Before the rise of the profile picture (PFP) non-fungible tokens (NFTs), artists and developers hardly built utilities around their collection. Instead, they often capitalized on a certain trend associated with NFTs, and then almost immediately began looking for the next profitable opportunity. That was the case up until the time when Yuga Labs appeared. That is the name of the firm that is responsible for the $3 billion Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection.
Yuga Labs, in contrast to many previous NFT initiatives, pioneered innovative approaches to encouraging participation and establishing a long-term NFT ecosystem. The company’s choice to create a community-focused strategy for maintaining the BAYC brand contributed to Yuga Labs’ success.

Bored Ape Yacht Club

Bored Ape Yacht Club is a project by Yuga Labs that has 10,000 ape-themed NFTs with distinct attributes. Celebrities including Paris Hilton, Eminem, Mark Cuban and Jimmy Fallon all have Bored Ape NFTs with access to the exclusive social club.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)

BAYC, like many PFP-based NFTs, was inspired by CryptoPunks, the first NFT to generate a library of characters with distinct features and rarity levels. It goes without saying that Yuga Labs has taken the notion of PFP-based NFTs to a whole new level by making Bored Ape owners instant members of an exclusive club with benefits like first dibs on future products and even the chance to have their Bored Apes put to commercial use.
Because of this, it is not hard to see why the value of Bored Apes NFTs has continued to surge ever since they were first introduced in April 2021. According to Coingecko, the floor price of BAYC (the lowest price for a Bored Ape NFT) at the time of writing is $82,745.
BAYC focuses on the storyline that in the distant future, these wealthy but bored people join an exclusive club and hang out in a pub.
It’s worth noting that Yuga Labs is the creation of two pals, Gargamel and Gordon Goner (both pseudonyms). Interestingly, the duo chose to remain anonymous until a February 2022 Buzzfeed story exposed their names as Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow, both have been engaged in the cryptocurrency market as “hodlers” and traders since 2017.

The Next Move?

After the success of BAYC, Yuga Labs created a pattern for inspiring persistent exhilaration and prestige in its members. Other NFT collections have been published by the corporation in less than a year as part of its intentions to reward BAYC holders.

Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC)

The first was the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC), which comprises of 10,000 NFTs, which are a collection of one-of-a-kind digital dogs bred as companions for the Bored Apes and given for free to all BAYC members.

Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC)

And the other was Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), a bunch of mutant or zombified Bored Apes, which were Yuga Labs airdropped mutant serums to holders of the 10,000 BAYC NFTs, which they can utilize to mint Mutant Apes

CryptoPunks and Meebits

When it comes to market valuation and supporter count, BAYC’s major competitors are CryptoPunks and Meebits. On March 11, 2022, Yuga Labs acquired CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs, therefore expanding the NFT ecosystem it had already developed.

Yuga Labs currently owns 423 CryptoPunks and 1,711 Meebits NFTs, together with all IP rights.
But this acquisition made the community worry about the over-concentration in the industry. At that moment, BAYC had the first, second, fourth, and sixth spots in the NFT market capitalization but has now slipped to the fourth, fifth and fifty-fifth. The value of BAYC alone could make up half of the industry and in the young NFT industry, BAYC’s excessive monopoly could be threatening.

Reasons For The Growth

Yuga Lab focused on making a business that cares about the community and wants to make more useful things for NFT holders. Their aim has always been to continue pushing the frontiers of what an NFT ecosystem can become. This is why their products and services are designed in a way that builds and keeps the BAYC community exclusive.
The BAYC team is continually doing something to keep its members involved, such as BAYC’s Bathroom, which is a digital replica of a private real location where you may freely write anything that comes to mind on the walls. The BAYC team periodically releases to keep its members enthralled as to what might be the next Bored Ape activity.
The owners of these NFTs can leverage various means for monetizing their NFTs by building businesses around them like creating merchandise as they hold their commercial rights.
These NFT holders are also involved in the decision-making processes regarding the community. Yuga Labs created ApeCoin (APE), an ERC-20 utility and governance token, to make the BAYC ecosystem even more open and allow users to access services inside and outside the network. To establish full decentralization ApeCoin DAO fully decentralized, a council of community members was formed to carry out the decision-making process of the community.

SEC Probing

The recent rampant thefts, allegations of racist symbology, and myriad other controversies have led to certain tanking of their reputation and cultural presence.
As a result, the U.S. Yuga Labs is being probed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on how to define the role of NFTs and virtual currencies like ApeCoin in the financial arena, as well as if sales of its digital assets violate federal law. The major legal issue at the heart of the investigation is whether NFTs are securities or not, which the SEC has apparently been looking at since March.