NFT Universe

Bored Ape Yacht Club: Why This NFT Collection is Worth the Hype

Jack Taylor

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17 articles

10 min

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21.04.2025

The market for NFT assets in 2022 has surpassed the $23.7bn mark, and much of that volume comes from popular collectibles. It is possible that the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection had a big impact on the 2021 and 2022 peaks.

Possessing collection tokens from them at the peak of NFT’s popularity became equal in value to owning paintings by Picasso and Malevich. One example of such HYIP collections is the Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) project.

In this article we will briefly look at what is Bored Ape Yacht Club, the history of the project and explain how Monkey NFT became such a hit in the world of digital assets.

The story behind the creation of Bored Ape Yacht Club: from concept to global phenomenon

The city of Miami, known as the centre of contemporary art, was the birthplace of the BAYC NFT project. Inspired by the hype surrounding the NFT, the founders of the startup Yuga Labs launched the collection in spring 2021. Already at the launch, BAYC managed to raise about $2 million, which laid the foundation for the subsequent rise in token prices.

A prime example of the success was at a Sotheby’s auction, where a set of 107 monkeys sold for a record $24 million. Celebrities who have joined the movement include Eminem, Gwyneth Paltrow, Shaquille O’Neal, Snoop Dogg, Post Malone, Mark Cuban, Steph Curry, Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon.

The four anonymous creators of Bored monkey are hiding behind the aliases Gargamel, Gordon Goner, Emperor Tomato Ketchup and No Sass. The official website of the collective says that the friends just wanted to try their strengths and create something new, which resulted in a unique collection. The project is called Yuga Labs.

Revealing the identities of the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club in 2022

From the very beginning it was known that Yuga Labs Bored Ape Yacht Club was behind NFT, but the identity of the creators remained anonymous. This remained the case until 4 February 2022. That changed when Buzzfeed published an investigation that revealed the names of two of the four creators – Gargamel and Gordon Goner. It turned out that Wiley Aronow and Greg Solano, Florida residents with a passion for cryptography, were hiding behind these pseudonyms.

The article caused a storm of emotion in the crypto community, which perceived the disclosure of identities as an unacceptable invasion of privacy:

The popular De Kobe Show podcast called the piece rubbish and accused BuzzFeed of bullying for traffic and advertising revenue.
Mike Solana, president of venture capital firm Founders Fund, condemned the publication’s action, calling it disgusting and reminding that ‘it’s just cartoon monkeys’ and hardly a reason to violate privacy.
Cryptoblogger and Messari founder Ryan Selkis also criticised the publication, finding compromising information about the journalist who wrote the article.

However, people outside of the crypto community did not see anything wrong with the situation. Gabe Rivera, founder of Techmeme, characterised the article as a normal example of business journalism and wondered why only a narrow circle of insiders should know who is behind a multi-million dollar business. Others pointed out that the journalist had used publicly available data that could have been found by other internet users.

The debate centred around whether crypto billionaires should be subject to the same scrutiny as politicians and traditional businessmen.

The Bored ape NFT developers themselves were not taken by surprise by the news. They took the situation calmly, posting pictures of themselves on Twitter with the caption ‘Web2 vs. Web3 me.’ Subsequently, the remaining two creators followed suit.

Reasons for the popularity of Bored Apes Yacht Club: a combination of visual appeal and proper PR

The popularity of the Bored ape NFTs collection is due to several key factors. Firstly, the visual aesthetics of the tokens played an important role: the bright and stylish images of apes immediately attracted attention. However, a competent PR and promotion strategy aimed at creating a strong community was no less important.

The most important element of success was providing NFT owners not only with beautiful images, but also with membership in an exclusive club. Monkey owners were given access to private parties, forums and other events, giving status and a sense of belonging to an elite group. This unique combination of exclusivity and social value attracted many collectors and investors, which in turn increased the value of the NFTs themselves.

Social interaction within the community also played a key role. NFT monkey owners had access to private chat rooms where they could communicate with other club members, including celebrities such as rapper Eminem, TV presenter Jimmy Fallon and singer Madonna. It was this opportunity to socialise with celebrities and foster connections within the community that helped to build the popularity of the project.

Features of the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection: Uniqueness and privileges

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is a collection of 10,000 unique NFT images of monkeys created on the Ethereum blockchain. When originally sold, each NFT was worth 0.8 ETH, ensuring a fair distribution with no price tiering.

BAYC isn’t just a collection of images – it’s a kind of club card that grants holders special privileges:

Full ownership and commercial use. Owners get full rights to use their monkeys for commercial purposes.
The Bathroom. A graffiti tool available only to club members. Owners can draw or leave writing on a shared canvas open exclusively to wallet holders with at least one monkey. One pixel can be added every 15 minutes.
Offline Meetups and Events. Members are provided with invitations to exclusive meetups and events.
Additional bonuses. New features and benefits for owners are constantly being developed.

To activate privileges, you need to authorise on the project website using your Metamask wallet.

Technical characteristics

Each Bored Ape is represented as an ERC-721 token on the Ethereum blockchain and is stored in the distributed InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), where there is no central server. This guarantees data immutability: the token cannot be edited after purchase and will be preserved as long as the nodes storing it exist.

Each monkey is distinguished by a unique combination of over 170 possible features such as clothing, face, headwear and accessories. The rarity of certain traits increases the value of individual NFTs.

Impact on the NFT market

Bored Ape Yacht Club has had a huge impact on the NFT industry. The success of the project has inspired other teams to create their own collections with unique owner benefits. A key achievement of BAYC was to establish the concept of NFTs as not only digital assets, but also tools to create exclusive communities. This experience has influenced the perception of digital assets and set new standards in the industry.

The purchase of the NFT Bored Ape Yacht Club

The entire primary collection of BAYC has been sold out and the tokens are now only available on the secondary market. Because of their popularity, they have reached high prices. The main platforms for purchase are OpenSea and Rarible. To make a purchase, you need funds in ETH and a wallet that supports connection to decentralised applications (DApps), such as Metamask or Binance Chain Wallet.

Conclusion

We told you what is Bored Ape Yacht Club and how the collection has influenced the crypto industry. The success of Bored Ape Yacht Club is due to many factors, the main one being the mature state of the NFT market seen in recent years. The ability to access exclusive meetups, airdrops and games has shown that the utility and exclusivity of NFTs play a key role alongside their rarity. Using art and modern technology, the BAYC team created a compelling story that led to the revelation of their identities. However, the de-anonymisation was not detrimental: the crypto community continued to support the project and the commercial side remained unaffected.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Bored Ape Yacht Club?

Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique NFT tokens, each with attributes of varying degrees of rarity.

When and by whom was the BAYC project launched?

The project was launched in April 2021 through the efforts of four anonymous developers whose real names were revealed almost a year later.

What is the main idea behind Bored Ape Yacht Club?

The idea of the project is to create a virtual club that can only be accessed by owners of unique NFTs.

What benefits do owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs get?

They gain the right to commercially use images, access to exclusive online events, unique merch, and opportunities to meet like-minded individuals. In addition, NFT can often be resold at a profit.