Out of all the limelight-stealing NFTs, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and related collections are probably the most prominent. They featured bored-looking apes that could be customised down to the tiniest detail based on the buyer’s taste. These seemingly-ordinary looking artworks attracted extraordinary attention. Some of them even sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars with a customer list including the likes of Justin Bieber, Eminem, Jimmy Fallon and so on. And the buzz around BAYC does not seem to be fading anytime soon.
On 18 March, the ApeCoin (APE) was launched and airdropped to all the investors of the BAYC and related NFT collections, such as the Mutant Ape Yacht Club and the Bored Ape Kennel Club.
Through the airdrop, owners of BAYC NFTs could claim APE tokens for free and resell them whenever they wished. Of course, some investors cashed in and made loads of money, ultimately driving the buzz around BAYC once again.
What is ApeCoin?
ApeCoin serves as the governance and utility token of the BAYC, an NFT project of Yuga Labs, which has 10,000 unique bored ape artworks. The Ape Foundation that powers the ApeCoin is overseen and managed by the ApeCoin DAO, which aims to ensure governance as the community burgeons. Therefore, ApeCoin holders become voters on the DAO, for which the Foundation acts as a facilitator.
It is an open-source project that serves the ‘web 3.0 economy’ wherein the owners of web-based content are the creators themselves. That includes digital artwork, music, videos, GIFs, in-game items, etc. “The possibilities for blockchain’s impact on culture are so endless that they can’t possibly all be predicted yet. APE is a token made to support what’s next, controlled and built on by the community. It will serve as a decentralised protocol layer for community-led initiatives that drive culture forward into the metaverse,” quotes the
ApeCoin website.
The admins of the Ape Foundation are overseen by “The Board” – a special council of the ApeCoin DAO. The Board congregates when proposals for executing the DAO’s vision are reviewed. It administers them, ensures thorough implementation, and acts as the custodian of the DAO’s vision. The first Board will serve for 6 months, after which DAO members will annually vote on the new members.
