Note: This post has been summarized with Artificial Intelligence.

The mad rush to buy Otherdeed NFTs over the weekend spiked gas fees on the number two crypto network, and burned 55,843 Ethereum in the process, worth approximately $157 million, making it the sixth-largest source of burned ETH ever.

When the network is particularly busy or when a user wants to expedite a transaction, the fees can vary by a large margin.

As the Otherdeed NFTs were minted, people started paying more in gas fees to bump their transactions to the front of the line.

The burn mechanism, introduced by EIP-1559 last August, takes base fees generated by Ethereum transactions out of circulation by sending them to a defunct wallet address rather than paying them to Ethereum miners for validating transactions.

Granted, the transition has lasted a lot longer than originally planned.