PxN: How a Project Avoided a Gas War Amidst Blue Chip Hype

Hype has been building for the PxN: Ghost Division project for sometime now with its complex roadmap which features impressive utilities and high-quality artwork. The project is led by @reicannon who is the founder of 0xygenlabs and the NanoPass collection.

What’s creating PxN Hype

The reason behind the hype is from speculation that the PxN collection will be the avatars that occupy the NanoPass land plots to create a Metaverse known as the Nanoverse.

With so much expected utility and interoperability between projects, excitement during mint reached a significant level which worried many because of the technical issues that were exposed by the Otherdeeds mint just a week before.

However, PxN outdid themselves and surprised everybody by implementing specific countermeasures to their website that mitigated a gas war; a practice that larger projects in the future should consider during the mint phase. 

Fears that PxN would create a gas war

The PxN project began minting on May 4th, 2022 and had everybody’s attention. Many were excited for the project; giving their price estimates and wondering just how far it could go before the reveal.

People who had received whitelist spots were expecting significant profits that ranged from 3-5 Eth, forcing whitelist members to decide if they would sell or hold onto the tokens.

Excitement was so high in fact, that many were starting to wonder what the impact from the PxN mint would be on other, smaller projects that were just getting started at the same time such as Oddstronauts which had been revealed just before PxN was scheduled to mint.

Collections like these were experiencing positive momentum, but many traders decide against investing into these smaller projects because they were afraid that the PxN mint would garner so much activity that it would affect gas prices and slow down the Ethereum network in the same way that the Otherdeeds mint caused high gas fess to reach as much as 2 Eth per transaction.

For smaller projects which sell between .05-.25 Eth, a 2 Eth gas fee would render their projects dead on arrival because the entry price to hold small market cap tokens would be completely out of the question. 

The PxN RNG Mint

When time came for minting to begin, many were confused as they were unable to find the mint button anywhere on the PxN website which led some to consider whether the project was just a massive rug pull.

This nearly killed momentum for the project as opinions quickly shifted to cautious concern almost instantly. For a projects with so much potential to reach a blue chip status, it is paramount for the mint to begin without a single error. 

Then suddenly an image popped up on many users' web browsers that was directed towards those ready to mint their project.

It stated that, due to so much hype for the project, access for whitelist holders to the minting page would be limited by a random number generating system to avoid overloading the Ethereum network to prevent a gas war.

This initially made whitelist holders furious. Many thought that they were being tricked or scammed, losing their position on what was supposed to be an incredible opportunity in the NFT space.

However, as listings slowly began to pop up on OpenSea it became obvious that the RNG limit was intentional and that the PxN team knew exactly what they were doing - they were preventing a gas war. 

The effort worked and, while many were grumpy about the idea, there were no complaints from anyone trading on the Ethereum network about gas fees in the slightest. It was a successful attempt at mitigating a high gas rate. 

Issues created by PxN’s RNG Access

The only issue, other than surprising traders, was the fact that imposter PxN projects were ready and waiting for the minting event to begin.

Due to the stagnated RNG system employed by the PxN team, fake PxN copycats were able to sell high amounts of fake tokens, siphoning off a massive amount of volume that was intended for the actual PxN collection.

While these tricks are common during most major mints, unaware traders were more easily convinced that they were buying the correct tokens which had much larger supplies because the PxN website was limiting their website traffic.

How future NFT projects can follow this example

In the future, big projects looking to avoid a gas war should take note of what PxN did to prevent a network overload on Ethereum, like Otherdeeds did a week before.

The RNG method meant smaller projects were able to continue their own operations without interference; allowing users to mint their whitelist tokens with lower gas fees which will result in higher future gains. It was an incredible idea that no one expected and worked flawlessly.

The only issue going forward is to find a way to prevent fake copycats from taking advantage of the slower minting phase, so that excess volume continues to go to the team that developed the original project in order for them to fully fulfill their roadmap plans.