Cats Clog Ethereum Again: Near $800k in ETH Lost in Failed Transactions for Stoner Cats NFTs

The Ethereum network reached peak congestion times in the hours leading up to press time, serving as a reminiscence of late 2017 when a cat-themed non-fungible token (NFT) CryptoKitties resulted in clogged network performance.

Today the public release of Stoner Cats, an NFT animated series launched by famous actress Mila Kunis in partnership with the original CryptoKitties team, went live on the Ethereum blockchain.

The cat-themed TV series features voiceovers from prominent entertainers and personalities from the crypto space and has attracted Mila Kunis and other NFT fans. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin voiced one of the Stoner Cats and its holders are entitled to watch future episodes and possibly participate in the assets’ governance.

The unprecedented demand for Mila Kunis’s NFT cat-themed series has resulted in users spending over 344.2 ETH (appr. $700k) in failed network transactions trying to mint the NFTs, according to data shared on Dune Analytics.

The Stoner Cat NFTs have a fixed supply of 10420 tokens, with most already claimed by users who have had to pay extremely high network fees.

Given a fixed initial price of 0.35 ETH (appr. $800) for each of the 7420 tokens sold so far, the public sale has brought in close to $6 million. Some of these tokens are already listed on the NFT marketplace OpenSea for two or more times the original amount buyers paid for them.

During peak demand, Ethereum network fees clocked up to 200 gwei or an average of $30 for sending transactions. The token’s smart contract is also the top gas consumer on Ethereum in the past three hours with 1510 ETH (appr. $3.4 million spent over the period.

The rush for the NFT animated series isn’t entirely surprising, especially given the current high market prices for CryptoKitties in today’s burgeoning NFT market. A single character in the CryptoKitties collection once sold for 600 ETH ($1.3 million).