Bored Ape Yacht Club (APE)

Basics

• Based in:
• Started in / Announced on:
• Testnet release:
• Mainnet release: 5-2021
• In May 2022, Ape.fi introduced $ApeUSD, a stablecoin soft-pegged to the US-Dollar
• Aka BAYC
• NFT Project

History

• From The Defiant (30-7-2021):

"Many were priced out of the OG avatar projects, and as a result, a new project looked to prioritize accessibility. The Bored Ape Yacht Club launched in May 2021 with a flat 0.08 ETH (around $270 at time of launch) mint price per ape. Moreover, the BAYC team fostered a dedicated community around the project with an extremely active Discord and special benefits for holders. Each BAYC NFT grants entry to a special “Bathroom” section on the official BAYC website where users can write digital graffiti on a communal wall."

Audits & Exploits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].
• Ape Finance's status (12-12-2022):

"Ape Finance has not been audited. The smart contracts are mostly forks of Compound, Cream, and Fixed Forex (by Iron Bank). There seems to be no community activity or governance process that would allow anyone outside the team to influence the protocol on any level."

Bugs/Exploits

• From Blockthreat (3-5-2022):

"On April 25, 2022 BAYC Instagram account was compromised to advertise a fake airdrop phishing site. As a result attackers were able to steal $2.8M from unsuspecting users. This follows a recent compromise of the BAYC Discord server also tricking users into signing safeTransferFrom transactions."

• On March 17, 2022 APE DAO airdrop reward mechanism was manipulated to mint tokens worth $500K.

Governance

Admin Keys

• Ape Finance's status (12-12-2022):

"While in the process of shifting to decentralized governance, the anon team still has full control over the protocol. Furthermore, 97% of $APEFI’s total supply sits in a multi-sig controlled by the same group."

• Got called out on its minting key which, a year after announcing they would revoke it, is still live (6-6-2022):

"There is a single private key out there that can mint an infinite number of new OG @BoredApeYC at any time. If the token contract owner (a personal wallet, not a multisig) gets hacked or phished, you might see thousands of new bored apes minted and dumped onto the market"

DAO

• Has the ApeCoin DAO (18-3-2022):

"ApeCoin DAO has recruited some prominent folks from around the crypto community to serve on its initial board, including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and FTX’s Amy Wu, and they’ll serve for six months before APE holders vote for next members on an annual basis. There are already governance proposals regarding things like ecosystem fund allocation and staking rewards."

Token

Launch

• Got launched on 18-3-2022:

"Launched today for NFT holders to claim, some 93 million tokens have already been snagged. That’s about $810 million worth."

• The BAYC social media account (9-10-2021):

"WEN TOKEN? Well, apes: We’re currently looking at Q1 2022."

Token Allocation

• From Decrypt (18-3-2022):

"There are 1 billion of them in total, with CoinMarketCap reporting that about 28% are currently in circulation.

If you hold a Bored Ape Yacht Club or Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT in your wallet, then you can claim a certain amount of free tokens from the official ApeCoin website. Each NFT draws its own allocation of tokens, so if you own a bunch, your token rewards will stack.

All told, 15% of the token supply will be allocated to NFT holders. Another 47% of the total supply will be granted to the DAO treasury and resources, with much of that tally vesting over the next 48 months.

On top of that, 15% will go to Yuga Labs, another 8% will go to the four founders of Yuga Labs, and 14% will go to other ApeCoin launch contributors. In addition, 1% of the total supply will be donated to the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation—to benefit real apes."

• 10k NFTs

Utility

• Utility and governance (18-3-2022).

NFT Distribution

• Owners: 4.9K (30-7-2021).
• From Our Network (5-2-2022):

"49% of Bored Apes are held in wallets that hold only 1 Ape. It shows that the NFT has moved between owners sufficiently in the process of price discovery in the past few months. A mere 3 wallets own more than 80 apes each but cumulatively, they own ~3% of supply."

Coin Distribution

• Despite the fact that 80,744 unique addresses own APE, the top 100 addresses control 51.21% of the circulating supply (10-7-2022).

Technology

• Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed [insert here].

Implementations

• Built on: Ethereum

Their Other Projects

ApeChain

• ApeChain is building through Arbitrum tech (8-12-2023)

Ape Finance

• From CryptoRisks (12-12-2022):

"Ape Finance is a stablecoin lending protocol. It enables ApeCoin ($APE) token holders to deposit APE as collateral and borrow $ApeUSD against it. $ApeUSD is soft-pegged to the US-Dollar. Ape Finance aims to bring DeFi to the BAYC community and unlock capital efficiency, new yield farming opportunities, and other use cases for APE holders. Ape Finance limits the total supply of $ApeUSD (currently 15M) and uses the majority share - that is not borrowed - to provide liquidity to their Curve metapool apeUSD/FRAXBP. They apply a concept similar to Curve AMOs (Automated Market Operations) pioneered by Frax. So effectively the majority of ApeUSD’s circulating supply is not backed by APE, but deposited into the metapool by Ape Finance.

The key “trick” behind $ApeUSD’s stability is to maintain the balance inside the metapool, by adding and removing $ApeUSD when an imbalance occurs. The gated access to $ApeUSD via the lending protocol and its limited supply prevent extreme imbalances. For an outsized inflow of $ApeUSD into the pool, it's necessary to borrow $ApeUSD from Ape Finance (which they can control via parameter setting and supply available for borrowing). An outsized inflow of counterparty assets (FRAX or USDC) can also be countered by minting and adding more ApeUSD.

The protocol also issued its own native token $APEFI, which is used to reward liquidity providers. Other than that, $APEFI only functions as a currency to buy Ape.fi NFTs. Those NFTs are intended to serve as governance tokens. However, as of today, there are no governance processes in place."

Bored Ape Kennel Club

• From The Defiant (30-7-2021):

"BAYC launched a spin-off project in June 2021 called Bored Ape Kennel Club, wherein every Ape holder could adopt a pet dog NFT for free. All of BAYC’s proceeds from the 2.5% royalty they get for Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT resales on OpenSea are donated to charity.

The BAYC project set the gold standard for subsequent NFT avatar launches, and inspired many similar animal-based avatar projects that grant holders special perks."

Roadmap

• Can be found [Insert link here].

Revenue

Yuga Labs marked 2022 with over $300 million in revenue from Otherside sales (2-2023).

Usage

• Total volume of Bored Apes traded have crossed $1.3 billion (5-2-2022). The month with the highest volume so far has been August with close to $292 million. 49% of Bored Apes are held in wallets that hold only 1 Ape. It shows that the NFT has moved between owners sufficiently in the process of price discovery in the past few months. A mere 3 wallets own more than 80 apes each but cumulatively, they own ~3% of supply.
• Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is a collection that has seen over half a billion dollars in sales to date, and the collection holds the fifth-largest all-time volume according to dappradar.com metrics (9-10-2021).

Projects that use or built on it

• From Decrypt (18-3-2022):

"Crypto game maker Animoca Brands has announced plans to integrate APE into a “secret project” that it is developing with the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Meanwhile, developer nWay announced that it will use APE in an upcoming play-to-earn game based on the Bored Ape Yacht Club, while Animoca’s unaffiliated Benji Bananas game will implement APE for token rewards. There’s potentially much more on the horizon, too. For example, E11EVEN Residencies in Miami will accept APE payments, and Florida-based brewery SaltWater Brewery has announced much the same for its beer—with a discount, no less."

Pros and Cons

Cons

• Yuga Labs had investment from Alameda Research/FTX, which came out (11-11-2022) during the FTX crash. This could mean fall-out risk since this equity will likely be sold due to bankruptcy. Also it turned out they had their whole treasury in FTX US. A co-founder came out to say they pulled it earlier that week.

Team, Funding and Partners

Team

• Full team can be found [here].
• Pseudononymous, but a buzz feed reporter doxxed them (2-2022).
• Daniel Alegre; CEO
• Nicole Muniz; mentioned ex-CEO as of 2-2023. "In Q4 2022, Yuga announced that Muniz would be replaced by Activision president and chief operating officer Daniel Alegre in the first quarter of the year. The firm was seeking someone from the traditional gaming industry to take over from Muniz, but she will don the hat of partner and strategic adviser for Yuga after the transition."
• Wylie Aronow; co-founder Yuga Labs
• Yuga Labs; announced lay offs (6-10-2023).
• From Decrypt (18-3-2022):

"While ApeCoin is ostensibly the official token of the Bored Ape Yacht Club and acts like a reward for holders of Bored Ape NFT collectibles, the official line is that it wasn’t created by Yuga Labs—the team behind the Bored Apes. Instead, it’s officially the creation of ApeCoin DAO, a new decentralized autonomous organization created to govern the token and its roadmap forward. Based on tweets from Yuga folks and board members, there was clearly a lot of attention put on precise and uniform messaging, likely for regulatory reasons."

Funding

• Yuga Labs raised one of the highest funding rounds from many top venture capital firms at $450 million (2-2023).
• Yuga Labs turned out to have had $50M investment from FTX in exchange for equity (8-12-2022). They were also listed as one of the creditors of FTX (26-1-2023).
• Is in talks with Andreessen for a funding round puting the company at $5B (3-2-2022).

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