What’s up y’all,
When I first started to learn about the Web3 space back in the beginning of January I was enamored with Bored Ape Yacht Club. They were the “cool” NFT that everyone wanted to have, the pinnacle of projects, and the most well-known worldwide. Personally, I idolized them so much that the artwork I was creating for my project included traits from BAYC, to me it was meant to be a tribute to the team that really put NFT’s on the map. My mind was always wandering off, daydreaming about having an APE as my PFP at some point in the future.
Now here is a disclaimer, because everything else you’re about to read are the reasons this opinion of mine has changed regarding this project. Everything I’m writing is my opinion, but I’ll also attach articles and video links that helped give me more insight into a company worth $4 billion dollars. While you read, keep in mind that this project is the face of a new generation of technology trying to achieve mass adoption throughout the globe. It’s a business entity that should be scrutinized when necessary and praised just the same. When you’re the top dog, you’re under a microscope. To me it doesn’t seem like the Yuga Labs team understands that, and I’m not sure they really care either. The world we live in is changing as we know it; this is why I need to start writing out my thoughts in hopes that you can read them, form your own, then give your honest opinion in return.
To start I want to mention the Otherside Deed Land Sale. With it being a highly anticipated drop, one would assume that the Yuga Team would have control on the amount of people wanting to mint a Deed, but they didn’t. As a result, there was $150 million spent on Gas Fees alone where some spent thousands of dollars only to see a failed transaction in return with no Deed in their wallet. Not to mention the congestion they caused on the Ethereum network. After the mint Yuga sent a couple Tweets, apologizing about “turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while”, and saying “ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain”. The way the Tweets read to me is them gloating about how large the mint was with no regard to the people who couldn’t mint one due to the gas wars. All in all, it was just bad taste from the Yuga team. On the bright side, Yuga did say they would be compensating anyone that this happened to, but it should’ve never come to that. There was no need to rush this project out, it was chaos that should’ve and could’ve been avoided.
Next is something that struck a nerve for me when listening to the podcast that two of the founders did with The Nelk Boys. At the 30-minute mark you’ll hear the founders discuss how the launch went for the Bored Ape project, how they felt like it was a flop due to only selling four to five hundred when it first launched, and then one of them said “this was after like 3 months of nonstop working on this”. To me that’s no time at all, so the fact that you can see by the body language in the video they didn’t think they were going to sell out, while also seeming to want to jump ship just shows me the expectation they had for this project. It was never supposed to get this big in their mind, which makes me wonder about their intentions when originally creating it.
***I also want to mention the fact that John Shahidi is also in this video who I’m still waiting for a response from regarding his comment at the 51:30 mark on the podcast he did with Gary Vee. “someone got paid 100, 200 grand to post some bunny thing”. For those that don’t know me, Bored Bunny was a project I became highly involved with and one that is still leaving me with questions even though @ZachXBT did a thread claiming to know the people who were behind it. Most recently the project was removed from OpenSea, but this will be a story for another time***
As time has progressed over this past year multiple reports have come out regarding the antisemitic traits that appear throughout the collection. The main issue I have here is how it’s been handled by Yuga Labs and its founders. Especially one saying “the reality of the situation is it’s such a small percentage of people, it’s like, you gotta be like, below GED level intelligence to read through his shit and be like - Oh, you know…” then continue to refer to him (Ryder) as Alex Jones. I personally read through Ryder’s website and watched the video by Philion. Call me stupid but I have a hard time understanding why certain things have been done the way they have by Yuga Labs and BAYC. From the traits to the founder’s personal past times, it’s hard to not consider the possibility of this being a troll on the most massive scale. They’ve done nothing but try and belittle anyone who calls them out, they won’t answer the questions because they don’t have answers, and its crazy to see the lack of awareness by the largest company in the space. At this moment we can all agree that certain traits used are racist, the simple fact that the team deflects and defends with anger while giving no real explanation is a huge red flag. However I do want you to see both sides because this is an important topic, so here is a rebuttal by /0scanned0rubric which I commented on briefly here.
Ending on this, over this past weekend Art Basel in Miami happened where BAYC was hosting an event where it appears 2,500 Ape Holders should’ve had no problem attending, but that wasn’t the case. This Tweet says it best “On April 30, 2021 #BAYC broke the blockchain. Tonight they broke Miami”. Once again, the Yuga team failed the community due to poor planning surrounding an event that shouldn’t be that difficult to manage, especially when the founders have mentioned their desire to host large events in the future. It was so bad that one of the largest holders, Franklin, showed the lack of preparedness for the event by this Tweet. It’s issues like this that give me the idea that Yuga doesn’t have a grip on anything they’re responsible for, but as long as the floor price stays where it’s at none of the holders seem to hold the fire to them long enough to matter. Holders should always take priority. From my point of view, this shows that they value the idea of money more than the experience of the holders, some holders that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a spot at an event that should’ve gone off without a hitch.
The fact of the matter is they’re a multibillion-dollar company with unlimited resources. The mistakes are inexcusable, and the lack of awareness is astounding. Luckily my intelligence is a little bit above GED level so even though I’m a “normie” I can still realize when a project is getting more credit than it deserves. The Bored Ape Yacht Club has an interesting story, one that seems to stray further and further away from the core principles of Web3. While it’s hard to criticize a project and company that has so much power within the space, if we don’t hold the top projects accountable, then we’re setting a bad precedent for anything that comes after them.
To be continued,
Ling 💙