Author: Katie Notopoulos
Compilation of the original text: Deep Chain Finance Tanker
"Boring Ape" BYAC is one of the most popular NFT series in the current encryption market. Many celebrities have replaced their social media avatars with BAYC to express their support for this project. However, the founders of BAYC have remained “invisible” to this day, and many fear that there will be no accountability if something goes wrong with the project.
Reality TV star and socialite Paris Hilton was an early entrant into the NFT space, selling blockchain art she created back in 2020, and she appeared as a guest on "Jimmy Faeron" in January. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and showed off his Bored Ape #1294, an NFT worth about $287,000 at the time. In fact, even Jimmy Fallon himself is a fan of Bored Ape, revealing last November that he had purchased Bored Ape #599 for $224,000 and tweeting to his 51 million Twitter followers Fans showed related pictures, and Jimmy Fallon also tweeted "Is boredom allowed?" It is said that Jimmy Fallon has now started researching "mutated apes".
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is an NFT series created by four anonymous co-founders. In the fast-growing encryption industry, BAYC has attracted the attention of many people in a short period of time. Recently, the floor price has exceeded Rival CryptoPunks. It has been reported that Yuga Labs, the company behind BAYC, is negotiating with Andreessen Horowitz, a well-known venture capital firm, and is expected to complete a financing at a valuation of up to $5 billion.
At this stage, there are two main profit models of BAYC:
1. Initial sale through "Boring Ape" NFT (approximately $2 million);
2. Collect 2.5% royalties through "boring ape" NFT transactions.
Not only that, in the real world, BAYC has signed licensing agreements with big companies such as Adidas, and has also participated in the concert activities of Chris Rock and Strokes. Frankly speaking, in the NFT market, some people are excited about BAYC, while others are skeptical about BAYC. In fact, this complex sentiment is common in the NFT industry. For example, supporters believe that NFT has created a level playing field without race and gender to revolutionize art and business, while critics believe that NFT is a speculative bubble, and may even be a field scam.
As the value of BAYC assets soared, the identity of the founder of the NFT project has also become the focus of intense attention. On the other hand, people's views on the BAYC project itself are mixed. It has been pointed out that the "boring ape" wearing street-style clothing and gold teeth is a racist trope (which Yuga Labs vehemently denies), while others have suggested that BAYC's creator, Asian-American artist Seneca ( Seneca) was not adequately recognized and compensated, although Yuga Labs CEO Nicole Muniz claims that the five artists who originally created "The Bored Ape" BAYC were paid more than $1 million each. (As of now, Seneca has not responded or commented on the matter).
But, like many people, as a multi-billion dollar company, one question always comes to mind:
If you don't know who the founders are, how do you hold them accountable if things go wrong?
But now, American Internet media and entertainment company Buzzfeed has dug up the identity of the two main co-founders of BAYC, respectively: Greg Solano, a 32-year-old writer and editor, and Wylie Aronow, 35, from Florida.
first level title
BuzzFeed uncovers the identities of BAYC's two core founders by searching public business records
Until their identities are confirmed, we only know the aliases of BAYC's two anonymous co-founders as "Gordon Goner" and "Gargamel". According to public records, Yuga Labs, the company behind BAYC, was incorporated in Delaware, USA, and the place of registration was related to Greg Solano, while other records showed that Gref Solano was closely related to Wylie Aronow.
Eventually, Yuga Labs CEO Nicole Muniz confirmed the identities of the two and admitted that they were the co-founders of BAYC.
The two anonymous co-founders of BAYC were previously interviewed by media such as Rolling Stone, Coindesk and The New Yorker as "Gordon Goner" and "Gargamel". According to the content of the interview, we found that Gref Solano and Wylie Aronow There are too many similarities in the experience——
Both are in their 30s, met growing up in Florida, both have literary aspirations (one completed an MFA in creative writing, the other dropped out for health reasons), both are interested in the crypto industry and want to create some sort of NFT gather. So they came up with the concept of "Boring Ape" and hired a freelance illustrator to draw these "apes", and then worked with two engineers to build a whole set of NFT series, these two engineers are also "Boring Ape" BYAC Co-founders, but their identities are still unknown, only known as "Emperor Tomato Ketchup" and "No Sass" respectively.
Greg Solano (aka "Gargamel") worked as an editor and reviewer for several literary sites, attended the University of Virginia, and previously co-authored a game book about World of Warcraft with a game designer.
Wylie Aronow, who is also from Miami but has since lived in Chicago for a while, was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune's Reader of the Week when he and a friend were asked what they were reading. Wylie Aronow replied that he liked Russian authors. Translated by Nikolai Gogol.
first level title
Why dig up the real identity of the BAYC co-founder?
In the Web 3 world, it's common to launch projects under pseudonyms. In a circle centered on cryptocurrency and NFT, everyone recognizes the concept of decentralization and believes that this will be the future development direction of the Internet. Supporters of Web 3 believe that there are many ills on the social platform centered on Web 2. For example, former Twitter employee Holyn Kanake (Holyn Kanake) pointed out that encryption and Web 3 communities do not need to use their own legal names. This can reduce harassment, but at the same time she also believes that project founders who use pseudonyms need to be responsible for the reputation of the blockchain industry.
On the other hand, the concept of "playing" with identity has always been a source of creativity for NFT artists. As an example, a famous NFT artist using "shl0ms" previously sold an NFT image showing details of his real identity - but all of this information was written in illegible white font and has not yet been released. people crack.
However, regardless of the artistic value, the reason for "picking out" the founder behind BAYC is that this NFT project is attracting investors and running a company that may be worth billions of dollars.
As NFTs continue to expand into pop culture and Web 3 becomes more mainstream, there will undoubtedly be economic and legal issues with running a company under a pseudonym, as those who use a pseudonym are dealing with "real money" (and lots of real money).
In the traditional business world, company CEOs or founders must use their real names and not pseudonyms, and especially for public companies, executive names must be mentioned in SEC disclosures and reports. For smaller private companies, banking regulations and know-your-customer (KYC) laws also require banks to use real names for loans or accounts held for the company. The purpose of this is simply to prevent terrorists, criminals or sanctioned countries from operating in certain jurisdictions.
For now, the resumes of Gref Solano and Wylie Aronow are considered legal (except that Wylie Aronow once fought a lawsuit), but we cannot guarantee that there will be no problems with other NFT projects. For example, the project founders have A long criminal history or extreme political leanings, if they don't disclose their identities, it will certainly be unfair to investors who spend huge sums of money on the product if something goes wrong with the project.
Gary Kalman, director of the U.S. office at advocacy group Transparency International, explained:
"It shouldn't be hard to know who you're dealing with, it's actually a pretty basic thing. While a flower VC might be able to learn more about who's really behind a company, the average NFT holder can't." No. Without transparency and openness, ordinary people simply can’t do due diligence like big companies, and there will undoubtedly be problems in the end—the key point is that there is no reason for the project party not to disclose their identity.”
Some believe that blockchain heralds a new and improved form of corporate transparency. In this regard, Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks and owner of two "boring apes" NFTs, said:
“Yes, we can hold the project accountable because all transactions are based on smart contracts and written to the blockchain, which is the opposite of traditional business. But the question is, which NFT collectible companies will publish all of them Sales and business processes?"
Of course, using pseudonyms to create NFT projects may become a reality that the encryption industry has to face.
Soona Amhaz, a partner at crypto venture capital firm Volt Capital, believes that using a pseudonym to create an NFT project is not necessarily all bad. Unlike starting a business in a traditional market, using a pseudonym allows founders to get rid of investors’ judgments about their appearance, school location, social class, gender or race. Investors should learn how to conduct due diligence on project founders who use pseudonyms. Soona Amhaz explained:
postscript
postscript
Just after Buzzfeed announced the true identities of the two co-founders of "Boring Ape" BAYC, "Gargamel" and "Gordon Goner", it caused dissatisfaction in the encryption and Web 3 communities. appropriate news". Cobie, a well-known encrypted Twitter "big V", directly pointed out that Buzzfeed is "typical garbage" in his tweets. The related report is "doing human flesh searches on the parties for clicks and advertising revenue", and Messari founder Ryan Selkis also expressed his disapproval of Buzzfeed's behavior. got angry.
Original link
