Earlier today WAX announced that they had sold out of their "GPK Goes Exotic" trading cards shortly after the sale went live:
- 7,000 Mega packs worth $139,930 sold out in 24 minutes
- 13,000 Standard Packs worth $64,870 sold out in 67 minutes
While the sale was clearly an astounding success, there were numerous complaints on Twitter from users who were not able to get any packs. One user lamented:
What a farce. Whales scooped up most cards and left fans floundering.
WAX replied to several similar comments stating that they would look into limiting the number of packs a single user can purchase within the first hour of a sale.
Other users complained of their purchases being confirmed, only later to find out their orders were actually cancelled and credit cards refunded.
The Anyobservation YouTube channel pointed out that the issue was likely due to the queue for packs growing so high that the system couldn't keep up with the demand.
While it was no doubt a frustrating experience for many users, it does show that the demand for digital collectibles is quite high, and that more sales will likely be coming in the future.
In March, Topps teamed up with WAX to sell digital versions of their Garbage Pail Kids trading cards as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) on the WAX blockchain. As per Wikipedia, "Garbage Pail Kids is a series of sticker trading cards produced by the Topps Company, originally released in 1985 and designed to parody the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls."
Although initial purchases of the cards are made in US dollars with a credit card, there are a number of secondary markets where users can buy and sell them using WAX tokens. You can visit Crypto Slam to see live sales happening on the marketplace.
The NFT market on WAX has been heating up in recent months. In May, WAX went live with their initial sale of Garbage Pail Kids, and the first batch sold out in less than 28 hours. Just a few days ago, one of the first minted GPK cards was sold on the secondary market for $2,400 worth of WAX tokens:
While most NFTs are currently traded on the Ethereum blockchain, high gas fees and slow confirmation times have been a frustration for many users. In order to compete with Ethereum for a share of the burgeoning NFT marketplace, WAX has eliminated transaction fees and shortened transactions times by adopting the Delegated Proof of Stake consensus algorithm. However, due to there being fewer nodes validating transactions on the network, some consider WAX to be much less secure than Ethereum.
The NFT market continues to pick up pace on Ethereum as well, where games like The Sandbox and Somnium Space have been selling out of land quickly after their sales go live.
Reminiscent of the ICO craze of 2017, it seems that some whales are quickly snatching up items during the initial sales and then turning them for a quick profit on secondary markets.
Other upcoming NFT sales on the WAX blockchain include Blockchain Heros, which is set to debut in August, and William Shatner's own tokenized personal memorabilia, which is also set for release soon.
To learn more about Topps GPK cards on WAX, check out their FAQ and feel free to join the Telegram channel if you have any questions.
