WELCOME TO THE BORED APE YACHT CLUB.#
(Welcome to the Bored Ape Yacht Club!)
[Note: This article is the second piece in the mfers universe article relay series—From mfers to BAYC and even the whole world, the contributor of this concept is myself @wenser, and the first article in this series is a discussion on the CC0 topic: The CC0 Fog of NFTs by alittle.bit]
TL;DR:
1. What did BAYC do right?—A breakdown of the success factors of NFTs from a personal perspective;
2. BAYC's endless ambition—To be the project that leads the trend rather than follows it;
3. The significance and future of BAYC—A series of chain reactions and impacts after empowering people.
In 1987, French businessman Bernard, with a strong hand, pushed for the merger of the Louis Vuitton brand and the Moët Hennessy luxury goods group, thus creating the "LVMH" group, a "luxury empire" that has been passed down to this day.
Today, the LVMH group includes 75 brands, with total revenue reaching 64.2 billion euros in 2021 (approximately 440 billion RMB).
Now, 35 years later, coincidentally, in the crypto field, at the forefront of the NFT track, a unique brand has emerged that can rival the @Yuga Labs and BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club), which are the "protagonists" we are going to talk about today, having recently stirred up a tremendous wave in the NFT field, the crypto world, and even the entire web3 ecosystem.
I. "The Stone Monkey is Born": The Past and Present of BAYC#
All seemingly great successes originate from a small beginning.
a. The Origin of BAYC#
Like all cliché stories, the beginning of BAYC was also a somewhat fortuitous arrangement.
On February 1, 2021, Gordon, one of the four gentlemen of @Yuga Labs, received a text message from his friend Greg, simply stating an imperative sentence—"Let's create an NFT together!" Before this, the two of them were just ordinary people. After entering the cryptocurrency field in 2017, their contributions to the crypto space mainly included three aspects: 1. reading a lot of books; 2. making some money and spending some money; 3. losing everything. Doesn't that sound somewhat similar to your and my experiences? But in the crypto world, this might be a norm.
Prior to this, although Gordon and Greg had heard of the NFT projects CryptoKitties and Cyberpunk, it was clear that they had their own understanding and different ideas about NFTs.
At the beginning of 2021, the The Hashmasks project was launched, an art project mediated by blockchain and NFT technology, which seemed unremarkable but inspired the creation of BAYC, now the "undisputed king of the NFT field." From this project and subsequent NFT projects, technology was no longer the decisive factor; culture became the "winning rule" of NFTs. This marked an important "paradigm shift" in the NFT field.
Subsequently, Gordon and Greg, already "crypto world surfers," brought in two software engineer friends, Sass and Tomato, and the "four gentlemen" of @Yuga Labs officially debuted. Through their interactions, their understanding of NFTs deepened, and they became incredibly confident in the infinite possibilities it brought—just as I mentioned before, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are well-suited to carry many things, even meaning.
The meaning that the "four gentlemen" assigned to the series of NFTs they were about to create was—In a future where crypto changes the world (about 10 years later), after all liquidity mining has come to an end, cryptocurrency traders will have achieved unimaginable success. But after that, what they fall into is endless boredom, dullness, and monotony, just like the old man sitting under the big locust tree at the village entrance, who always sighs—"Life is truly lonely as snow." Then, these cryptocurrency traders who call themselves "apes" would engage in a graffiti game on a secret club's bathroom wall in the depths of the swamp, where "each person can only draw one pixel every 15 minutes," with a collaborative art experiment nature.
From the perspective of narrative economics and semiotics, everything is narrative, and symbols are power.
Under the extreme operations of the "four gentlemen," the entire BAYC project began to operate at high speed—
OG (Original Gangster) team:
@allseeingseneca (basic character design - took 4 days), @migwashere, @thomasdagley, and two other unnamed artists (created various expressions, clothing, and accessories, as well as the design of the club itself - took about 1 month). After that, for the mutant series NFTs, the main creators included @thomasdagley and @lovans (mutant ape illustrations), @1800seandotcom (serum art pieces).
Timeline:#
2021.4.18 The official BAYC Twitter account began promoting, the 10K private membership club officially debuted, and the split began, emphasizing from the start that all NFTs were uniformly priced below 0.1e, which was completely different from the pricing strategy of NFT projects at that time that used bonding curves to better care for early supporters (for more information on bonding curves, see → When Bonding Curves Meet NFTs - Tencent-2021.4.12). In simple terms, bonding curve pricing allowed early minters to buy in at a lower price, facilitating subsequent sales, but was very unfair to later buyers; therefore, BAYC made it clear from the beginning: all beings are equal, and emphasized "Bonding Curves are a ponzi."
Announcing the Bored Ape Yacht Club! 🐵⛵️ 10,000 unique #NFTs where each Ape doubles as membership to a digital club with member-only benefits. For a chance of winning a Bored Ape: 1 - Follow @boredapeyc 2 - Retweet This 3 - Like and Comment on this tweet. #NFT #nftcollectors
Bonding Curves are a ponzi. All our Bored Apes #NFTs will be priced 0.1 ETH (or less, TBD prior to sale on 3/24). BAYC Membership costs the same for everyone! #NFT #NFTcollector
2021.4.19 BAYC emphasized its scarcity and rarity: promoting "one-of-a-kind NFTs, 172 traits, generated using ERC-721 contracts and stored on IPFS," and announced a presale opening on 4.23;
2021.4.22 BAYC officially launched the NFT presale website and again used a split operation method, giving away a BAYC in a lottery, with a Twitter user ID @yourstruly_nft becoming the lucky winner (later he also minted bayc#27).
2021.4.23 BAYC officially launched a week-long presale, with a minting price of 0.08e (approximately 220 USD at the time), and the BAYC team specifically chose an afternoon at 5 PM (Eastern Time) when gas fees were relatively low to start the presale, emphasizing afterward: BAYC is not just a collectible NFT, but a club that includes exclusive member benefits: collaborative art experiments, treasure hunts, member-only stores, and NFTs that can breed and mutate (the later mutant apes).
BAYC is more than just collectible #NFTs. It's a club. When the pre-sale ends, The Bathroom goes live. Inside is the first collaborative art board for #NFT holders. After that we have Roadmap Activations that include a Treasure Hunt, Members-Only merch store, and NFT breeding.
However, like many current NFT projects, BAYC's sales were not ideal at the beginning, with only about 500 sold in the first week. At this time, the efforts made during the initial operation began to pay off! This is the common tactic in today's NFT field—"Influencers driving sales"!
First, @evantan, as the last buyer during the presale phase, became the "whistleblower" driving sales after the official launch; his endorsement was crucial; subsequently, under his influence, @j1mmy.eth was the first to enter, buying 100 BAYC in 20 minutes; after that, @pranksy also joined in, directly purchasing 250 BAYC and quickly increasing his holdings to 500, becoming a "consumption fanatic." The subsequent frenzied buying by these two whales successfully ignited the strong FOMO sentiment among NFT players for BAYC, and with the previous goodwill from various influencers, nearly 10K BAYC were sold out in an instant, and its contract quickly topped the Ethereum network!
A year later, as time flows, looking back at that crazy night, it has now become a milestone worthy of being recorded in NFT history.#
Whoaaa! Thank you! This looks so dope!! 😍 Go get yours at boredapeyachtclub.com ASAP! Every single one costs 0.08ETH. I've already gotten 4 so far, but I might get more. Each one is so unique and truly a work of art! The reveal is coming reaaall soon....
One last Bored Ape Yacht Club honorary member ape before our Pre-Sale ends tonight for @evantan 🐵👑
Here, I believe that every influencer who has contributed to BAYC, to some extent, deserves to be recognized (the following list is compiled from @Metascan.Pro):
@screentimes, @0xtuba, @hasufl, @cyrptonaut, @girldadNFT, @CL207, @AnonymouslyObv3, @ABigThingBadly, @dis0ri3nted, @marenaltman, @waifusion, @CryptoPapi10, @steven_schill, @loomdart, @youngalgy, @evankeast, @gmoneyNFT, @shroom_daddy, @DeezeFi, @HsakaTrades, @beaniemaxi, @evantan, @c0inalchemist, @0xMaki, @ledgerstatus, @ratwell0x, @inversebrah
At this point, the 10K BAYC finally achieved its first "small goal"—officially sold out! The journey they are about to embark on is the next checkpoint for NFT project teams—the execution of the RoadMap. Fortunately, they did well.
So, we can first pose a question—
b. What did they do right?#
A year later, looking back at the initial actions of the BAYC team, it is no exaggeration to say that BAYC raised the operational level and execution standards of NFT project teams by more than thirty floors:
1) Early seed user screening and interaction with more blockchain users (thanks to the team's deep understanding of the crypto field);
2) Pioneering the lottery split operation method of liking, retweeting, and tagging more people, which has since become a standard for NFT project operations;
3) Sending 1/1 exclusive honorary member avatars to influencers with larger followings and greater influence, not counting towards the 10K NFTs;
Bored Ape Yacht Club version of @DeezeFi ☠️🐵⛵️
So clean 🙏
Bored Ape Yacht Club version for @girldadNFT 🐵🏀
4) Puzzle reward-based operational activities to increase community member stickiness, activity, and loyalty, and serve as promotional materials;
📢📢The final puzzle will be dropping in under 15 minutes! The first to DM us in Discord the solutions to all three puzzles will win 1 $ETH and BAYC membership. 🥳Help Frankie get his crypto back, poor ape lost his Trezor in the swamp... boredapeyachtclub.com
5) Valuing everyone's (especially influencers') social network, not missing any opportunity to promote themselves! (The following tweet shows BAYC's emphasis on early potential supporters.)
An Ape for @0xtuba🐵 Cheers!
6) Meme culture: Using monkeys (orangutans) and related expressions, memes, GIFs, etc., to bridge the communication gap between the official Twitter account and different followers and Twitter users, while enhancing meme influence.
7) Pricing: Based on a uniform price of 0.08e, greatly filling the market gap—high liquidity low-priced NFTs.
8) Design: Although the time spent was not long, the design and aesthetics of BAYC are clearly online and easily recognizable.
9) Rights: The BAYC team clearly defined the ownership and corresponding commercial usage rights of holders regarding NFTs for the first time. (This point will be elaborated later in conjunction with the CC0 protocol.)
(PS: At this point, I want to emphasize that these are my personal summaries of the successful aspects of BAYC's NFT project operations based on past information. Don't come at me saying I'm "Monday morning quarterbacking" or "hindsight bias." If you don't want to read, don't!)
c. BAYC Milestones#
The following milestone sorting reference information is from: "Let's make a NFT" (official Yuga Labs article), and the table information is organized and created by @wenser.
BAYC Timeline Overview (Upper/Lower Part)——
d. BAYC Ecological Niche
Reference Articles:
A breakdown of BAYC's path to success
Yuga Labs' own account: The origin of the $4 billion story—"Let's create an NFT together"
2, @yugalabs VS @Larvalabs#
Since BAYC burst onto the scene in May 2021, the entity behind BAYC, @yugalabs, and the entity behind Cryptopunks, @Larvalabs, have been regarded by many NFT players as the "Twin Stars of the NFT Field."
a. Rights granted to holders
b. Power boundaries of projectors
c. Responsibilities and rights of members
Reference Articles:
CryptoPunks Controversy: Creators Apologize for 'V1' Ethereum NFT Sales
Understanding why CryptoPunks lost to BAYC from the "V1 Punks Controversy"
- Evolution in the NFT Field
a. GameFi
—— CryptoKitties
b. PFP
—— Cryptopunks
c. Membership
—— BAYC
d. Pass Cards
—— Proof
e. Others.
Patterns——
-
Rotation of NFT sectors
-
High inclusivity and strong extensibility of NFTs
-
Artistic value of NFTs: NFTization of artworks + Artisticization of NFT works +
-
The next era has arrived
4.1 Building a three-layer growth flywheel
a. BAYC——NFT/GameFi/Metaverse
b. Yuga Labs——Marketing brand, behind-the-scenes driver
c. Apecoin——FT/Liquidity/DAO organization
4.2 What does BMW mean?
a. Blockchain: Underlying technology
b. Metaverse: Application scenarios
c. Web3: Next-generation internet
- Starting from BAYC: The Pan-Lifestyle Application of NFTs
a. Daily life
b. Work and labor
c. Multiple social interactions
d. Time and space travel
5.1 CC0 Protocol
5.2 Holder's Power
5.3 Infinite Potential of NFTs
5.4 Integration or Micro-Innovation?
5.5 "Community, Product, Culture" Web3 Success Pathway Construction
- Starting with the end in mind, where is the limit of imagination? (Is IP a good business?)
a. @BoredApeYC = @Disney?
b. @BoredApeYC= @Pixar?
c. @BoredApeYC= @Nintendo?
d. @BoredApeYC= @LVMH?
Yuga Labs CEO interview video
Or, you can see a brand new world appearing before you——————
See you on the Otherside in April. Powered by @apecoin
Here, you fully own your money, rights, and land, of course, not excluding the possibility of centralized authoritative governments using laws to restrict or centralized institutions to ban (account warnings).
Separator
https://nfts.wtf/bored-ape-yacht-club-goes-boom/
https://www.cnet.com/culture/internet/bored-ape-yacht-club-nfts-everything-you-need-to-know/
Now, like them once did, we embark on every unknown journey, whether the future is bright or fraught with dangers, we know nothing. But perhaps each of us is like that arrogant, fearless Don Quixote, charging at those towering windmills, regardless of the risks.
A Tale of Two Cities—It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
we are still early.