Vitalik Buterin-themed NFT collection causes brief spike in Ethereum gas fees

A Vitalik Buterin-themed NFT collection that stores the image data directly on Ethereum ETH + became the blockchain’s top gas guzzler on Friday and caused a brief spike in Gwei.

The project, dubbed Buterin Cards, had used up 13.1% of the total gas units over the past three hours as of 3:00 p.m. ET, ranking it above the Uniswap universal router address and Tether’s public address, according to the Ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan. The collection triggered transaction fees of 318.31 ETH worth $665,670 over the past 24 hours.

After the spike, gas usage has since fallen back behind Uniswap.

What are Buterin Cards?

The Buterin Cards project aims to upload 2,015 NFTs paying homage to Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain. The project uses an NFT minting process called JPEG mining, which stores image data on-chain as opposed to a typical NFT that only stores metadata on-chain.

“To prevent miners from uploading arbitrary data, the smart contract verifies the data’s correctness by computing its hash. Thanks to progressive JPEG technology, the NFT image is gradually revealed as it is mined,” the project’s website states.

“In return for their work, miners receive a card featuring an image of Vitalik Buterin at varying quality levels,” it added.