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Created by Yuga Labs and website launched on April 30th, 2021, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique NFT digital collectible ape avatars. An NFT, otherwise known as, non-fungible token, acts as a deed of ownership for a digital item, allowing the purchaser to prove that they own the one-and-only version of that image. In this case, one holds ownership of an illustration of a bored-looking ape, each featuring different attributes and styles. No two images are alike and each Bored Ape is randomly generated from over 170 possible traits, which include expressions, headwear, clothing, and much more.
Each Bored Ape was generated based off of seven traits:
- Background color
- Style of clothing
- Earring
- Eyes
- Fur
- Hat
- Mouth
Some apes have rarer traits than others and the rarer the trait, the higher the value.
An example of a Bored Ape NFT
The apes are stored as tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. Owning a sought after NFT unlocks exclusive membership to Bored Ape Yacht Club with each Bored Ape costing 0.08 ETH (estimated to be around $245 USD). All 10,000 apes have the same flat price of 0.08 ETH, with no price ramps, as a way to promote fairness and equality amongst all members and fair distribution.
The Yuga Labs team consists of four core members and real-life friends that chose to use pseudonyms and hide behind ape avatars:
- Garagmel. Starcraft Obsessed. Eats Smurfs.
- Gordon Goner. Reformed Leverage Addict.
- Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Spent All Their Money On First Presses And Pet-Nat.
- No Sass. Here For The Apes. Not For The Sass.
Before Bored Ape Yacht Club, Gargamel was working as a writer and editor as Co-founder, Gordon Goner, took up cryptocurrency after falling ill. Both grew up in Miami and met while out at a bar. They later brought on programmers, Emperor Tomato Ketchup and No Sass, to be in charge of the blockchain coding. They went on to hire professional illustrators for the project's graphics.
Purchasing a Bored Ape doubles as Yacht Club membership card, and grants one access to all the member-only benefits. The first benefit being offered is access to The Bathroom, a collabrative graffiti board where members can paint 1 pixel every 15 minutes. Over time, benefits and offerings will increase as new goals are accomplsihed along the roadmap outlined on the website.
In addition to membership perks, full owernship and commerical usuage rights are given to the owner of the Bored Ape NFT. The NFT holder can use, copy, and display the purchased art, or really make any creative pieces of work that stem from the NFT - even sell it.
Within a day of the website launching on April 30th, 2021, all 10,000 apes had sold out for a total of $2.8 million. They are being traded on OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace, for even higher prices.
In late August 2021, Yuga Labs released an additonal 10,000 new Mutant Apes that anyone could purchase for 3 ETH. The set in its entirety sold out within an hourm generating another $96 million.
In September 2021, a record sale was recorded for a single Bored Ape NFT at 600 ETH, or $2.25 million. In the same month, a set of 107 Bored Apes sold in an online auction at Sotheby's for $24.4 million.
