Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) — one of the hottest non-fungible token projects at the moment — released its Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFTs over the weekend through a free airdrop to existing Bored Ape holders as well as a public auction of 10,000 Mutant Apes. The price for Mutant Apes started at three ETH, or about US$9,550, but the average price on OpenSea, an NFT resale market, has reached 7.47 ETH, or about US$24,296.
Fast facts
- BAYC randomly airdropped 10,000 “Mutant Serums” to Bored Ape holders on Saturday afternoon, which can be used to generate a new “Mutant Ape” from an existing Bored Ape, while the original pixel monkey remains intact. Furthermore, an ape can “ingest” a particular type of serum only once as a serum is burnt after use.
- The Mutant Apes public auction set off a buying frenzy and raised around US$96 million within an hour. Altogether 10,000 Mutant Apes were sold, at a price that started at three ETH, gradually reducing to 0.01 ETH. The auction followed the rules of a Dutch auction, with prices starting high and getting low. BAYC did this to avoid high gas fees and bidders using bots.
- Unlike many other NFTs on the market, which are often digital art or other collectibles, Bored Apes Yacht Club is both a collection of 10,000 cartoonish ape-themed art as well as a community. Each Bored Ape NFT serves as the holder’s membership card that can grant additional benefits, such as access to the club’s graffiti board as well as the Mutant Serum airdrop over the weekend.
- Out of the 20,000 Mutant Apes now on the market, around 14,400 are currently traded on OpenSea, whose trade volume for Mutant Apes has now reached over US$140 million. Mutant Apes is now the fourth top-grossing NFT collection on OpenSea in the past seven days, and its buyers include basketball superstar Stephen Curry, who reportedly paid US$180,000 for his digital ape.
- Bored Apes, which launched in April this year, has already amassed over US$370 million in sales so far and now ranks fifth in all-time top-grossing NFT collections, according to DappRadar. The higher-grossing NFT collections are Axie Infinity at US$1.72 billion, CryptoPunk at US$1.17 billion, NBA Top Shot at US$672.56 million and Art Blocks at US$558.92 million.
- Mutant Apes Yacht Club is partnering with Polygonal Mind to build 3D models for every Bored and Mutant Ape that can be used in the metaverse as an item in MAYC’s Roadmap 2.0, according to its twitter post on Aug. 30.