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
CryptoKitties
Hey cutie! I'm Kitty #362389. I've never told anyone this, but I once loved a dog. I would give it all up to star in a soap opera. I look forward to riding unicorns with you.
#96363
By OthersideDeployer
Inner fountain
I'm connected to an infinite source of creative energy. Digital painting - Gif
30K
Artist notes: the halving ceremony is the most unusual part of modern bitcoin production in which the owners bet on how efficiently an alpha can inseminate the market.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
"Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" is dedicated to the mysterious creation of Bitcoin, and acts as the showcase artwork within Javier ArrĂ©s’ exploratory series "Bitcoin, The Origin". "Who is the creator of Bitcoin?" The artist, ArrĂ©s, explores this question, and the feelings of doubt and mystery that accompany it, through his unique artistic language. An unknown, an enigma. It should be remembered that the name Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of Bitcoin's author or authors and gives us little insight into its true creator. For this Visual Toy, ArrĂ©s uses the signature claw machine, his famous half-operation, to symbolize our collective ignorance and unconfirmed belief: As soon as it has the stuffed animal within its grasp and appears to have solved the puzzle, the animal escapes again, and again. At present, there are three more public and studied possibilities who are either believed to be the creators of the currency or who directly claim the creation of it. It may be all or none of them, yet these three personalities leave us clues which are an important part of this interesting enigma. For this moment, it will remain unknown... In this artwork, ArrĂ©s elevates the claw machine from the apparatus, to an iconic pop art object serving as an important element to the Bitcoin creation narrative. Action is everywhere, with each movement serving an iconographical or metaphorical purpose related directly to cryptocurrency: Various ups and downs, roller coasters, mining points, robot, coins and more speak to a sense of hope, risk, mystery, randomness and possibility of pay out. Hundreds of manically thought out details make this creation one of the artist’s most complex Visual Toys to date. ------- "Bitcoin, The Origin" is a set of two Visual Toys, titled "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto" and "It’s Alive!" which reflect and explore the mystery and enigmas behind the creation of Bitcoin. ArrĂ©s presents these proposals to us in his signature style, full of iconography, fantasy, maniacal animations and a panoply of details (both subtle and overt) which simultaneously fascinate, hypnotize, and narrate this historical milestone through the singular vision of the artist. Through this series, ArrĂ©s freezes a crucial moment of cryptocurrency history, taking a still photo under his vision and turning it into two unique crypto artworks. ---- More info about Javier ArrĂ©s: https://javierarres.com/about.html