Mila Kunis’ NFT project was a resounding success after selling out in just 35 minutes. But, it wasn’t without its share of bumps in the road. 

The recent Stoner Cat non-fungible token (NFT) sale had a number of ups and downs in the 40 minutes the collection took to sell out. The NFT sale was created to coincide with and promote a new adult animated series “Stoner Cats.” To hype up the show, an NFT collection of 10,420 stoner cats was minted and, as the team tweeted, “SOLD OUT in 35 meow-nutes!” Collectors were able to mint the cats for 0.35 ETH each, around $800, on the Stoner Cat website. 

The NFTs not only come with a digital piece of art, but also guaranteed lifetime access to all future episodes of the television series. Additionally, the show will debut to NFT owners first before eventually being opened up to the public. The entire ordeal, short as it was, caused Ethereum gas prices to soar and clogged up the entire network. 

Ethereum gas prices explode

The Stoner Cats NFT sale sent gas prices past 600 Gwei, a number the industry hasn’t seen in a long while. According to a Twitter post from DeFi Prime, prices for rapid transactions topped out at 709 Gwei, around $33, while the slowest option, taking 10 minutes to process, was still nearly a $10 charge. A follow-up tweet by DeFi Prime links to a page with data from Dune Analytics that states, during the frenzy, 344.4 ETH, nearly $700,000, in value was lost due to failed Stoner Cat transactions. 

The Stoner Cats show is an adult animated series featuring Kunis along with Aston Kutcher, Jane Fonda, Chris Rock, and Seth MacFarlane. Even Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, is on the show as a character known as “Lord Catsinton,” an old dead cat.  Stoner Cats is backed by NFTs and is planning to use sales like this to finance its production. 

This sale alone netted the production around $8 million in funding. A number of the Stoner Cat NFTs are back up for sale on the OpenSea marketplace for 420 ETH, just a shade less than $1 million. 

An additional 3,000 NFTs will be minted and released during the first season of the series.