BAYC Overview: Mutant Apes, ApeCoin, Kennel Club, and Yuga Labs
Yuga Labs, the team behind BAYC, introduced improved strategies for creating a sustainable NFT ecosystem and enabling engagement.
Overview
Non-fungible tokens have been making headlines in the media and seem like they are not stopping anytime soon. Before the explosion of profile picture NFTs, developers and creators rarely stuck around to create utility for their projects/collections. Creators would just cash in on the most-promising NFT project and then move on to the next one.
Yuga Labs, the team behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection, introduced improved strategies for creating a sustainable NFT ecosystem and enabling engagement.
Bored Ape Yacht Club
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is a collection from Yuga Labs (a Web 3 company) made up of 10,000 programmatically generated Bored Ape digital collectibles. The collection has a variety of Bored Apes avatars as there are different combinations from the 170 traits thrown in the mix.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club went live in April 2021, introducing the pre-sale of 10,000 digitally verifiable Bored Ape NFT avatars, each costing 0.08 $ETH. All 10,000 NFTs were sold in a week, but latecomers were allowed to buy them on secondary marketplaces.
These non-fungible tokens also serve as membership cards to the Bored Ape Yacht Club and give the holders members-only benefits. BAYC NFTs have been a big hit in Hollywood, with celebrities like Justin Bieber, Eminem, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, and Post Malone having their own Bored Ape NFTs.
Yuga Labs moved on to the next challenge after the successful launch of BAYC to create the “Mutant Ape Yacht Club” (MAYC) and “Bored Ape Kennel Club”.
“Mutant Serums” were airdropped to BAYC owners. BAYC holders could now mutate their Bored Apes into Mutant Apes NFTs; over 20,000 Mutant Apes were minted. Bored Ape Yacht Club owners were allowed to sell their serums through the official marketplace, the Bored Ape Chemistry Club.
ApeCoin DAO
As BAYC continued to gain traction and become an exclusive community, Yuga Labs decided to create a DAO to serve as the backbone of the burgeoning community. The Ape Foundation was also designed to serve as the base layer for ApeCoin DAO. An ecosystem fund pays all the Ape Foundation expenses as directed by the DAO.
Participating in proposal submission, idea submission, commentary, and voting is restricted to ApeCoin DAO members. DAO members can submit an Ape Improvement Proposal, which must receive a confirmation from a moderator to comply with the DAO guidelines before appearing in the community. The Ape Improvement Proposal goes through various steps before being implemented.
ApeCoin
Based on its official website, “ApeCoin is a decentralized protocol layer for community-led initiatives that drive culture forward into the metaverse.”
ApeCoin ($APE) is an ERC-20 token used for transactions and governance in the Ape ecosystem. The ApeCoin serves the following purposes:
Governance. ApeCoin is the governance token allowing holders to participate in the ApeCoin DAO.
Access. ApeCoin holders have access to exclusive perks, such as games, events, merch, and services.
Unification of spend. ApeCoin is the ecosystem’s utility token. The coin gives all the participants an open and shared currency that they can use without centralized intermediaries.
Incentivization. ApeCoin acts as a tool for third-party developers to participate in the ecosystem as it is incorporated into games, services, and other projects.
ApeCoin supply is capped at 1 billion, and all coins were minted at once. There is a 48-month window that will see the tokens unlocked gradually. At launch, 150 million tokens were airdropped to BAYC and MAYC holders. 470 million tokens were set aside for the DAO’s treasury and general resources for this ecosystem.
150 million tokens were allocated to Yuga Labs. However, these tokens have a 12-month lock-up, after which 4.1 million tokens will unlock every month for the next three years. 6% of these tokens will also be donated to the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation.
140 million ApeCoins were allocated to various launch contributors with varying minting schedules. The four founders of Yuga Labs and BAYC will share 80 million tokens. There is a 12-month lockup, after which 2.2 million tokens per month will be released for the next three years.
ApeCoin Claiming For BAYC And MAYC Holders
The ApeCoin token airdrop was on March 17, where varying amounts were allocated to holders of BAYC and MAYC. There was also a bonus amount given to Kennel Club members.
Each Mutant or Bored APE with a Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT was allowed to claim ApeCoin tokens as follows:
Holders of Bored Ape only claimed 10,094 tokens.
Holders of Mutant Ape only claimed 2,042 tokens.
Bored Ape + Kennel Club claimed 10,950 tokens.
Mutant Ape+ Kennel Club claimed 2,898 tokens.
The Board
The Ape Foundation has a special committee, the DAO’s “Board,” that provides oversight of the Foundation administrators on behalf of the ApeCoin DAO. The Board is tasked with administering DAO proposals and serving the community’s vision. The Board meets whenever proposals need administrative review, and the ApeCoin DAO rules guide it.
The current board members are:
Alexis Ohanian — Co-founder of Reddit; General Partner & Founder of Seven Seven Six
Yat Siu — Co-founder & Chairman of Animoca Brands
Amy Wu — Head of Ventures & Gaming at FTX
Dean Steinbeck — President & General Counsel at Horizen Labs
Maaria Bajwa — Principal at Sound Ventures
Yuga Labs raises $450 million to build an NFT metaverse
Yuga Labs recently raised $450 million to bring its valuation to $4B. The development team wants to create a media empire around NFTs with games and a metaverse project. The metaverse project has been named Otherside, an MMORPG meant to connect the broader NFT universe.
According to Wylie Aronow, a co-founder of Bored Ape Yacht Club, they intend to create an “interoperable world that is completely decentralized and gamified.” Yuga Labs is partnering with various game studios to bring Otherside to life. The game will not be exclusive to Bored Ape holders; the team is creating development tools that allow non-fungible tokens from other projects to work inside its world.
Yuga Labs acquires CryptoPunks and Meebits
Yuga Labs expanded its NFT ecosystem in March 2022 after acquiring CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs. It is worth noting that these two collections have been Bored Ape Yacht Club’s most prominent competitors in terms of value and following. The deal makes Yuga Labs the owner of all brands, IP rights, and copyrights of Meebits and CryptoPunks collections and 423 CryptoPunks and 1,711 Meebits.
Wrapping Up
Mention NFTs, and most people will think about the Bored Ape Yacht Club as one of the top collections. The fact that Yuga Labs recently acquired two of its competitors shows that it is setting the pace to be the leader in this space. We can only wait and see the direction that Yuga Labs will take after creating its metaverse and how ApeCoin will compare to similar tokens in the market.