Yuga Labs heads to the metaverse

NFTs aren’t going anywhere, and Bored Ape Yacht Club is testament to its success. Now, the company behind the Bored Ape collection is building its own metaverse.

The year of Yuga

While cryptocurrencies have been making a storm, 2021 wasn’t quite the year of the doge. NFTs rolled around with a whole lot of hype and ‘What actually are NFTs?’. And while there’s just as many questions as there are answers, it’s clear NFTs are here to stay.

Yuga Labs is the creator of the well-known Bored Ape NFT collection – you know, the ones where the apes look bored – and is currently valued at $4 billion. Having managed to whip up around $450 million to build its own metaverse, Yuga Labs has its sights set on bigger and more meta things.

Hello from the Otherside

Bored Apes are a status symbol. Who remembers Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton awkwardly discussing their own collections? Sure, it might’ve made us all cringe, but they’re far from the only ones that have bought into the hype. And now, after dipping into the crypto world with the launch of the Ape coin, Yuga Labs is going one step further and creating Otherside – it’s very own metaverse.

According to a leaked pitch deck from the creators, the expectation is to bank $178 million off land sales this year. A quote from the deck claims that Otherside is “a metaverse that makes all other metaverses obsolete”, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes next in this move that looks to evolve art collections into ecosystems.

Whether it’ll be a game, or just an extension of the NFT market, remains to be seen. But one thing’s for sure: the team at Yuga Labs sure know how to make rich people spend money.