Otherside metaverse

However, the development of the industry has not stopped: large-scale, ambitious and innovative projects continue to be created. One is the metaverse Otherside, created by Yuga Labs, authors of the legendary NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club.

General information

The developers themselves describe Otherside as a "gamified interoperable metaverse". Strictly speaking, this description doesn't give anyone much information about the metaverse, so the released demo is the best source of information so far.

Judging by the demo, Otherside could be most correctly described as a "Play-to-Earn hybrid of World of Warcraft with Fortnite". The gameplay base is taken from the first game, and many style components are taken from the second one.

At the same time, of course, the developers actively used their previous creations. Thus, many NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection became characters in the new metaverse.

The game's tokenomics rests on three assets:

• Otherdeed is an NFT token representing a virtual plot of land in the game world. It will serve as the player's "base" and allow the player to produce game resources, but its primary function, at least for the moment, is the function of a "pass" to the Otherside world. A total of 200,000 Otherdeeds are planned to be released.
• A Koda is an NFT that represents a playable character. Each has a unique avatar and in-game properties. There are significantly fewer of them than Otherdeed — 10,000. So, not every player will be able to acquire a Koda.
• ApeCoin ($APE or APE) is an ERC-20 token, the platform's main currency. It was released on the market long before even the first demo builds of the metaverse. It can be used to purchase NFT Koda on the built-in marketplace. In addition, it was only possible to buy Otherdeed to access the game's demo version with ApeCoin.

The developers paid considerable attention to the compatibility of their metaverse with other projects. In addition to free trading of the project's NFTs on OpenSea and other marketplaces, Yuga Labs is working on possibly using Otherside's NFTs in other metaverses. The fact that Animoca Brands, which owns The Sandbox metaverse, is involved in the development certainly makes it more accessible.

It is still premature to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of gameplay and graphics - the demo version simply does not provide enough information to assess the integrity of the developers' ambitious statements. However, using M² (MSquared) technology inspires some optimism, at least in optimisation — it is used in AAA-online projects to ensure the simultaneous presence of thousands of players in one location.

Scandals, intrigues, problems

To put it bluntly, the history of Otherside is far from idyllic. The developers have been repeatedly criticized, and often quite deservedly. Problems like failure on the first stress test of the demo version are "trifles of life" against the background of more serious scandals.

The first decision of Yuga Labs, which caused a flurry of criticism from the community, was to sell Otherdeeds only for ApeCoin and for a rather impressive amount — 305 tokens per "land plot". This led to an explosive rise in the token's price before the "land" minute, aggravated by the fact that $APE holders were not eager to part with the suddenly increased cost of their assets. As a result, the value of ApeCoin rose from $8 to $23.65. One "land plot" in the metaverse costs more than $7,000, which does not please potential players. And the subsequent collapse angered investors as well.

The second problem was that the release of the Otherside demo in 2022 triggered another round of "gas wars" in the Ethereum blockchain. A poorly optimized smart contract caused a surge in load on Ethereum and drove transaction fees up to 2-3 ETH for a few hours. In response, Yuga Labs promised to eventually move Otherside to a proprietary blockchain, but whether they can fulfil this promise is unknown.

The fact is that in autumn 2023, Yuga Labs' problems became public — in October, the company announced a significant staff reduction to reduce costs. Of course, this was accompanied by assurances that the company would focus all efforts on Otherside. Discarding secondary areas, the future of Yuga Labs is still unclear.

APE token

APE was valued at $1.66 at the time of writing, with a market capitalisation of over $600 million. On the one hand - the token is among the top 100 traded cryptocurrencies (85th place by capitalisation). On the other hand, not only has it not recovered from its fall in the spring of 2022, but it has been unable to return to its starting price ($8.5 per token) for over a year and a half. And the entire 2023 trend has been unambiguously downward. So, it is impossible to recommend APE as an investment asset. The situation may change in case of a breakthrough in the development of the metaverse, but the prospects for such a breakthrough are not visible.

At the same time, ApeCoin's daily price fluctuations consistently exceed 10%, so the token may be of interest for speculative trading, which, in any case, involves significant risks.