Sales of non-fungible tokens for “Stoner Cats,” the new adult cartoon featuring Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin alongside Hollywood A-listers, resulted in losses totaling 344.6 ETH (US$790,000) to fans yesterday due to the influx of buyers who overwhelmed the Ethereum network and failed transactions, according to data from Dune Analytics.
Fast facts
- The show, which sold NFTs that give buyers the ability to stream it, also stars Chris Rock, Jane Fonda, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher. The 10,420 Stoner Cats NFTs that went up for sale yesterday for 0.35ETH each ($785 at the time) sold out within “35 meow-nutes,” according to the show’s official Twitter account.
- As the rush to grab Stoner Cats NFTs jammed the Ethereum network, gas fees spiked from $9.50 all the way up to US$33.67, according to analytics firm Defiprime. The firm joked on Twitter that “as usual cats clogged Ethereum” — a reference to one of the first popular NFT projects, CryptoKitties, which caused so much congestion on Ethereum in late 2017 that it slowed the network to a crawl.
- There was much excitement in the Ethereum community for the launch of Stoner Cats, which was entirely funded through the sale of the NFTs that grant holders exclusive access to the show’s content. While all NFTs for the show’s first episode are sold out, the production team plans to release a further 3,000 each episode and will continue making the series as long as fundraising goals are met.
- The show is produced by Kunis, whose husband Kutcher has been an investor in cryptocurrency and other blockchain projects for years, including Ripple, Bitcoin and Dapper Labs, the startup behind NBA Top Shot, a runaway success that helped spark this year’s NFT resurgence. Kunis’s company, Orchard Farm Productions, teamed up with the Big Head Club to develop Stoner Cats, whose founders had worked on CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot.