summary: Yuga Labs is a leading company in the NFT space, best known for launching the leading NFT project, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). 
content: Yuga Labs is a leading company in the NFT space, best known for launching the leading NFT project, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). Founded in February 2021, the company has quickly gained influence and success by onboarding celebrities and broadening the community, reaching a company valuation of $4 billion by March 2022. Overview Yuga Labs was founded by Greg Solano, Wylie Aronow, Kerem Atalay and Zeshan Ali previously known by their pseudonyms, “Gargamel '', “Gordon Goner”, "Emperor Tomato Ketchup" and "Sass" respectively, and is incorporated in the state of Delaware in the United States. The company's first NFT project, BAYC, became extremely profitable in a short period of time, with initial floor prices of $240 reaching over $137,000 in just a few months. In 2021, Yuga Labs also launched two spinoff collections, Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), which quickly gained value on secondary markets. In March 2022, the company expanded its portfolio even further by acquiring CryptoPunks and Meebits and also started their expansion into the metaverse by the launch of Otherside. The team behind Yuga Labs, which includes diverse backgrounds and full-time staff working on various aspects of the BAYC ecosystem, aims to be a community-owned brand that provides world-class gaming, events, and streetwear. History On April 18th 2021, shortly after creating their twitter account, the announcement of the release of the Bored Ape Yacht Club's NFT collection was tweeted. On April 23rd 2021, their presale went live, where buyers did not get to see the appearance and features that their NFT possessed, making it a relatively unsuccessful presale launch. Following the announcement of the launch of their project, there were 3 puzzles posted on their website where the first person to solve the puzzle would win 1 ETH and 2 runner-ups winning an ape each. On April 30th 2021, the BAYC collection was released with 10000 bored apes minted for around $200 at the time and completely sold out by May 1st 2021. On June 18th, 2021 BAKC was launched with 10000 dog NFTs as companions for the bored apes. On August 28th, 2021 MAYC was launched with all 10000 Bored Ape holders receiving an airdrop of Mutant Serums so that they could receive the mutant version of their ape, and also released 10000 brand new Mutant Ape NFTs that were available on the market. On December 13th, 2021, a partnership between BAYC and Animoca Brands was announced for the creation of an NFT integrated game. !image On March 12th, 2022, Yuga Labs announced that they have IP (Intellectual Party) rights for both CryptoPunks and Meebits NFTs, granting commercial rights to the community. On April 24th, 2022, Yuga Labs released Otherside, an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) that integrates NFTs to allow up to 10,000 players to interact and communicate with each other in real-time. On November 14th, 2022, Yuga Labs has announced that it will acquire WENEW, the parent company of the 10KTF collection. As part of the acquisition, digital artist Beeple will join Yuga Labs as an advisor, and WENEW CEO Michael Figge will become Yuga Labs' chief content officer. Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano stated: “Figge, Beeple, and the WENEW team have been successful in creating a serialized story for web3 and tapping into the popularity of digital avatars and customization.” On October 13th, 2022, Yuga Labs announced that it would donate $1,000,000 to support the growth of arts and education programs in Miami. As part of this pledge, Yuga Labs started by donating $300,000 to the Venture Miami Scholarship Fund, which provides free tuition to students in Miami studying STEM subjects at a local institution. Following this, on November 15th, 2022, Yuga announces that they will donate CryptoPunk 305 to Miami’s Institute of Contemporary Art on December 2nd, 2022, marking the start of the “Punks Legacy Project” - a movement to expand the display of CryptoPunks and NFTs in art museums all around the world. On December 5th, 2022, Yuga Labs was featured on Coindesk’s Most Influential 2022, as Nicole Muniz, Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow were announced as the three to share the spot for 2022. The Start of BAYC and Yuga Labs Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow met on spring break in Miami in 2011. Both had grown up in Miami but didn't meet until then, as Greg was attending college in New York and Wylie was in Chicago. They discovered that they had mutual friends from when they were about 15 years old, and met at a bar that their friends frequented. They ended up having an argument about a book called "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace, which Wylie was obsessed with at the time. This disagreement on the book actually helped to start and grow their relationship, as they "became sparring partners of ideas", says Greg Solano. They also became closer through playing World of Warcraft, an MMORPG. They were both already really big MMORPG fans with Greg being into Everquest and Wylie playing Star Wars Galaxies. In 2017, Greg introduced Wylie to cryptocurrency, as he had been aware of it since high school in 2009. That year, they became interested in CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties with Wylie's first NFT being a Crypto Kitty. However, they saw flaws in the NFT project, including a lack of a strong storyline and a solid scarcity model. In early 2021, they became interested in a project called Hashmask, an art project being published on the Ethereum network. Greg, understanding the project better, realized that publishing an NFT on Hashmask didn't require a broad technical skill set and suggested to Wylie that they create an NFT, which Wylie agreed to. “i texted him like hey let's make an nft and he immediately was like let's f\\\\\\ go“ - Greg Solano on Nelk Boys podcast. This is where they began “bouncing around many ideas” for an NFT project and finally had an idea where owners of an NFT would be able to drop their NFT on a collaborative artboard - creating a single art piece, made by multiple people. With this idea, they reached out to one of Wylie Aronow’s friend, Nicole Muniz who responded with ”you're kind of an idiot because the very first thing that someone's going to draw on this pixel board is going to be a d\\\”, which ended up being true. This comment gave them the idea of creating the current BAYC "BATHROOM" as they thought inappropriate, graffiti-like drawings reminded them of bathrooms in bars. The initial idea of the 'Bored Ape Yacht Club' emerged when one night, Wylie wrote Greg an essay about an idea he had involving the imagery of New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He described an exclusive club he would want to be part of, which inspired the "Yacht Club" part of BAYC. The "Bored Ape" part came from their view of certain crypto personalities as bored individuals who would "ape" into cryptocurrencies and communities without doing the necessary research. Realising that the pair needed more help on the technical side of things, Greg called Kerem, a friend that studied Computer Science, asking if he knew any Javascript who then quickly noticed that it had “nothing to do” with Javascript. From there, Gordon says that they, “just contacted any friend we knew that studied computer science in college basically and was like let's put together a team for this”, which is where the 4th Co-Founder, Sass joined. The four then “worked nights and weekends” to build the foundation of the project and Wylie says that “they (referring to Tomato and Sass) came in more as engineers we (referring to himself and Greg) came in more from a creative and strategy perspective but we kind of met all on the same page with everything before launching”. Founders' Identities Revealed On February 4, 2022, the identities of the team behind the Bored Apes were revealed by Buzzfeed. They were Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow. Up until the BuzzFeed article dropped, most people only knew them by the handles they use online — Solano is Gargamel, after the villainous wizard from The Smurfs, and Aronow is Gordon Goner, a punk-inspired name — and their corresponding Ape avatars. The same went for BAYC's other two co-founders, engaged in the technical side of things: Zeshan Ali, who went by No Sass, since shortened to Sass, and Kerem Atalay, who went by Emperor Tomato Ketchup, a name taken from an album by the Anglo-French indie pop band Stereolab. All four of them wanted to stay incognito, so in their minds, Solano and Aronow were being doxxed by the Buzzfeed article, because Ali and Atalay’s identities were not revealed in the piece. Solano and Aronow decided it was best to "doxx themselves" first by tweeting out their photos. Four days later, Ali and Atalay posted their first names and photos of themselves on Twitter to have more control over the narrative. After the doxxing, the Co-Founders felt as if they had no control over their identities which led them to hiring a PR firm as they wanted to find the best outlet to publish their side of the story and "take control of the narrative". The PR firm then connected Yuga’s PR team with the Deputy Editor at Fast Company, David Lidsky where David and Yuga’s PR team met for the first time. After this, there was a second meeting consisting of the same people that met the first time around with the addition of Nicole Muniz and Connie Lin and Yaz Gagne, Staff Writer and Associate Editor at Fast Company, respectively. The team at Fast Company started working on the story behind Yuga Labs in early July 2022 and on Octo