secondary title
01. Yuga Labs tries to distance itself from ApeCoin
Yuga Labs tried to distance itself from the elaborate ApeCoin marketing campaign, but was actually deeply involved.
ApeCoin is directly related to the Boring Ape NFT, and is also closely related to the Boring Ape NFT development company Yuga Labs, which manages the intellectual property rights of the Boring Ape NFT. However, Yuga Labs has gone to great lengths in its marketing campaign to disassociate ApeCoin from itself.
ApeCoin officially defines ApeCoin as "a community-led decentralized protocol layer that pushes culture into the metaverse.secondary title
02. What is ApeCoin?
ApeCoin is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain. Over the past year, most Ethereum-based social tokens have been built using this framework. (FWB, for social club Friends with Benefits and WRITE, for Web 3 crowdfunding platform Mirror.)
Unlike NFT, ApeCoin, like Bitcoin, is a "fungible" homogeneous token. The value of any ApeCoin is the same as other ApeCoins, and everyone can freely buy and sell ApeCoins on exchanges.
secondary title
03. Who is the driving force behind ApeCoin?
According to the news introduction on ApeCoin official website,ApeCoin was initiated by ApeCoin DAO, a decentralized organization composed of all APE holders. ApeCoin DAO aims to put forward proposals from the community, and then ApeCoin holders can vote on the community.
In addition to the ApeCoin DAO, there is also a foundation called the Ape Foundation that handles the day-to-day management of the ApeCoin DAO, proposal management, and "other tasks of ensuring that the ideas of the DAO community receive the support needed to realize them."
A subcommittee of the Ape Foundation will also serve as the "Board" of the ApeCoin DAO, overseeing certain proposals.The initial board is made up of five high-profile crypto investors: Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Maaria Bajwa of Amy Wu Sound Ventures who leads the venture arm of crypto exchange FTX, Yat Siu of Animoca Brands and Dean Steinbeck of Horizen Labs. Each board member will serve a six-month term, and the ApeCoin website promises that DAO members will be able to vote on future members.
At the same time, Cartan Group, a consulting company headquartered in the Cayman Islands, also participated in the ApeCoin project. ApeCoin signed a 6-month contract with Cartan Group.Five positive improvement proposals for Ape, all proposed by Cartan Group co-founder Brian Tang.
So, outside of the ApeCoin protocol (the code behind the ApeCoin token), there is the Apecoin DAO, the Ape Foundation, and the ApeCoIn DAO Board of Directors.
However, ApeCoin was not developed by a community of Boring Ape NFT investors. There's a black hole at the center of this galaxy of apes, who put it all together?
The main company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club is Yuga Labs, a traditional entity registered in Delaware, USA. According to reports, Yuga Labs is negotiating with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) to value it at $5 billion. Recently, Yuga Labs has acquired the largest NFT project CryptoPunks, becoming the first major NFT monopoly enterprise.
Yuga Labs is also responsible for all major projects and acquisitions related to Bored Ape Yacht Club. If you want to cooperate with Bored Ape IP, you must do it through Yuga Labs.
"Yuga Labs will continue to be a builder of products and experiences that bring new ideas and energy to the community," Nicole Muniz, CEO of Yuga Labs, said in a statement. Yuga Labs has presented a special token to the ApeCoin DAO Treasury. To one NFT, and plan"Adopt ApeCoin as the main token for all new products and services", which links the value of ApeCoin to the entire Bored Ape NFT.
Nonetheless, Yuga Labs insists that it is not responsible for ApeCoin.
secondary title
04. ApeCoin token distribution and airdrop
ApeCoin's distribution model makes things look complicated.
62% of the total amount of ApeCoin is allocated to NFT holders and DAO treasury.In the first 90 days of ApeCoin's official release, anyone who holds a combination of NFTs from Bored Ape Yacht Club and its two derivative series, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Bored Ape Kennel Club, can claim a certain amount of APE from ApeCoin's website Token airdrop.
Because APE has a discrete value and is already traded on major exchanges, claiming these token airdrops is a bit like claiming free money. For every person who owns a Bored Ape, 10,094 APE is awarded. At top price, that's about $280,000. So far, NFT holders have claimed more than 100 million APE tokens.
Another 38% of ApeCoin is set aside for "initial contributors," and the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation, which supports (in real life) bush primate conservation efforts.
Yuga Labs will receive 150 million APE, of which 10 million APE (“or equivalent”) will be donated to the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation. An additional 140 million APEs will be distributed to “companies and people who help make this project a reality,” likely including members of the Yuga Labs team. Among them, 80 million APE are allocated to the founders of Yuga Labs.All of these tokens are "locked" for the first 12 months, so holders cannot cash out directly, preventing price drops.
secondary title
05. Is it legal for Yuga Labs to do this?
It depends on whether ApeCoin DAO is completely independent from Yuga Labs,If Yuga Labs explicitly issued tokens as rewards to Bored Ape holders, it would be easier to consider purchasing Bored APe NFTs as an investment and therefore subject to securities regulation.Much like the way some stocks pay dividends, part of the value of investment NFTs is tied to issuing token airdrops.
Since ApeCoin is ostensibly initiated by the ApeCoin DAO and not from Yuga Labs, there is a specious deniability to Yuga Labs.A separate entity (i.e. ApeCoin DAO) distributes tokens to the Yuga Labs company and its founders, not Yuga Labs and its founders themselves invest.
Of course, traditional companies do this all the time, through initial public offerings of stock. The difference is that ApeCoin offerings are essentially unregulated, as in the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission still does not regulate NFTs. At least for now.
According to Rohan Gray, a Willamette University law professor and crypto regulation observer, the difference between ApeCoin DAO and Yuga Labs may also have to do with the so-called Hinman Test. The Homan test is named after former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) official William Hinman, now with Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z). Hinman's idea is that,If the governing body is "sufficiently decentralized," it can issue tokens for free without registering them as securities. ApeCoin DAO is (at least nominally) decentralized while Yuga Labs is not.
Rohan Gray said, “This is the next attempt by the crypto world to circumvent securities regulation. First, tokens. The SEC proposed regulatory policies in the 2017 ICO report, so it turned to stablecoins, and then the SEC suppressed them. So now it's turned to NFTs."
secondary title
06. What can ApeCoin be used for?
At present, ApeCoin mainly exists for DAO speculation and "governance", but Yuga Labs has great ambitions for this token.
A mobile game called Benji Bananas, developed by Animoca Brands (whose co-founder Yat Siu is on the board of the Ape Foundation), is using ApeCoin as an in-game token.25 ApeCoins can buy a Benji Bananas membership pass, which allows you to earn "special tokens" in-game. These tokens can be exchanged for ApeCoins.
Presumably, this is just the beginning of an entire ecosystem powered by ApeCoin: Yuga Labs plans to use APE as the actual token for all of its new projects. This is also part of the consideration of legal regulation - if more things can be done with tokens, the greater the chance of evading the supervision of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Telegram: https://t.me/zebra_ventures
To contact the author and enter the community communication, please add WeChat: Notaganster. Follow more cutting-edge investment research information and market information, please follow our media:
Official website: https://zebra-vc.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZebraVentures
Telegram: https://t.me/zebra_ventures
