter, OpenSea officially announced the issues faced by its servers in handling the surged traffic, which went up two times following the NFT drop.
Outage notice: the @Bosslogic drop caused a 2X surge in traffic at 19:30 UTC, ultimately causing two spikes of failed requests, at 19:50 and 20:40.
The issue was our servers' ability to reclaim memory. We will have a fix out shortly, but sincerely apologize to all affected! — OpenSea API (@apiopensea) March 8, 2021
In addition, the platform assured that the users who lost their money on gas fees due to the technical glitch would not have to pay any gas fees in their next bid for NFT collectibles.
The NFT Mania
Though existed for a while, demand for NFTs skyrocketed in recent months as more and more celebrities are issuing their digital art on the Blockchain . The craze for NFTs is so high that Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey is even trying to sell his first tweet as an NFT, while artists are raking in millions of dollars.
Based in Australia, BossLogic is a celebrated graphic artist with millions of followers on social media. He is acclaimed for his work with organizations like Marvel Studios and Disney+, but his real fame was in creating popular fan illustrations of comic book franchises.
However, his commercial success came as he started to auction his arts as NFTs. Last month, he sold $3.6 million in NFTs, which prompted other artists into the NFT space.
The demand for NFT arts by well-known artists remains high as they are often re-sold with astronomical returns. However, many, including the Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, warned against the NFT mania, calling it similar to the 2017 ICO market.
