Owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) nonfungible tokens (NFTs) — including celebrity holders like Eminem, Steph Curry, Jimmy Fallon and Mark Cuban — are set to receive a brand new token called ApeCoin (APE) as yet another incentive for being part of the exclusive digital asset club.
The developer of the new token is the ApeCoin decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and is notably separate from Yuga Labs.
Introducing ApeCoin ($APE), a token for culture, gaming, and commerce used to empower a decentralized community building at the forefront of web3.
— ApeCoin (@apecoin) March 16, 2022
Owners of BAYC NFTs will be able to claim approximately 10,000 ApeCoin each, but the one billion soon-to-be-released ApeCoin tokens will also be distributed among a series of different parties.
According to the ApeCoin DAO website, 62% of the total supply will be added to an ecosystem fund,14% will be given to “launch contributors,” 9.75% of tokens will be held by the creators of BAYC, Yuga Labs, 8% of the tokens will go directly to the founders of Yuga Labs and the remaining 6.25% is to be donated to the Jane Goodall Foundation, a charity dedicated to preserving the habitats of chimpanzees.
While the token itself remains technically separate from Yuga Labs, the firm is set to fully adopt ApeCoin as the “primary token for all new products and services” that emerge from Yuga Labs. According to Yuga Labs, this includes a yet-to-be-released play-to-earn (P2E) blockchain game that the team at Yuga Labs plans to release later this year with game developer nWay.
ApeCoin will also be used in the upcoming play-to-earn game Benji Bananas, a game from Hong Kong-based blockchain gaming company Animoca Brands, that also owns nWay.
1/ @animocabrands has proposed AIPs 4 & 5, these are live on Discourse for viewing. AIP 4 covers a novel staking mechanism to reward @apecoin and BAYC ecosystem NFT holders. AIP 5 proposes the size of the staking liquidity pools – 17.5% of the total token allocation over 3 years
— Yat Siu (@ysiu) March 16, 2022
Co-founder of Animoca Brands and ApeCoin DAO board member Yat Siu told Cointelegraph that ApeCoin is a step forward in the progression of NFTs.
“ApeCoin a token that represents the zeitgeist of NFTs today. It is, in a sense, the expression of the current culture of NFTs.”
He stated that ApeCoin is set to become the “Dogecoin of NFTs where the utility is community created and community valued.”
Siu is optimistic about the future of ApeCoin, but noted that utility would be provided straight away through games:
“ApeCoin itself has some starting utility, which will kick off with games and more to come. The benefits will be the creative energy that combines this mix of technology and culture that the BAYC community has kicked off already which will reach much larger audiences due to the fungible and transferable nature of ApeCoin.”
Related: Gaming industry to have a ‘blockchain-connected’ future, studio execs say
Since launching in April last year, Bored Ape Yacht Club has grown to become on the highest-profile NFT collections and continues to add high-profile celebrities to its owners list, now including Paris Hilton. Last week, Yuga Labs acquired two of the other largest NFT projects, CryptoPunks and Meebits, expanding its dominance over the burgeoning NFT market.
According to the official website, ApeCoin will be available for purchase on all major exchanges.
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