If you’ve ever Googled the term “NFT” in the past year or been relatively active on social media, chances are that you’ve heard of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). From celebrities’ profile pictures to their collaborations with Adidas, BAYC without a doubt is the biggest project to date within the NFT space. However, they have a much bigger ecosystem than is shown on the surface. Let’s dive deeper.
BAYC was created by the development team YugaLabs, which was founded by Greg Solano (Gargamel), Wylie Aronow (“Gordon Goner”), Zeshan Ali (“No Sass”) and Kerem Atalay (“Emperor Tomato Ketchup”). The same development team goes on to create the rest of the ecosystem mentioned in the rest of this article.
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)
Going in chronological order, the birth of YugaLabs and this ecosystem started with BAYC. A 10,000-piece NFT collection was built and developed on the Ethereum blockchain. The NFTs were originally sold for 0.08 ether each, around USD $190 at the time of their April 20th 2021 launch and were sold out in 12 hours. The project currently stands at a floor price of 73 Ethereum (a 91150% increase on investment since mint). BAYC has moved from being just an NFT project to now being an iconic identity of many people in the Web3 world and continues to provide a sense of ownership to many celebrities and holders in the space.
Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC)
In June 2021, these dog NFTs were offered for free (minus the cost of gas) to BAYC owners as a membership perk for supporting the BAYC ecosystem. On the secondary market, BAKC NFTs trade independently from BAYC NFTs. The collection currently stands at a floor price of 6.24 Ethereum with 9,602 NFTs (398 BAYC holders can be assumed to have missed out on the claim period for this project).
Bored Ape Chemistry Club (BACC)
An airdrop of 10,000 serums known as the Bored Ape Chemistry Club (BACC) was made to BAYC holders’ Ethereum wallets. This project consists of the following three NFTs: M1, M2, and Mega Mutant. It’s crucial to note that BACC serums are not NFTs in the same sense as the other NFTs listed above; rather, they function more like a hybrid token that was specifically created to carry out an Ethereum smart contract.
The Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT was produced through the use of a mutation serum. Although the serum NFTs were burned at the moment they were used as the “cost” for minting the new MAYC NFT, the mutation process did not damage, degrade, or otherwise affect the original BAYC NFT.
At the time of publication, about 95% of the serums have already been used/burned through the mutation process.
The matching apes were altered by the first two tiers of BACC (M1, and M2) mutant serum in ways that kept some of their original traits and increased the rarity. In contrast, Mega Mutant Serum altered the equivalent BAYC to have features that made it rarer, hence increasing its value on secondary markets.
Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC)
The Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) is a group of 20,000 Bored Apes with a mutant theme. 10,000 Mutant Ape NFTs were available for minting on August 28th, 2021, during their open Dutch Auction sale (which began at 3 Ethereum and gradually descended to 0.01 Ethereum over the course of nine hours), and the remaining NFTs were produced through BACC as previously mentioned. Only 575 serums remain to be burned as the collection currently has a floor price of 12.25 Ethereum with 19,425 minted. Interestingly, there is only one Mega Serum left, even though there are still some M1 and M2s. It will be interesting to see what this last one might sell for if it is sold given that the previous one sold for 1,542.069 Ethereum.
Otherside From Otherdeed
The Otherdeed for Otherside NFTs platform, which became live on April 30, 2022, enables users to purchase real estate in the Otherside metaverse. Owners of each Otherdeed NFT have the right to make claims to Otherside land after the complete launch of the Otherside. Otherside is also developed by YugaLabs.
Holders of BAYC and MAYC NFTs were eligible to receive one Otherdeed NFT for each BAYC and MAYC they held. The remaining 55,000 Otherdeeds were available for purchase by those who successfully completed a Know Your Customer (KYC) submission, as well as 15,000 being given to Yuga and project developers.
Even though BAYC collections are typically expensive, Otherdeed for Otherside has the lowest floor price of all the collections in the BAYC ecosystem as of September 14, 2022; the current floor price is 1.73 Ethereum.
ApeCoin (APE)
The ApeCoin DAO is a decentralised organisation that owns and runs ApeCoin. Each token holder has a say in how the organisation is run and how the Ecosystem Fund is used. The only prerequisite for joining the ApeCoin DAO is having ApeCoin.
The ApeCoin community will receive 62% of the total supply of ApeCoin, of which 15% was made available for a claim on the 17th of March.
The BAYC, MAYC, and BAKC pairs with either BAYC or MAYC will each receive an airdrop claim worth 15% of the total supply of ApeCoin.
Since its launch, ApeCoin has performed well in markets where some of the leading cryptocurrencies have yet to succeed. That is brand adoption into major companies. Gucci and TAG recently announced that they will both accept ApeCoin as payment through Bitpay in their stores.
Ongoing Developments
In conclusion, I believe that YugaLab’s success and its continued leadership in NFT Projects are largely due to the various components of the ecosystem. This is due to the fact that many ideas, like using a burning mechanism, have been replicated in numerous projects as a result of MAYCs success and will undoubtedly continue to be done so with all the new developments YugaLab makes. Most of all, I think it’s mind-blowing to think that if you had invested into the BAYC initial mint at 0.08 Ethereum (USD $190 at that time) and been actively accepting airdrops and minting where necessary, you’d now have 1 BAYC, 1 MAYC, 1 BAKC, 2 Otherdeed’s and 13,848 ApeCoins. All of this is worth a total of USD $227,420.45, an 119595% increase in investment.
