ApeCoin: the BAYC community currency
The Apes have their coin now.
Bored Apes Yacht Club is one of the best examples of how a collectible #NFT can be leveraged to earn profit beyond speculation.
Since the NFT’s IP rights belong to its owner, they can use the Ape image on all sorts of commercial products and services, from beer to clothes to music bands. As BAYC creators Yuga Labs and the community itself are working on increasing the Apes’ notoriety, the value of an Ape image goes up.
Recently the BAYC future got another coordination center : the ApeCoin DAO, powered by the fungible APE token and supervised by the Ape Foundation. The DAO was created in order to manage the community and its projects, and the token “will serve as a decentralized protocol layer for community-led initiatives that drive culture forward into the metaverse”. APE is a governance token, allowing to vote on DAO’s decisions, but it can also be used as a payment token in BAYC ecosystem, give access to exclusive services or be used as an incentive for third-party developers willing to contribute.
The Ape Foundation is responsible for the administration of ApeCoin DAO’s decisions, helping make them a reality and ensuring the necessary bookkeeping. Its board counts 5 influential people in the crypto world, including Alexis Ohanian (Reddit, 776 ventures) and Yat Siu (Animoca Brands, Web3 game developer).
The total supply of APE is fixed at 1Bn, with 62% left in the Ecosystem Fund (of which 75.8% stays in the DAO treasury and 24.2% can be claimed by the NFT owners), 16% given to Yuga Labs (of which 6.25% will go to Jane Goodall Foundation contributing to primates’ conservation), 14% given to launch contributors and 8% to Yuga Labs founders.
Despite APE tokens distribution showing tight ties with Yuga Labs, the ApeDAO representatives insist on it being a separate project. Some analysts consider it as a way to circumvent the existing securities law: if it were Yuga Labs who issued the tokens, APE would be considered a security and would need all the relevant SEC authorizations. However, since the token is managed by a decentralized entity, which is #DAO, they can skip this painful part.
Since the token release two days ago its price went from $7 to $17, correcting to $13 since. For the moment it is mostly speculation, although some projects have already started attributing APE tokens a utility, like Animoca Brands’ Benji Bananas game, which now accepts the token as an in-game currency.
Web3 is an exciting space, and BAYC/ApeCoin projects show how easy it can be to create synergies and involve the community.
