The demand for NFTs and recognition of NFT artists has seen an unprecedented spike during the pandemic. Thanks to the digital gale in pandemic, the NFT world saw the dawning rise of the exclusive Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
The emergence of this innovation has reached to a level that buyers can’t stop their fascination towards the bored ape nft project and the result is its soaring prices, that further adds to its popularity.
BAYC NFTs are amongst the elite category of unique digital collectibles that every crypto aficionado desires to have in their wallet.
Certainly, Bored Ape Yacht Club falls in the league of anomalous NFT collections that took the NFT market by storm. But how did BAYC NFTs become such a big deal for NFT enthusiasts? And, what contributed to the rise in popularity of BAYC NFTs?
This write-up goes deeply into the details of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, including how you too can become an elite BAYC member.
What is the Bored Ape Yacht Club?
Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection for 10,000 simian cartoonised bored ape NFTs. Each ape is a doorway to the bored ape yacht club for the buyers.
The unique avatars are ERC-721 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, and its metadata is stored in the InterPlanetary File System. Each ape token has been generated using a custom algorithm from a total of 170 attributes.
Bored Ape nft has garnered tremendous social media attention since its launch. In the beginning, every BAYC NFT ape was minted for 0.08, and today, they are going for 100s and 1000s of ETH. The total volume traded is above 542.5 K ETH, and with more than 6310 owners, the Club has seen an impressive journey!
Who created BAYC?
The Bored Ape Yacht Club was established under the entity name Yuga Labs. It was developed and launched by four pseudonymous innovators named Gargamel, Gordon Goner, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and No Saas.
On 23 April 2021, Gordon came up with a surprise pre-sale launch on Discord. As the pre-sale failed to grab any public attention during the first week, only a few bored ape NFTs were minted.
Social media was ablaze with fuss when the ‘face of the ape’ was revealed as the NFT on 30 April 2021.People were getting trolled for buying the bored ape NFT. Nevertheless, in just a day, the whole list got sold out.
Much to the chagrin of members, the identities of two creators behind the lucrative bored ape nft venture were revealed as Wylie Aronow (Goner) and Greg Solano (Gargamel)! The identities were later confirmed by Nicole Muniz, the CEO of Yuga Labs, himself.
However, the identities of No SaaS and Tomato Ketchup have not been revealed yet.
How was Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs created?
Gordon Goner revealed the story behind the creation of the rich apes of BAYC NFTs. Goner and Gargamel were born and brought up in Miami. Gargamel was an editor and a book critic. They met decades ago, at a bar and soon became friends while arguing about David Foster Wallace’s books. Later, Gargamel got Goner to crypto in 2017. They had then begun to explore unique ideas for capitalization together.
In the first half of 2021, Goner and Gargamel started scouting out NFT platforms. After scouring many medias, they stumbled upon the idea of ‘blending virtual art with community membership’ via gamification.
Gargamel and Goner weren’t technophiles, so Gargamel invited No Sass and Tomato into the team. Both No Saas and Tomato Ketchup were computer science graduates from the same university as Gargamel.
According to Goner, NFTs must have utility other than just being virtual collectibles. He wanted to add some usefulness for the buyers who purchase a token. So, Goner came up with a vision to create a club for like-minded people to crack jokes and have crypto-centric discussions. Gargamel welcomed the idea with both hands, and that’s how BAYC NFT was born.
Even after an immediate success in the NFT space, the Bored Ape Yacht Club team hasn’t stopped experimenting! The BAYC creators are looking for innovative ways to bring more perks to the club members and improve the utility of the virtual product.
What are the characteristics and features of BAYC NFT?
BAYC NFTs are intriguing creative art pieces that attract buyers. Each ape is made up of seven possible traits including different background color, clothes, ears, eyes, fur, hat and mouth.
Several of the bored apes are also wearing colorful caps. Other features include golden teeth, pizza on their lips, oversized sunglasses, and metal bodies. These unimpressed ape characters represent the modern lifestyle of rich apes.
BAYC NFTs offer commercial rights to individual buyers. As a result, NFT owners can brand their projects or products and sell them independently. Bored ape holders have made cartoon replicas of apes and created an animated YouTube series.
Kyle Swenson, an NFT market analyst and an early investor of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, has started a Bored Ape gazette for tracing every movement of the bored ape community.
Bored Ape Yacht Club came up with a roadmap for prospective buyers that clarifies what purpose will the ‘earnings’ serve. The team has thus promised a YouTube channel, Lofi Radio, limited edition tees, hoodies, and goodies. They have also donated to charities and ape sanctuaries.
What are the main uses of BAYC NFTs?
Bored Ape Yacht Club became one of the most lucrative and coveted memberships in the NFT space. It is a destination for crypto lovers and NFT enthusiasts to gather and discuss controversial topics from the cryptocurrency market. Additionally, bored ape NFT holders will have a feeling of being a part of the elite coterie with people having identical interests.
The BAYC NFT holders will be able to participate in Ape Fest, which will include warehouse parties, charity dinners in New York, in-person gallery parties, yacht parties, and merch pop-ups. In addition, members will have access to exclusive areas, such as BATHROOM, Apes vs. Mutants mobile game, Kennel Club, and Mutant Ape Yacht Club.
BATHROOM is a hangout place around a virtual toilet. It is a pixel-ish board with a canvas accessible to wallets that contain at least one ape. It looks like a good dive bar wall where users can scrawl, paint, and write expletive quotes. BATHROOM is an effort to bring artistic minds to enjoy art space.
BAYC fellows can also enjoy entry to MAYC – Mutant Ape Yacht Club, another cool pool of 20,000 mutant apes. It is a way to reward the ape holders with a mutant version of their respective apes.
A mutant serum vial of a random tier, M3, M2, and M1 were airdropped for holders of BAYC NFTs.
Out of these three, M3 serum can create a new ape completely distinctive from the original one. Unlike M3, M1 and M2 serums make a new mutant that shares the trait of the original one. The bored ape club members can also mint a mutant ape in the public sale.
Bored Ape Yacht Club members are part of the Kennel Club as well. These ‘Dog NFTs’ are not for sale, but ape owners can adopt a club dog NFT for one week.
BAYC NFT owners can claim any dog of their preference from the Kennel Club. An ape holder who claimed a puppy once would not be able to claim it again, and a transaction fee would be required to claim the puppy.
Merch on the official website is a merchandise showroom that allows bored ape club members to shop in the store. Members can buy limited edition hoodies, t-shirts, and other goodies from the shop and pay using their MetaMask wallet.
Why is the Bored Ape Yacht Club so popular?
The first reason for Bored Ape Yacht Club’s popularity is that BAYC NFTs reached the top of the ladder to become one of the best investment choices.
Last year, the first 101 minted Bored Ape Yacht Club tokens were resold for $24.4 million in an auction organized by Sotheby’s, a renowned destination for contemporary art. Subsequently, another NFT collection forum ‘Christie.com’ sold four Bored Apes for $12 million.
A record sale of the BAYC NFT is again from the second auction of Sotheby’s in which a single Ape sold for $3.4 million. As mentioned earlier, it was just 0.08 ETH on 29 April 2021, and now the sales have skyrocketed to 1080.69 ETH. The profit is beyond imagination!
The second reason is its utility. In contrast to other NFTs that offer only investment possibilities, BAYC NFTs offer additional perks and entertainment opportunities.
For instance, during the second week of February, the Bored Ape Yacht Club hosted a warehouse party as part of its Ape Fest 2021. Strokes, Lil Baby, Beck, Chris Rock, Aziz Ansari, and Questlove performed at the music events of the warehouse party with BAYC apes.
No wonder, the project has attracted a lot of potential partners since its inception. In Dec 2021, Yuga Labs announced a partnership with Animoca Brands to launch a play-to-earn crypto game, sailing smoothly with the latest crypto current..
Adidas, the apparel brand, entered the metaverse space with the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Adidas acquired an ape avatar and planned to make Indigo Herz’s character. They have posted a picture of their ape wearing an Adidas shirt and a yellow hat on Twitter. In the future, the partnership hopes to introduce attractive metaverse avatars using BAYC NFTs.
Twitter has also introduced a blue tick verification for original BAYC NFT profile pictures. Consequently, keeping a BAYC NFT avatar in the Twitter profile picture has become a new way of showcasing the luxuriance.
Who are the celebrity owners of BAYC NFTs?
Another unique selling point of the Club is its prominent presence in the celebrity class.
The booming ape NFTs attracted celebrities and influencers to become a part of the premium club of virtual art just by owning one rare ape.
The internet lost it when on 25 February 2022, rumors popped up that Elon Musk bought Bored Ape Yacht Club #1837 ape. There was no official confirmation from Musk but it turned out to be a mere speculation from the NFT community.
The rumors started doing the rounds when Deepak, an NFT collector, sold #1837 ape for 600 ETH to an anonymous buyer. He presumed it could be Tesla founder Elon Musk based on the account details.
Even the speculations around Bored Apes gaining so much traction is just one case in point. Many bigwigs from the Entertainment, Business, and sports world are proud owners of the simian NFTs.
For instance, the Golden State Warriors Stephen Curry, who has 15.5 million Twitter followers, kept the image of BAYC Ape #7990, a bored blue fur ape in a tweed suit, worth 55 ETH, as his profile picture.
Pop icon Justin Beiber; American actress and businesswoman, Paris Hilton; Soccer star Neymar Jr; American television host Jimmy Fallon; Rap Legend Eminem; Venture Capitalist and MD of Boost VC, Adam Draper; Esteemed billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban are some of the big names amongst the list of celebs holding the Bored Apes.
The prize possession has instantly taken over flashy cars and other status symbols for the ultra-rich of the world. What is more ironic about this, is its simple yet most important utility – the ability to keep it as your social media display picture.
Well, that’s what luxury is all about- rarity.(isn’t it ?)
Conclusion
Bored Ape Yacht Club follows the whims and fancies of the digital assets in the cryptocurrency market and has emerged as a popular celebrity NFT choice in the Crypto space. The team behind Bored Ape Yacht NFT wants to do more, not just to capture the media attention but to provide much more loyalty to owners.
Yuga Lab is in discussions with music bands and other companies for a partnership to unlock new doors for BAYC. They are also planning to launch a ‘legally compliant token’ in 2022, boosting the ecosystem with more utilities and governance.
Investors look forward to the day when Bored Ape Yacht Club becomes a decentralized Disney of the future. And who knows, you too could be enjoying your holidays with the bored simians!!
