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 #339004. I've never told anyone this, but I once groomed a dog. It's not common knowledge, but my ancestry connects me to Marie Antoinette. I hope you like kitten around as much as I do!
Fuku-Shiva
The term “Fuku” refers to fortune or good luck. “Shiva” refers to the Hindu deity who represents strongly polar qualities, both severe and delicate. On a beach inspired by adventures on Phi Phi island in Thailand, three youths cavort. Two are representational figures and the third is psychologically rendered. A dynamic relationship ensues between the triad; a reciprocity of active and passive states. The boy on the right engages in maneuvers of evasion, defense, and is dressed in a speedo which reiterates the colors and symbolism of the caution tape on the left and upper right frame of the composition. In concurrent reaction the psychedelic figure shoots out a rocket powered paper airplane. The nude boy seated in the froth and sand approaches in passive repose, and is met with active attention but equal physical reserve by the psychedelic being. Perhaps the most naked figure is also the least representational. Looming large, dynamic, and active, it engages its companions playfully. Various symbols interject into the otherwise naturalistic scene, most notably a beach ball and two contaminated barrels nested in the sand. The upright barrel reads “FukuShima” in Kanji. The barrel laying down reads “Dharma”. To the left the scene is bounded by caution tape, reiterating the danger of the nuclear waste while also hosting alien archetypes, whose presence, as is the nature of these entities, runs up and just behind the consciousness of the psychedelic figure’s eggshell-like skull.
LADY MAGDALA’S LOVER
Mystery lover like no other.
Discord Assembly
Discord logo factory. 3D animation, 10-second loop, 30 fps. Created using Cinema4D, X-Particles, Octane, and After Effects. Originally posted on TikTok (@jigpx) on 2/20/21. 47.5m+ views, 3.2m+ likes (as of 4/22/21).
Hairy
hairy by Steve Aoki x Antoni Tudisco. Comes with Infinite Objects screen!