7 months ago
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Classic collections from the 2020–2022 bull market
Arguably, Web3’s Most Iconic NFT Collection
And how could we ever forget Eminem and Snoop Dogg? Both of whom had their BAYC avatars appear in the music video to their 2022 hit song, “from the D 2 the LBC”.
Please note this article is intended for informational purposes only. All views and opinions expressed are my own and should not be considered financial advice. Always do your own research, and consult with a financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is an NFT collection that was launched on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s credited with bringing awareness of Web3 collectibles to the mainstream. The collection was created in 2021 by Yuga Labs. Based in Miami, Florida, in the USA, Yuga Labs describes themselves as a blockchain technology company. Without the creation of their iconic BAYC collection, the entire NFT marketplace would look very different.
Yuga Labs was founded by 2 of the 4 creators of the BAYC NFT collection. They were then joined by the other 2. More on their identities will follow in this article. The company was named after a villain from Zelda, a Nintendo video game IP (intellectual property), who turns people into paintings.
In April of 2021, when the collection was launched, it was a disaster by modern pre-sale standards. The mint price was $200. However, the Bored Ape NFTs didn’t instantly sell out. Back then, this sort of thing would have been considered a death sentence to any aspiring collection creator.
A major factor that contributed to the muted speed of the sale of the collection, was the fact that when people bought their NFT, its image was unrevealed. Only a placeholder was displayed in place of the image. This continued until the entire collection of 10,000 NFTs was sold out. Once all the NFTs were sold, their owners were able to refresh the placeholder, and their NFT was finally revealed.
Once people could see the artwork of their purchased NFT, this marked the beginning of the BAYC mania.
Some believe that the reason this phrase became a crypto meme, is in larger part courtesy of the BAYC pre-sale and the collection’s proceeding popularity.
Shortly after the mania began, Yuga Labs created the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) NFT collection. These NFTs were designed to be a companion collection for owners of the Bored Apes. Then the Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT collection was created.
Bored Ape Kennel Club
Created in June 2021, the BAKC is a companion NFT collection to the original BAYC. The collection is comprised of 9,602 cartoon dogs, based on the Shiba Inu, a breed popularised by the $DOGE cryptocurrency. Like BAYC, the Bored Ape Kennel Club was launched on the Ethereum blockchain.
These canine NFTs were offered for free (apart from the gas fee), to BAYC owners. They were presented as a membership perk for holders who had supported the BAYC ecosystem.
Just like the BAYC mint, initially, the images of the BAKC were replaced with a placeholder. The dogs in the collection were first revealed on June 25, 2021, the last day of their minting period.
Other than the BAKC NFTs being free to mint for BAYC NFT holders, the occasional airdropping of ApeCoin ($APE) was an additional perk.
Mutant Ape Yacht Club
This collection of up to 20,000 NFTs was launched on 28th August 2021. Like the BAKC, the MAYC collection was primarily created to reward supporters of Yuga Labs’ ecosystem. It also provided an entry point for new holders to participate in the BAYC phenomenon.
Half of the NFTs were created by BAYC holders who exposed their NFT to a vial of airdropped “Mutant Serum.” This allowed them to mint mutant versions of their apes for free (excluding gas). The other half of the 20,000 were sold in a Dutch public auction, with a starting price of 3 Ethereum (ETH). As the auction progressed, this sale price would decrease.
Each Mutant Ape created from an existing Bored Ape NFT shared the traits of the original, but with mutated variations.
Yuga Labs was among the first collection creators to reward their community of holders with a free and entirely new NFT.
The public sale was executed as a stealth drop. The precise launch time was not widely communicated in advance.
The mutation process of a Bored Ape to a Mutant Ape was an interesting mechanic. If a Bored Ape ingested an M1 or M2 serum, the resulting Mutant retained traits of the original ape. Any Serum vials were automatically burned upon their use, and a Bored Ape could only ever ingest a serum of a given vial-type once. This meant that any given Bored Ape could be exposed to either an M1, M2, or M3 vial. This resulted in three different possible mutations of that Bored Ape. Each Bored Ape was only allowed to ingest one vial of serum.
At the time of their minting, just like the BAYC and BAKC collections, Mutant Apes were unrevealed. Once the public sale had concluded, the identity of all Mutant Apes was revealed. This prevented anyone, including the project’s founders, from knowing which mutant would be minted during the sale.
The thing with Yuga Labs, is that they didn’t just want to create the aforementioned collections and call it a day. The company set out to create a lasting legacy in Web3.
The valuations of the BAYC NFTs were rapidly increasing. Unfortunately, the success of their collection brought many detractors.
An online publication called Buzzfeed decided to “hold the NFT creators accountable”. In February 2022, Buzzfeed doxxed the Yuga Labs/BAYC founders.
For the record, the founders were:
- Greg Solano AKA Gargamel, is one of the co-founders
- Wylie Aronow AKA Gordon Goner, is another of the co-founders
- Zeshan Ali AKA No Sass. Ali was responsible for the technical aspects
- Kerem Atalay AKA Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Atalay was also responsible for the technical aspects
A year after the release of the BAYC collection, Yuga Labs raised $450M in a seed round from investors. This gave the company a valuation of $4B. This was one of the highest valuations ever in history of a company in a seed round. Certainly, for any NFT project.
Yuga Labs then acquired CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs. This move further solidified their position in the NFT world, while broadcasting the company’s desire for a lasting legacy to the entire crypto community.
Around this time, every holder of a Bored Ape or Mutant Ape was given an allocation of $APE, a new cryptocurrency affiliated with the BAYC brand, based on the Ethereum blockchain.
What followed, was an event described at the time as, “having broken Ethereum”. This event was the minting of an NFT collection for, “the Otherside”.
The Otherside is an ape-themed metaverse developed by Yuga Labs. Launched in April 2022.
At the time, the exorbitantly high transaction fees to mint the Otherside’s on-chain collectibles called “loot”, was a fiasco. The loot was supposed to be a free perk for players who had completed a mission in the Otherside platform’s “Legends of the Mara” game.
The average transaction fee for minting an NFT from the loot collection was $12,000. During this time, Etherscan, a tool for viewing transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, crashed.
In the end, Yuga Labs promised to reimburse any people affected by the elevated gas fees.
However, much to the dismay of the Ape community, this solution of a refund failed to address the concerning issues with Yuga Labs’ dependence on the expensive Ethereum blockchain for its on-chain transactions.
Despite this PR nightmare, the BAYC mania was still in its ascendancy.
Celebrities began appearing online flexing their BAYC avatars to the world at large. Paris Hilton famously appeared on the Jimmy Falon show, where, if memory serves me correctly, both shared their Apes with the show’s audience. Adidas and Gucci entered partnerships with BAYC. Restaurant and bars launched with their respective Ape IPs. The Brazilian football player Neymar got his own BAYC NFT. Justin Bieber bought one because he said, “it looked sad”. And how could we ever forget Eminem and Snoop Dogg? Both of whom had their BAYC avatars appear in the music video to their 2022 hit song, “from the D 2 the LBC”.
The marketing genius of Yuga was the fact that anyone who bought a Bored Ape was given the intellectual property (IP) rights to the likeness of their NFT. This allowed NFT owners the ability to reproduce the image of their pride and joy on anything from merchandise to animated cartoons. This had the appearance of a herculean marketing campaign for Yuga’s brand. In reality, it was free advertising “on steroids”. Handing over the IP rights to NFT holders was effectively a stealth marketing campaign amplifier.
An amplifier that compounded over time, pushing the BAYC mania even further into orbit.
The chances of another NFT collection having this kind of confluence of marketing synergy is close to zero.
Once the development of Yuga’s Otherside metaverse had progressed to early playtests, they appointed a new CEO, Daniel Alegre. He was an executive from Activision Blizzard, who oversaw the creation of games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. He had also worked at Google for a while as the President of Global and Strategic Partnerships.
As well as the development of the Otherside, Yuga Labs created Legends of the Mara, a staking game based on the metaverse, as well as a game called Dookey Dash. The precursor to Dookey Dash was “the Trial of Jimmy the Monkey”. This was a storytelling event within the Bored Ape Yacht Club universe. It was created by Yuga Labs to expand the BAYC lore surrounding their NFT ecosystem. It connected various components of the BAYC world, introduced new collectibles, and integrated interactive gameplay.
Dookey Dash
This was a Web3-based 3D endless running game developed by Yuga Labs, released in January 2023. It is similar to games like Temple Run, or Subway Surfers. The longer the players run, the higher their score. The game is a continuation of the storyline to their “The Trial of Jimmy the Monkey” with an initial teaser to the game being released as a short film on December 22nd, 2023.
Dookey Dash combined elements of gaming with blockchain technology. This allowed players of the game to use their BAYC NFTs as integral components of the gameplay.
The game was available to play from January 19th to February 8th, to people holding the “Sewer Pass” NFT.
The Sewer Pass
This NFT, was a reward that was claimable by BAYC and MAYC holders on January 17th. Mongrel, an ex-Fortnite professional, ended up taking home a paycheque of over $1M after placing 1st on the leader board. This 1st place had the effect of transforming Mongrel’s Sewer Pass into the only legendary HV-MTL (Heavy Metal) NFT.
HV-MTL is an NFT collection of 30,000 “Evo 1” Mechs (robots), that were released from a “Power Source”, when Sewer Pass NFTs were destroyed. This granted the owner of a Mech access to future games and content from Yuga Labs.
The creation of Dookey Dash was the first time that major E-sports players entered Web3.
This further enhanced the legacy Yuga Labs had established in Web3. They succeeded in fusing the world of Web2 with Web3.
Both are defined as:
Since then, Yuga has created the Forge, and the Rift. These are two games that allow HV-MTL NFT holders to play using their Mechs as in-game avatars.
True be told, both games, The Forge, and the Rift, were underwhelming experiences. Hopefully Yuga Labs can create future BAYC games that exhibit the energy Dookey Dash brought to their franchise.
In February 2024 Yuga Labs and Magic Eden created an Ethereum based NFT marketplace. It was designed to create an NFT bazaar that would champion the enforcement of creator royalties as a universal standard. Many creators, the likes of Azuki, RTFKT, and DeGods/y00ts signalled their decision to support, and use the marketplace to sell their collections.
There was also a proposal for the creation of ApeChain, a dedicated blockchain for ApeCoin. The idea was that this blockchain would scale $APE, and support the growth of the ApeCoin ecosystem. The blockchain proposal came into existence, out of Yuga’s desire to address the previously mentioned problems with scaling the BAYC ecosystem on the Ethereum blockchain.
Yuga’s metaverse the Otherside also announced a return. Its next iteration, called “Apes Coming Home” was released in February 2024. The mission statement, was to allows players an open-world exploration experience. As well as the ability to take pictures and unlock many different kinds of achievements.
Months later “Dookey Dash Unplugged” was released in September 2024, not just to the BAYC community, but to everyone. The idea of the game’s availability to the public, was to further increase the reach of the BAYC IP.
If we examine the intellectual property (IP) of BAYC, there is no other Web3 project in existence that possess anything remotely comparable.
A look at the “Made by Apes” section of the BAYC website shows over 460 affiliated projects/products currently in existence. More and more are launching every single day.
The recognition and respect of the Bored Ape Yacht Club IP is global. During the bull market of 2020–2022, the Ape avatars became synonymous, and epitomised NFTs in the minds of millions.
The traditional NFT marketplace which BAYC represents has seen a significant depreciation in its prices over the last 3 years. In part, because that period was predominantly a bear market, and mostly, because of problems with the dynamics of the marketplace. One of the biggest flaws on the current NFT marketplace, is that outside of any utility an NFT may have, they possess no intrinsic financial value. Once the hype of a project fades, the valuation of the collection generally depreciates into oblivion.
The creation of the Liquid NFT marketplace by Nathan Hill has solved the central issue that has plagued NFTs since their creation.
Namely, the complete absence of real world financial intrinsic value.
Finally, and for the first time since their inception, NFTs will fulfil their blueprint’s solemn promise to the Web3 community.
To find out more about the Liquid NFT Marketplace, check out my previous article on the topic here:
My name is Prometheus Bones, and I’m an ambassador for the Liquid NFT Marketplace.
Any project creators who are interested in launching their collections as a Liquid NFT, please feel free to use my referral code to do so.
It will help me out greatly, and allow me to continue doing the work that I love in the Web3 space.
For my referral use the URL (link) below.
https://liquidnfts.finance/share/0xca6d817199d4bd248a53a24e17731bb8c84dab88
Also, if crypto is your thing, you are more than welcome to follow me on X (Twitter).
I am a Bitcoin Maxi, and I post quite regularly.
Many thanks.
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