21/04/2023 Heavy Demand for Madlads NFT Breaks Internet, Delays Mint

The Madlads NFT is meant to be the first in a novel spin on digital collectibles from Armani Ferrante and Tristan Yver, two well-known figures in the Solana ecosystem.

Armani Ferrante with tech support at Breakpoint 2023 (Danny Nelson, CoinDesk)

Armani Ferrante with tech support at Breakpoint 2023 (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)

One of the hottest NFT mints in Solana’s recent history is getting pushed into Friday after a groundswell of interest in the Madlads collection broke the internet infrastructure behind it.

The Madlads collection – a project closely tied to the growing realm of Solana duo Armani Ferrante and Tristan Yver – will open to public minters at 7 p.m. ET (23:00 UTC) Friday, an account tied to the supercharged non-fungible token (NFT) project tweeted late Thursday.

Delaying nearly 24 hours could buy Madlads’ creators time to solve a problem they didn’t think to expect: way too much internet traffic. “Billions” of requests routed through the crypto wallet Backpack (itself a production from Ferrante and Yver) outpaced the platform’s abilities, effectively resulting in aDDoS attack.

“This is orders of magnitude more insane than anything we've dealt with up until this point,” Ferrante said on a Twitter spaces with about 9,500 listeners, explaining why the mint was being pushed back.

The delay came after a day of electric interest in Ferrante’s and Yver’s custom take on NFTs. They’re called xNFTs, and they’re more than just a JPEG on a blockchain: They also represent “tokenized code representing ownership rights over its execution,” according to the website of Blue Coral Inc., the duo’s startup that focuses on Solana development.

Madlads is meant to be the first xNFT.

On the Twitter spaces, Ferrante recounted a cascading series of internet outages that restricted the public’s chance to access the mint, first for an hour, then a day. He said heavy demand knocked out two RPC nodes (access points to the Solana blockchain) and also the user interface on Cloudflare, which, among other things, tries to prevent DDoS attacks.

Popular demand for the collection of novel JPEGs has already likely spelled a signup boom for Coral’s wallet app, Backpack. That’s the only Solana wallet where would-be owners can mint the Madlads collection, and also the only wallet that supports it, given market leader Phantom isn’t playing.

The palpable excitement among Solana’s developer community manifested in unexpected ways as NFT traders searched for any edge that might guarantee them access to the collection.

Some desperate seekers even followed the advice of a Substack post that implied, erroneously, that buying into custom RPC nodes from Solana developer project Helius could benefit would-be minters.

The signups to Helius’ $19.99 “Hacker plan” grew so much Thursday that it prompted CEO Mert Mumtaz to ward off the ill-informed.

“While I appreciate you thinking of us, it's important to understand that this RPC won't actually increase your chances of minting a Madlad all that much, if at all,” Mumtaz posted in Helius’ Discord server midday Thursday.

Arts

https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/04/21/heavy-demand-for-madlads-nft-breaks-internet-delays-mint/

Interesting NFTs
#90241
By OthersideDeployer
Rare Persian
Sup playa! I'm Rare Persian. My friends describe me as hairy and prickly. I once dreamed of being a Mad Scientist. Now I can be found sleeping in fresh laundry all day. It's pawesome to meet you!
Really Remote Working Part 3
The third piece is the Really Remote Working series, white sands and turquoise waters make this is a desk space like no other. Created during the lockdown period whilst being confined to the same place every day, this piece is part of a series of imaginary places that I dreamed of being able to work from.
Playtime At Le Mans
Playtime At Le Mans | From [The Room] series A creation which focuses on minimalism and the beautiful characteristics of the famous Le Mans Porsche 917K. Do you prefer the relaxed day cycle of the Gulf Blue... or the more engaging and exciting Gulf Orange. What mood are you in? Will you win over your imagination. The cycle of time lives on...
Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys
In this image, a giant sphinx spoons itself in erotic play within an aquatic styled environment littered by various denizens. These creatures include symbols and archetypes both current and nostalgic–each inhabiting a rootedness within mass cultural adolescence. Among the roster are Servbots, video game inspired mushrooms, a Pacman-like creature, a distant sea faring rubber duck, creatures sporting the symbols reminiscent of popular anime, and a Pokemon-like rabbit (a novel incarnation of Ganesha indicated by the Shiva trident on its nose). In addition, a few sea creatures partly inspired by sea monsters of western antiquity conglomerate along the mid left side of the composition. The Sphinx itself is an amalgam of aquatic, fetishist, ancient Egyptian, and 80’s style adornments, both living, as in a clown fish, or material, such as a cassette tape. Nautically colored antennae receive somatic signals from the atmosphere, perhaps from the 8 Ball moon or giant ringed planet beyond.