Since it was founded in April, 2021, the company Yuga Labs has impressed the world at list twice. The first sensation was the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), a non-fungible token (NFT) collection representing profile pictures of cartoon apes, which was sold out in the first days of its existence.
The second scoop came exactly one year later, in April 2022, when Yuga Labs announced the launch of its virtual reality (VR), a metaverse ‘Otherside’. So far it is unclear what this metaverse is going to be like, but it has already brought financial success to its creators.
The first event in the life of the new VR was the sale of virtual land plots, called ‘Otherdeeds’. These plots were put for sale in the form of non-fungible tokens, just the same as ape pics of the preceding startup. Otherdeeds could be only bought with ApeCoins, which gained in price significantly since the announcement of the sale.
Each plot cost about $5,800 plus the charge of transaction, taken by Ethereum blockchain, which could come to even a higher amount than the price of the deal itself. As a result, all 55,000 plots were sold out quickly, the amount of virtual cash raised coming up to $320 mln.
It is no surprise that the new project by Yuga Lab caused such an agitation, remembering that the ape tokens are now estimated a thousand times of the initial price. The BAYC got its popularity as it managed to attract the attention of celebrities. Among the token owners there are Justin Bieber, Madonna, Paris Hilton and others. The proprietors of ‘bored apes’ can join the close club and enjoy exclusive events. Or just use their ape pic as an avatar in the social network. The buyer gets full commercial rights for the token purchased, meaning that it can be introduced into a film or musical clip etc.