On January 29, 2022, the floor price of "Boring Ape" BAYC broke through 100 ETH, setting a record high. After breaking through this historic milestone, the Rug Radio podcast chatted with the founders of this NFT project that is popular with the crypto community and many celebrities. Let's take a look at how they achieved these amazing achievements. .
Q: Bored Ape BAYC has grown into one of the most popular (if not the most popular) brands in NFTs, all in just nine months, how do you guys feel about being in this position now ?
A: We never thought we would be where we are today, and even though the entire NFT collection won't be officially launched until April 2021, it's been almost a year since we started researching and launching the Bored Ape Yacht Club project years. At the same time, we are so busy that we often don't have the opportunity to stop and take a hard look at the many things going on in the market right now. But occasionally, we feel how unbelievable this NFT project is and how surreal this journey is, such as when we held the Ape Fest event and looked around and found that many people came from far away on purpose New York City and meet with community exchanges.
Q: A few days ago, on the Rolling Stone website, I read an article about the stories behind BAYC Chinese female creators (reference article:"Boring Ape Creator, 27-year-old Chinese Girl's NFT Journey"), I heard that more than one person participated in the creation of "Bored Ape" BAYC, who else participated in the creation of the original Bored Ape NFT series?
A: We've been lucky enough to have a talented team of freelance artists (including @allseeingseneca, @migwashere_, @thomasdagley, and 2 more on condition of anonymity) - plus we have a guy who helps with graphic design friend. It is thanks to the efforts of each of them that helped us bring the vision of "The Bored Ape" BAYC to life. We've seen "The Boring Ape" BAYC take shape, one sketch after another, eventually becoming more and more exciting.
Q: The Boring Ape BAYC has had great success over the past year. As a founder, what important events do you think are worth sharing with us?
Answer: There are countless. I still remember that crazy night, on May 1st, our "Bored Ape" BAYC NFT collection sold out in no time, it was amazing. Additionally, we’ve raised close to $1 million for animal charities through the BAKC NFT collection — another highlight worth watching when we have absolutely no idea how people will respond to these “surprise doggos.” In addition, the day when NBA star Stephen Curry joined BAYC was also very memorable, and that day was also the same day that "Mutant Ape" launched the airdrop.
Thanks to community support, we are in a very lucky position in the NFT space, so it was an amazing feeling to give all BAYC and MAYC artists a $1 million prize last year. And of course the "Ape Fest" event, we've been through 2 years of COVID and lockdown and it's been awesome to see the community finally get together and watch Lil Baby perform together. You just need to be in it to feel the strong cohesion of the community.
Q: Had the opportunity to meet Guy Oseary last year and he gave me a lot of great advice! What was it like working with him?
A: In September last year, Guy Oseary joined BAYC as a partner. Many people know him as the manager of U2 and Madonna, but in the past ten years, Guy Oseary has actually been the most outstanding investor in the technology field. one. From our very first call with him, we knew his creative vision aligned with ours. He was an incredible mentor and friend to us, and we even nicknamed him "The Fifth Ape" (note: the BAYC project has four co-founders).
Q: You guys have had a lot of success, but faced some conspiracy theory issues about the artwork and the founders. I noticed that in an earlier tweet thread you mentioned that one of you was Jewish and I remember feeling sorry for that team member because he was accused of being anti-Semitic, how did you feel?
A: I guess, many successful people have these problems, when you are successful, conspiracy theorists will crawl out to discredit you? The Yuga team has a very diverse background, so those rumors about us are really weird. Our co-founders include Cubans, Jews, Pakistanis, and Turks, and this bullying was particularly acute for Gordon, who is actually Ashkenazi Jewish and currently serves as the creative director of the Boring Ape BYAC project, And the guy who vilified Gordon is basically talking nonsense, he actually called Gordon an anti-Semite, which sounds absolutely crazy and very hurtful.
On art: It's also important to take a step back. We have a very wide and varied collection of Boring Ape NFTs that basically reference pop culture directly as well. Everything from Magnum PI's Hawaiian shirts to togas and other historically-inspired clothing, to the rainbow suspenders popular with gay groups, was mixed with irreverent references to punk rock and '90s hip-hop. If you isolate these things, maybe just look at one or two combinations, but overall, everyone can turn our NFT series into almost any narrative you want.
We wanted to create a "collection of apes" where anyone could find themselves, and it's this expression and range of expression that sets BAYC apart.
Q: Why did the founders choose to remain anonymous? Are you going to remain anonymous forever?
A: In the field of encryption, many project founders choose to be anonymous or use pseudonyms. This has been the case for a long time. People want to protect their personal privacy in this field. That said, what's more important is trust. When entering this space, the first thing we knew the first thing to do was to form a Delaware LLC because it would allow us to ensure anonymity while at the same time showing that we were serious and committed to NFT Do things seriously in the field. In fact, our employees and partners know who we are, the community has learned about us through our digital identities over the past nine months, and we prefer to be judged on our actions and achievements. In our opinion, what should really be concerned about is the NFT project BAYC, not us.
Q: We obviously know that the BAYC project has four male co-founders. At the same time, we also often hear that women are underrepresented in the NFT field. Do you have female Hengyuan in your team? The reason I'm asking this question is because I heard that you actually have 2 women on your leadership team.
A: We actually have more women than men – and we have women in every role in the company. On the management side, Nicole (aka @vstrangeYUGA) is currently the company's co-CEO and @SodaOps is currently the COO. Nicole is now a partner at Yuga and has been involved in a lot of behind-the-scenes work on the Boring Ape project since day one. As the company expands, it's perfectly fine for Nicole to serve as co-CEO full-time, and we're delighted to have @SodaOps as our COO, one of the key players in keeping the wheels turning.
Q: A lot of people are surprised that Yuga has more employees. Can you tell me who you've brought on the Boring Ape team? What is your day-to-day work like? It's like you guys send "gm" on Slack every morning.
A: We're in a period of high growth right now (the company currently has 36 people in total), some of which are some of the best people we can find in this field. In addition to Nicole and @SodaOps, another Yuga partner @PezYUGA is currently working full-time as our Chief Content Officer (CCO). At this stage, our team members mainly consist of social media managers, community managers, producers, illustrators and artists, graphic designers, copywriters, engineers and IT staff.
This morning, we all log into Slack and have meetings where everyone compares their day-to-day performance and lets the group know when they start working, and sometimes we play Wordle together. Let me tell you a little secret, one of our engineers has created a clone of the Wordle game (which he will not share publicly) where he can try it an infinite number of times without affecting his real game score any impact.
Q: How many "boring apes" do the founders of BAYC own?
Answer: Our four founders own 6 "boring apes". Frankly speaking, we don't like creators holding hundreds or even thousands of "boring apes" BAYC collections. In fact, our intention is for people to be able to access our community using Boring Ape as their own digital identity. So it makes sense that each founder really only has one or two "boring apes" instead of having a bunch. Additionally, as an entity, Yuga Labs currently owns 7 Bored Apes and 10 Mutant Apes The entity has never sold a single Bored Ape or Mutant Ape other than minted NFTs from the primary market ".
Q: For the current encryption/NFT industry, what are you most interested in?
A: We are bullish on an interoperable metaverse. In many ways, the Metaverse already exists, as people have started using NFTs as their cross-platform digital identities. However, the Metaverse still has more room to grow and needs to be further developed and popularized.
Q: Do you have any news to share about the next Ape Fest?
A: What we achieved last year was unbelievable, especially considering that we only had two months to prepare for this win. Immediately after the first Ape Fest, we started preparing for the next Ape Fest, and this time we will go all out. We think it's going to be an incredible experience, and we can't wait to share more.
Q: I have to ask - when will the coins be issued?
Answer: Hahaha! You know, we can't answer that question.
