Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club is entering into metaverse

Yuga Labs, creators behind the popular ape avatar collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is now stepping into the world of metaverse. This company’s metaverse project is named Otherside, which intends to connect its massively multiplayer role-playing game into the broader NFT universe.

See you on the Otherside in April. Powered @apecoin pic.twitter.com/1cnSk1CjXS
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) March 19, 2022
The trailer starts with a BAYC ape fishing a pool of water. The ape sees a bottle labeled ‘DRINK ME’. He obliges and finds himself surrounded a bunch of visitors. These visitors are apparently reference to other popular NFT ape collection: Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats, CryptoPunks, CrypToadz, Meebits, Nouns, and World of Women.
In an interview with The Verge, BAYC co-founder Wylie Aronow said that their goal is to create “an interoperable world” that is “gamified” and “completely decentralized.”

Yuga Labs is also integrating with other game studios to enable this metaverse project.  This became clear after blockchain metaverse developer Animoca, famous for The Sandbox metaverse, tweeted that it was entering the BAYC universe: “Animoca Brands is excited to announce that we’ll be adopting @ApeCoin for the secret project we’ve been developing with @BoredApeYC.”
Apecoin, the coin tied to BAYC NFT project will be the official currency of the Otherside metaverse. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the company raised funding of $450 million, bringing the company’s valuation to $4 billion. This funding featured major crypto players, led a16z, with participation from Animoca Brands, Coinbase and MoonPay. Chris Lyons, general partner at a16z, is joining Yuga Labs’ board.
Earlier last week, Yuga Labs announced acquisition of NFT collection CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs.The company now owns 423 CryptoPunks and 1711 Meebits.
On March 11, when the Yuga Labs, creators of BAYC NFTs announced the acquisition, a single piece of BAYC NFT was being sold at $1,85,363 (roughly Rs 1.41 crores) or 73 Ethereum in cryptocurrency. However, after the announcement the price soared to 89 Ethereum which is $22,5991 (roughly Rs 1.72 crores), according to CoinGecko market cap tracker.
Bored Apes and CryptoPunks NFT collections are the most sold NFTs. Both the collections hold a combined worth at a minimum of some $3.6 billion at current prices.This acquisition does not mean that co-founders of CryptoPunks and Meebits are joining Yuga. They’re going to continue running Larva Labs and will keep doing what they are doing.