Guide to the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT Ecosystem

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), an NFT collection of 10,000 “Bored Apes”, was launched and revealed to the public on April 30, 2021, as the first project of the now famous Yuga Labs. The price of their first BAYC NFT was 0.08 ETH (at the time worth about $190).

About 12 hours after going live, Yuga Labs’ NFTs went viral. This led to one of the most famous late nights between Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton, and helped increase the visibility of BAYC. Celebrities like Stephen Curry, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Post Malone began buying these profiled NFTs as status symbols.

The popularity of BAYC NFTs has made them a trendy item to show off on social media among the rich.

The most expensive BAYC item was #2087, bought for 769 ETH in September 2021, $2,307,638 at the time.

Despite the explosive hype about BAYC Spring 2021, the project has maintained itself as one of the most valued NFTs in the digital collectibles world, especially during this year’s crypto bear market.

This was largely due to Yuga Labs succeeding in expanding the scope of the project far beyond the original NFT collection into an ecosystem of NFT additions, a future metaverse, and a token that binds the company’s entire portfolio of projects, which it calls the “Yugaverse” together.

On August 15, 2021, the floor price or the lowest price among all items in the collection was 13 ETH compared to the highest floor price of 303.15 ETH on February 17, 2022.

What makes BAYC so special?

Owning a BAYC NFT makes you a “Boed Ape Yacht Club Member”. Some of the benefits are:

• An invitation to a private Discord server for BAYC members only.
• Airdrops of NFT collectibles into members’ wallets that can be sold for profit.
• The ability to turn monkeys into “mutants” using free air-dropped serums. As with airdropped NFTs, these mutants can also be sold.
• Airdrop promotions of BAYC’s new cryptocurrency, ApeCoin, are offered to Bored Ape NFT holders with a 90-day claim period.

The data has shown that BAYC transactions have not stopped despite the crypto winter of 2022. From February to May 2022, there were three peaks in trading volume and trading numbers. In each of these peaks, there were at least 45 transactions totaling at least $35 million.

On the other hand, the lowest transaction number to date is two, totaling just over $529,000 on February 19, 2022.

BAYC adjacent NFT collections

The BAYC founders launched a secondary pool of NFTs to incentivize the community with rewards and free services. The collections include the following:

Mutant Ape Yacht Club

The Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT collection is a reward for BAYC holders. Although a BAYC holder does not directly receive a MAYC NFT in their wallet, BAYC holders receive a “special serum” NFT item. This “special serum” gives a BAYC holder the ability to create a variant of their current BAYC NFT.

Similar to BAYC NFTs, MAYC is also in high demand. Measuring the MAYC floor price over time measures the demand for these digital assets. As of August 29, 2021, the floor price on MAYC started at around 4 ETH. The floor price shot up to 1878.75% on April 29, 2022, which was 79.15 ETH.

If you compare MAYC’s highest floor price of 79.15 to BAYC’s highest floor price of 303.15 ETH, you can see that BAYC digital collectibles are more sought after. However, MAYC’s bottom price path during the bear market in 2022 showed that the claim was recession-proof. Simply put, MAYC never reached a floor price of 0 ETH from its inception until today.

Bored Monkey Kennel Club

This NFT collection is another reward for BAYC holders. The Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) collection introduces dogs to be your BAYC NFT’s best friend. In fact, this NFT collection has become an important part of the Bored Ape NFT ecosystem. Among the four notable NFT pools in the BAYC ecosystem, BAKC has the lowest market capitalization of 111.68 ETH.

Although there are 9,602 NFTs compared to 19,425 MAYC NFTs, the scarcity of BAKC has not made it more valuable than MAYC. It only has the second lowest floor price of 7.3 among its peers in the BAYC ecosystem. These figures show that BAKC has a mid-tier price compared to BAYC, MAYC and Otherdeed for Otherside.

Otherdeed for Otherside

Launched on April 30, 2022, Otherdeed for Otherside NFTs allow users to purchase property in a future metaverse – the Otherside – under development by Yuga Labs. As of August 18, the floor price is 1.7 ETH (about $3,184). Every Otherside plot has different traits and resource-producing abilities, the specific uses of which are still unknown.

The cinematic trailer for the project shows Bored Apes living in the land of Otherside, among other Yuga NFT collections. The teasers and images all feature Bored Apes prominently, so while Yuga hasn’t explicitly stated it, they tease that they will play a critical role in this world.

Although BAYC collections traditionally carry a high price tag, Otherdeed for Otherside has the lowest floor price among collections in the BAYC ecosystem as of August 15, 2022. Currently, the floor price is 1.749 ETH compared to BAYC, MAYC and BAKC.

There are 100,000 NFTs, making it less exclusive than other pools in the BAYC ecosystem. Although the Otherdeed NFT collection is a few months old, there are over 34,000 landowners, according to OpenSea. The number of Otherdeed NFT holders currently exceeds the holders of BAYC, MAYC and BAKC in total.

Although it is the newest NFT pool in the BAYC ecosystem, it ranks third in largest market capitalization among all NFT pools.

ApeCoin

ApeCoin is an Ethereum-based governance and utility token used throughout the Yugaverse to fuel a decentralized community. ApeCoin holders govern the ecosystem using a decentralized governance framework and decide how the ApeCoin DAO Ecosystem Fund will be spent.

Since its inception during the crypto bear market, there has been an increasing number of unique wallets containing ApeCoin.

The chart above shows that there are over 85,000 unique holders. This means that some people want to be part of the BAYC community even if they cannot afford to buy the expensive NFTs.

The chart below shows that the top 100 owners only account for 51% of the market capitalization of ApeCoin. In other words, ApeCoin is not monopolized by the ultra-rich or the whales, unlike BAYC NFT collections. It is clear that retail investors also make up a significant fraction of the market capitalization of ApeCoin.

Estimate for Bored Ape Yacht Club

The BAYC NFT collection and Apecoin are showing promising numbers in terms of US dollar trading volume and unique wallets in recent months. From December 2021 to August 2022, the market capitalization of the BAYC collection grew from 114,302.53 ETH to 759,917.38, an increase of 564.8% in nine months. This increase can be seen below in the chart.

BAYC’s market cap trajectory is a positive sign for two elements of the BAYC collection. Increasing market value means that items in the BAYC collections have increased in price over time. Additionally, increasing market capitalization indicates a sustainable demand for these exclusive NFTs for the foreseeable future.

As of August 15, 2022, Bored Ape Yacht Club is still ranked number one with the largest market capitalization. Furthermore, it is also worth noting that there are only 6,446 items owned out of the total of 10,000 items in the collection. This means that the NFT shortage in the BAYC collection is also a driving factor for price increases and floor price increases since the start.

The NFT area is still young, and it is highly speculative as prices can still fluctuate regardless of supply and demand. It is important to do your research before making a large investment.

This report has been prepared by Footprint Analytics.