---
title: 'Yuga Labs CEO Reveals What''s Next for NFTs'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=KjBoZ_vLSFw'
video_id: 'KjBoZ_vLSFw'
date: 2026-08-01
duration_sec: 3001
---

# Yuga Labs CEO Reveals What's Next for NFTs

> Source: [Yuga Labs CEO Reveals What's Next for NFTs](https://youtube.com/watch?v=KjBoZ_vLSFw)

## Summary

In this interview, Crypto Gorilla sits down with Figgy, the newly appointed CEO of Yuga Labs, to discuss his journey from live-event creative to NFT pioneer, the creation of 10KTF, and his vision for the future of Bored Ape Yacht Club, Otherside, and the broader NFT ecosystem. Figgy reveals upcoming drops, the three strategic pillars (IRL, storytelling, and style), and how Yuga is rebuilding trust and momentum in a challenging market.

### Key Points

- **Meet Figgy, new CEO of Yuga Labs** [00:14] — Interview with Figgy, CEO of Yuga Labs, covering his NFT origin story and the company's roadmap.
- **Pre-crypto creative career** [00:27] — Founded a live-event creative company in 2010, working with pop stars, e-sports, and fashion shows from LA.
- **Beeple's sale ignited the NFT cycle** [01:24] — Witnessed Beeple's record-breaking NFT sale up close, which shaped his belief in the tokenization of memories.
- **Tokenizing memories** [03:12] — Explored ideas like tokenizing Michael Jackson's moonwalk or the moon landing, going beyond NBA Top Shot-style cards.
- **WENEW's supply problem** [03:54] — Founded WENEW to package famous moments on-chain, but celebrities were hesitant to tokenize personal memories, creating a supply bottleneck.
- **From virtual shoes to 10KTF** [05:42] — Rendered Air Force 1 shoes for all 10,000 Bored Apes on Twitter, which went viral and led to the pivot into 10KTF.
- **10KTF = 10,000 True Fans** [07:30] — The name comes from Kevin Kelly's essay '1,000 True Fans'; 10KTF linked multiple PFP communities into a meta story.
- **Black swans and Yuga's tough period** [09:03] — FTX, Celsius, and other black swans crushed the market; Yuga had to unwind complexity after being overvalued on royalty promises.
- **The 'Web3 Disney' mismatch** [10:38] — Having vast IP like CryptoPunks and Meebits in a tiny space meant every community expected attention, making wins hard to celebrate.
- **Rebuilding Otherside** [11:49] — A year ago, Figgy decided to focus on the Otherside story and turn it into a persistent, continually shipped world.
- **Otherside is now open 24/7** [12:59] — The persistent version is live — no NFT required, just an email login; Amazon was the first partner drop.
- **Daniel Arsham drop details** [13:26] — The second partner drop is 300 pieces at ~$200, raffle-based, and expected to be one of the biggest drops in a while.
- **Three strategic pillars** [15:04] — Figgy outlines focus on IRL events, storytelling (anime, lore), and style (merch, physical marketplace).
- **Why IRL beats Discord** [15:43] — One good in-person event strengthens token bonds more than a year online; it reveals the people behind the PFPs.
- **Anime as canonical lore** [18:13] — The anime will serve as BAYC's storytelling foundation and a Trojan horse to onboard mainstream audiences.
- **Storytelling over AI** [20:58] — The pillar is storytelling, not AI; audiences reward effort, as seen by low engagement on AI-generated Roblox worlds vs. handcrafted assets.
- **Peer-to-peer marketplace for physical items** [23:54] — Launching in early May to let fans trade sold-out Yuga merch securely, solving the eBay/StockX resale problem.
- **Floor price mindset** [26:16] — Figgy watches the floor as a community metric but focuses on what the team can control: shipping quality products and staying EV-positive.
- **Fresh holders bring optimism** [30:22] — Thousands of net new unique holders across mutant and other collections show rotation and new energy, not trauma-dumping.
- **Grails OTC desk** [31:29] — Started after collectors asked for off-market grail purchases; the OTC desk connects serious buyers with unlisted holders.
- **Otherside as UGC platform** [35:19] — Inspired by Warcraft III's custom maps that spawned Dota, Otherside is opening its assets and SDK to third-party developers.
- **SDK with massive scale** [38:06] — Otherside's network stack supports thousands of players per instance vs. the typical ~100-player Unreal cap, enabling large social events.
- **29 biomes and 200+ communities** [39:14] — Otherside has 29 distinct biomes (lava, ice, etc.) and over 200 communities that have already created drops and avatar accessories.
- **Raffle weights for drops** [40:07] — Entry weights balance passive holdings (e.g., Kodas, Bored Apes) with active engagement like reaching level 40+ in Otherside.
- **Platform, not just a game** [43:58] — Otherside includes social features like Bubbles (3D Twitter Spaces); Yuga is delaying user acquisition until retention and product quality improve.
- **ApeCoin remains the core** [46:12] — ApeCoin is the currency of the realm, though Figgy says he wouldn't close off future network effects.
- **Steady growth philosophy** [47:11] — Figgy prefers consistent floor growth with a strong unique-holder count over explosive but unsustainable pumps.

## Transcript

drop in a while. >> Would Otherside ever have its own coin? marketplace. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another Crypto Gorilla interview. Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Figgy, the CEO of Yuga
Labs. Figgy, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. >> Yeah, this is our first time chatting, so I'm going to discover a lot about you and everything going on at the same time as the audience. So, let's just jump
right into it. Uh maybe we can start by a quick like TLDR of your history in NFTs, a little bit of like 10KTF, Otherside leading up to now CEO of Yuga Um Well, I didn't I've been doing this
since about 2020, but you know crypto curious since well before then. And um before I jumped into Web3, what I was doing was I was I was working in creative field and based out of LA. Um as you can see from a bunch of the
stuff. I founded a company in 2010 that specialized in like live event creative. creative cuz there's like a lot of people that need to take whatever their somewhere. And so I'd help them translate those
ideas and that range from like pop stars uh to e-sports to fashion shows. There's a lot of people that need to take their brands and turn them live, right? And um at at the time one of the people who uh I worked with for um
we kind of like grew up in the industry together was Beeple. together was Beeple. And um Beeple had his like big sale and um it was crazy having front row seats to see that whole situation happen. Like
basically the rise of like that NFT cycle kind of stemmed from, you know, that Nifty Gateway moment all the way through you know, that Christie's moment. And um so we we were having dinner one day
in March. We were having dinner in January uh here We were having dinner in January uh here actually at the studio. And um Shot. You know, we were talking about Top Shot and how it was a concept around
like trading cards, but it's all virtual. So, it's like basketball cards. it, um is this idea of like you could take moments in the NBA game, LeBron's dunk and stuff, and you could trade it. And um so we were talking about how that
was a pretty novel idea cuz it's kind of like tokenizing memories and like you're basically trading memories, right? Like that abstraction was wild. Um usually when you're trading like a baseball card, you kind of forget
already that like what you're actually trading materially is like ink on abstraction's that's way gone. You know, this stuff, it's way more about the emotional intent.
And I thought, "Wow, that was a crazy new medium. You could take snippets in and they could be part of somebody's life that they do editions of." Cuz are, right? Like you're taking the likeness of a person and trading it.
Um and so we thought, "Well, you could do that not just with NBA moments. You like you could do that with like the moonwalk. Go to Michael Jackson's stay. could go, you know, landing on the moon and stuff." So,
we kind of had this like crazy idea, but never really act that was January. Didn't really act on it. And then, you know, once that moment like we could be on like the precipice of something really different here. Like
we're just at the start of what this thing could be. And so like, "Well, so what do you think could happen in the space?" That was like the you know, Beeple and his art, which of course is like super famous and
of artists and like he's one of a kind. Like there's nobody like him. space could go, we thought like the tokenization of memory and like how could it advance beyond basketball trading cards.
connected with a lot of people. Um so we started a company called WENEW, uh W E N E W. And um one of the things that it did was people, like, you know, like the Michael
to figure out how we can like package their moments and sell them on the blockchain. What's funny is I thought we would have would have to actually educate more people about like the idea of collecting
What we wound up having, and I think why we got stuck with that idea, is we wound up having a supply problem. I I was talking to like 40 different people. And like I was on the 1-yard line with everybody and nobody wanted to
close, right? Like nobody wanted to put their memory on the blockchain. Like we had a couple of really big we had like um Wimbledon did one with us. We did Tom did one with us. Like we had a couple people wanting to try it, but the
if it's your own memory, is like a very complicated thing. you know, it's weird because like in my old life I had like I give you a sense of it like I was working with the biggest pop stars
in existence. Like in 2019, I was looking after Ariana and Childish headliners, right? Like I have a line waiting list of people that wanted to work with me. And here I come into
crypto and this is just like I think it's a good humbling thing. It's like oh, nobody wants to work with me here. Like nobody knows who I am. And like that's something you're just going to have to like be fine with.
in my frustration, you know, one of the things I saw was like there's a cool you got the shoe in the background. But they were doing something where they were wrapping like CryptoPunks to like an Air Force 1.
I know how to do that. I bet I could do that with all the Bored Apes." like my first NFT was a Beeple, and my second was a Bored Ape. I wasn't a minter, but I was very swept up in the PFP scene. I
thought whatever Yuga did was really cool. Um is magical, actually. Um and then I just was looking at this Air Force 1 like I I actually know how to do that cuz my background's in like
CG animation and stuff. I could do that, you know, PFP wrapped to a shoe, but I could do it for all 10,000 shoes, like 10,000 Bored Apes. So, I did that and I because I've got like a whole render farm and everything.
And I started this thing where on Twitter I would tell people um I'll give you your shoes. And somebody would say their ape number, "Hey, you're 3784." And then like within 1 second I had their shoes ready. It's cuz I had
folder. I just drag and drop it. I didn't use Twitter in like 13 years at super deep in Crypto Twitter. I probably should have been. Um and what wound up happening was like
Twitter has like a 1,000 DM limit in a day. Like you can only DM with a And the network effect of like the Bored Apes sharing their shoes with more Bored their shoes, like it just exploded my DMs in like 30 minutes or an hour or
something crazy like that. Wow. So, I was like, "Oh, there's something team and I was like, "I did this thing over the weekend and it kind of popped off." And our head of product was like,
in this other thing, we should try to just like go all in on on that cuz that's where the energy is." So, we kind of completely pivoted everything into that idea, which was a
10KTF came from. It really the name of it, I know it's like, "Oh, there's all these letters, 10KTF." It's really like 10,000 true fans. And it's based off of a Kevin Kelly essay that talks about the early internet and that
because you don't need to be a Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift or somebody with millions and millions of fans. You just need to find your thousand true fans. called A Thousand True Fans. And when we looked around on Twitter, we were like,
"Where are the people active in crypto?" And we're like, "Oh, there's not just a fans at a time. There are all these different communities." So, 10KTF was a project that's like a community of communities. It linked all of these PFPs
together into a meta story. And that's kind of how I got started in the space and, you know, stories like Otherside for instance really resonated with me because that was the same idea. It was a community of communities. And um that's
how I got my start in the space. So, uh kind of a wild ride, but that's that's the origin story. I like that your I mean, your first NFT was Beeple, but then your your second one I guess is Bored Ape. So, it's like
full circle now uh with everything that's happened with Yuga. So, then it it recently more recently you've been working with Otherside. And now your focus obviously is is all of Yuga. Um maybe you can lead us uh to that story
of the Otherside, what you're working there, and then what led to you taking over the role as CEO and Gargos focusing more on the Bored Ape Club side. Um you know, I think there was a period of time, so you know, Bored Apes had
this huge like shoot up and then the space in general. I mean, we had like nine black swans in a row, right? We had like FTX, we had Celsius, we had all like kind of a not great conclusion last cycle. And as
so do uh the alternate assets that are in digital assets like like NFTs. And um we have over time seen a And um we have over time seen a concentration of that capital to what we
them. Um and over that time I think, you know, Yuga Yuga had its own bumpy path, you Yuga Yuga had its own bumpy path, you know, we were we were valued uh based
off of royalty stream and the the promise of Otherside and and what that And when you raise at those kind of valuations, like one of the same things bring in the best people that money can buy, right? Like you go out and you get
the very best pedigrees. And I think so on paper like that's that's everything that, you know, the original team was doing was getting the best people in there on paper. But I think, you know, as I as I work more in this
space, it's really important like I think authenticity is more important the company has to know how to trade NFTs. Like if they don't, it's not going thing. And um I think we kind of like
weren't weren't succeeding in the way that uh people that were at Yuga. I think we kind of like got in our own way at And that's not a secret. Like I think the rest of the space kind of saw us
struggle with that. Another part of it was uh we were often called the Web3 Disney at the time. But I think that that was a mispattern match. Like got like Pixar and Star Wars and all these things. But in Web3,
you know, we had CryptoPunks and Meebits. We had just so many IPs and like Web3 is such a small space. Everybody needs their cult leader. And like if we would deliver for one community,
"But what about us?" Yeah. And even though we had like leads on every project, it was sort of like hard to celebrate even wins that we would get uh because there was so much uh more that was
expected. And even when you set goals for yourself, it was really hard to achieve those goals cuz your focus is so diffuse, right? And so we kind of took a step back and the founder of the
company, Gargamel, one of the founders, stepped back in to take us kind of back to basics and unwind a lot of the complexity that we were mired by. rebuilding. And
a year ago, I really looked at, you know, what we were doing and I said, "Look, the only way that like a lot of the efforts that we're making make sense is if we take the Otherside story and we actually build on it. And we we make it
And so that's what I was working on for the past year. It was basically taking Otherside from this thing that, you know, had a bumpy road in the past that I should say myself like as somebody who wasn't
into the vision of Otherside, right? a lot of Yuga assets. And so I was trading ApeCoin. And then after the ApeCoin at like $25 or something. So I had, you
just kind of like buying all the way down was like getting such a deal. Every time there was a dip, I would just buy that dip. So like I too am in the position that a like a lot of frustrated, you
"We need to go do this thing though cuz that's what a lot of people bought into." So that's where I kind of like took my think we've really turned around what Otherside is and we've got it like going
on as a persistent world. I've got it on back here that people can they always even while I'm in these interviews and stuff. Like people will try to have a And uh we're continuing to build out more of that um
to the extent that we we actually like launched the persistent version of it live. So you can go in 24/7. You don't need an NFT. All you need is like an and you can go visit it. And we partnered with Amazon as our first drop.
And our our second partner drop is going to be with Daniel Arsham, which is and next week. It's going to be like the biggest drop in a while. It's only 300 pieces, around $200. But it's going to be very very very like coveted as an
object. So, you know, we've really worked over the past year to turn around where it's like shipping something every week or every 2 weeks. And you can feel the progress on it. And now with this role at C as CEO of Yuga,
I plan on taking that same operational discipline over to all of Yuga. now. Cuz I really do think like BAYC is a thing that can create such an outsized signal
that like the space really needs that. When people can see how loud BAYC gets, products, all of our tokens, all of our And it helps everyone else's, too. So that's really where my energy is today.
Obviously, I work out concentrically from there, but that's the plan. especially with all the acquisitions Yuga was doing. I remember even when they had Punks, everyone was like, "Do not give Punks utility." I feel with
Otherside, with everything that happened, um they kind of got added to this big basket and almost in my opinion at least lost their identity. So I like now that there seems to be this clear line where
it's like, "Hey, this is the club to be a part of." And it really feels like you are going to be pushing that club forward. You've highlighted three different pillars that you're going to be tackling: IRL, storytelling, and
style. Uh the first one, IRL, I mean, even even throughout the bear, year. So you guys were still keeping the IRL going. Now there's going to be the club in Miami. Um I'm also seeing a lot It's I feel like it's a resurgence
unless I just wasn't seeing them in the posts of of the country clubs, I call them like Bored Ape Canada. I've been to a quite a few Bored Ape Canada dinners, which I believe were funded uh by Yuga. If not, whoever did it paid for my
dinner. Thank you very much. Um so I imagine those are the three things going to be other IRL event, maybe more ApeFest per year uh that we could look >> I would I would put, you know, ApeFest, clubhouse, meetups like all under the
IRL pillar because I even though we're in a trustless, decentralized, you know, borderline crypto libertarian movement sometimes where people, you know, want to preserve their anonymity,
have a good in real life event, it's better than a year on Discord. Like I think it actually makes these token bonds that much stronger. And when I was looking for the answer within myself. And I think like being able to
meet with people in real life and meet the people behind the PFP went a really long way. And those those relationships are some of like nowadays. I'd also add, you know,
that, you know, in trying to do a lot of different things and trying to go like online only with some activations or even like going to gaming with activations, like
the meetups became less of a focus for us to organize centrally. And I think that local chapters weren't getting the support they needed. And this was no fault of, you know, a leadership inability to see things. I
focus is pulled in 30 different directions, sometimes it's hard to see But for me, when I was going back to basics, you know, I was so AI is really I'm like I went to an OpenClaw meetup in LA. And
there. I was like, "I haven't seen these guys like in a while at the at the even LA I was like, "Oh, why don't I see these people
like at the LA meetups?" And I think part of it is just like like this is a this is a message to return. Like why isn't there a Bored Ape like get-together for all of us
meetup. We should just like fire up a flare and be like, "Hey, let's all go to this thing together." Cuz that's what a club should do. Club things, right? And um so that's that's one of the reasons why we're focused on the IRL
counterintuitively, I know we're like living on Crypto Twitter and the actually think it's a virtuous cycle that supports that other stuff. traveled in the past 4 years outside of Web3 events, which I need to take a real
vacation. But my first ApeFest, I'm I'm rocking the hoodie, uh my favorite >> a hoodie. Yeah. And like you said, putting a face to to single day. Some of my best friends I met on Discord. Uh so glad all that is
the Miami uh meetup. Uh the second pillar is the storytelling side. Now you guys are working on an anime. anime. Um we've seen a lot of NFT projects try this. It's It's a lot of
similar to a game, I mean, less work than a game in my opinion. But uh it than a game in my opinion. But uh it takes a lot of time. But we're seeing projects like Saiop anime, you know, they're cranking out videos. I find
consistent. The voices and everything. And that's utilizing AI. So you just said you're already working with AI. Are you guys going to integrate AI into the faster so it doesn't take I don't know how long it takes to make a single
Uh is that something you guys are looking into? supports the production, we'll consider it, you know? Like I think when you know what you want to do, like a traditional animation pipeline isn't isn't that
background. Um and you have a lot more control. I also think that like we have to really be thoughtful about that aspect of it. Look, I I love AI, but I'm not going to lead with like,
"And you all have to make it an AI mandatory." Like that's the production I don't know. It's like telling a cinematographer what like kind of camera they're supposed to Just like if there is a benefit to it and if it improves
the production in some meaningful way over a traditional method, then we should consider it. But otherwise, I have found that while a lot of developers or, you know, producers love AI,
AI, I don't know if audiences love it yet. Right? Like and I think that if they can't tell it's AI, if if there are with like flushing out matte paintings or backgrounds, but whole cloth AI, I
you know, I think there's a little bit of a ways to go. I'll give you an example like you see something on Roblox for like like, "Hey, I made this I made this whole world in an hour with AI." And
it'll get like almost no engagement. Mhm. But then you'll see somebody post Mhm. But then you'll see somebody post like, "I hand crafted this asset process." And you'll see it with like 4,000 likes. Mhm. I feel like people who
have to part with their money want to know that effort was put into for. And like that's different than like me as a developer as a producer or as, you know, a filmmaker wanting to leverage AI
with something like certainly, you know, I I I've been using C dance, you know, and this like an incredible model, but I think part of it is like we always This is why the the pillar is called storytelling and not AI, right? Like
it's IRL storytelling in in style not IRL AI in style. Like storytelling should use the very best tools to get us there. If it's, you know, augmentation of traditional pipelines around the way
What's the goal of the anime? Is it Is it more to reach the a mainstream audience? Is it IP growth? What's the Yeah. Yeah, I think um you know, it it is novel to have like an IP like Bored Ape
get as big as it did and the foundation of it is, you know, 30,000 JPEGs like character drawings. Like that's not a typical thing that an audience a mass And it takes some level of onboarding. When you're in it, you're trading NFTs
everything. But most of the time mainstream audience that. Like this is something that I firmly believe in. We all have something
the amount of people we could care about in the world. Right? Like and it's you wrote down every single person that you care about and interact with on a have like tens of thousands of followers or whatever on Instagram. Like you can
only really care about like 300 people at a time. This is like a biological But humans are able to organize beyond that number. Much bigger numbers beyond that number. And the theory behind it is it's because like we've used stories,
whether it's like politics, religion, like we we convey stories that organize us through stories. Uh the messages is that organize us through stories. So, you know, I think that the anime is
going to be the type of canonical lore for the Bored Ape Yacht Club that helps That helps people look at um and and access something that they crypto thing. I would never understand that or I don't have any interest in
it." I think that it is one of the greatest Trojan horses to go after now and we're one of the few teams with like the resources to actually like be able to entertain that on a long pole, but things like the anime, you
know, Ape Fest, the clubhouse, they're very long builds. So, you need a mix of long builds things and then stuff that's like you're shipping it every month. You're shipping it every week. You need kind of a hybrid and the best version is
these long pole things can kind of like help at servicing both. You could show show some of the the like building public type attitude. Mhm. Yeah, I mean I mean I remember the trailers for Otherdeed and that would
those. So, yeah, I can't wait for the anime. It really People do get an attachment to it to these characters to um I mean I'm looking forward to it. Uh the third pillar is style. I got a little bone to pick here. I showed up
late to the hat sale. It sold out. Where are the Where are the hats? Can we expect more soon? Well, I don't want to I don't want to do anything to like affect the hat market, right? But this is a hat here.
We are launching a peer-to-peer marketplace. Um this is going to come is like normally when we sell out of something you got to go to eBay or StockX. Yeah. But, you know, in thinking about that that's actually like a really
disjointed experience for most people. It's great to like push that off the platform, but like what we can do is kind of give people a place to do kind of verify transactions. And so, if something is out, you'd be
able to like more accurately like get your hands on it. There are some things some things we'll do another run of, but we we try to make that call up front stacking and collecting based off of those ideas. So, this peer-to-peer
marketplace is going to open up next week. Probably beginning of May. and yeah, the goal there is to facilitate people being able to trade, you know, physical objects as well because we've
to be able to like surface those to people who want to collect everything. pictures. You have two right now on the website and they're limited to a 100 supply. And I saw a post about that like, "Hey, there's only 100 of these.
You better grab them before uh before they sell out." Um the other one I want is the hoodie, too. The the zip-up like OG logo on the back, but it they're sold out in my size. Would you ever bring back a non-zipper hoodie? I've always
want to order it on eBay cuz I'm scared I'm just going to get a fake. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think what we're focused on is like if you look at the called the essentials collection and that that stuff will probably restock
basics, right? Like you want to make sure that you have something comfy that's not super opinionated that you can wear in a essentials collection is that and we'll probably restock that. But if it's if
it's a collab or a run that we did back in the day, chances are we probably won't put that up again. I don't I mean it's it's probably dead stock and so peer-to-peer marketplace is going to be so good because there are people that
have that their inventory. And there's there's going to be a secondary market that we can like help like facilitate a little bit better so that people could get their eyes on even the OG ones. Mhm.
to it. Uh let's jump into the NFTs a little bit here. Um weird question. I don't know I don't know how you'll We'll just see. You don't have to answer it. Uh as a founder, like I mean I've spoken to a
lot of founders um and I feel sometimes they feel on top of the world. best and then next day they've done nothing, floor price is down and scammer even though literally they they did nothing. Like they're just trying to
Ha. Do you think of the floor? Like is that over or you're just like, "You know what? It'll It'll It's the market is the market and I can't control it." Yeah, I have to look at the floor. Like I don't
I don't usually tweet about it, but I have to look at it because I think it's an important metric for our community. That said, can control is the ability to show up and make sure that we are shipping stuff
That is kind of being EV positive to potentially members outside of our community who would want to join in both inside and outside of crypto. And I think that as long as you kind of push
that and you do that the best you can, then people will stick with you, you already been through a lot of that stuff. I've been through that kind of stuff, too, where like it's it's silly. Like you know,
I've worked in the creative field for a long time. And this is the first industry where like whether or not the Strait of Hormuz is closed down like affects your daily livelihood, right? Like we're
so tied to the financial markets of the world. And if uh suddenly everybody has tariffs, like there is not There's no product you can roll out that's going to be able to like, you know, stop a macro force. Macro forces are so strong.
But I do think that as consolidation happen, as people try to position themselves for the next move cuz this I I really do believe everything is still cyclical. It's everything that I've seen in life is cyclical and this is
cyclical, too. That people will basically allocate their capital based the bear market, too. even though I look at things like the floor and I understand our standing in
it, you can't really change that as much. You have to focus the team on what they can change. You know, and and that is really where I think I'll personally have the most impact because
one of the things I want like Yuga to be known for during my time running it is I want it to be the least bureaucratic place ever. Like if you have an idea and ship it and it's a good idea, go do it. Like less red tape. Just make it happen
And I think that if I create that signal and I talk to people that way, they'll understand that this is probably of all the places that you could, you know, allocate capital to or start collecting from,
that we are one of the most trusted names in the in the field. And there are but I say that we are one of the best venues where people should put their goal is. Mhm. I feel for me, I mean I'm I'm a
trader first. You know, I I I've no no shame in saying I flip stuff. I uh I'm here to make money like anyone else. Um but what when it comes to apes, I feel that price it was something, you know, 100K the meme of if you don't have a
100K PFP don't at me. Like seeing apes at crazy prices was a thing. And now especially whenever you hear in the mainstream about NFTs, they always bring thing. You guys are still the face of NFTs. I saw last week some channel uh
ColdFusion, 5 million subscribers, he made a video about NFTs out of nowhere show the the Jimmy Fallon, power Paris Hilton. They talk about Justin Bieber. It was once worth a million dollars, now it's worth this. So, it must be hard to
not Like how could you not think about floor? You know, it's Yeah, but I think negativity, that kind of like grave dancing and stuff. I've seen that with Bitcoin, too. Like I've seen that with a lot of other assets and like
you know, if they're for engagement saying Bored Ape Yacht Club 24/7, like mean? Like you can say it all you want. You can keep trying to dredge stuff up. But here's here's a a positive I'll tell you. One of the reasons why I was like
optimistic that there is an important but bumpy path here, but it is it is a path forward is that I looked at unique holder accounts on like mutants, for of people that have rotated in, thousands of net new holders.
And whenever there's something about the past and people say like, oh, but this and it's it was down and and uh you know, it's this thing was supposed to happen and it didn't. A lot of the new folks are like,
hey man, please don't trauma dump onto me. Like I'm new here and I kind of want and I'm ready to contribute. And so I think like that is the best tone that you think there's going to be a major turnaround, that's the type of signal
seeing with the Bored Ape Yacht Club. I Yeah, the vibes are definitely back. Uh people are excited. I mean, whenever price goes up, people get excited, that are leading this, right? We saw
in the in the past few weeks were up like 2x. Uh people are really excited and I feel part of it had to do with Like you guys never spoke about floor, you never said anything, but you started obviously the post about the the CEO and
the focus on Bored Apes as a club was a great signal. But then also, you know, you speaking to buyers who are looking for grails. You guys opened the or you're opening the OTC desk. You you got the sales bought back up. To me, that I
view that as a signal as like, hey, we know like we this is important to us. about the floor, I'm just like, dude, that's you don't care about my well-being. It's my money that I'm thinking about 24/7. Like um So, for me,
that was a really good signal and I'm seeing other NFT projects now trying to to rush and do similar because you guys, the leader, have said, hey, apes are back. Uh so, I really like that, personally.
and like that's one of those ideas that came from just being in the trenches, collectors that Friday after So, it was like I announced being CEO on Thursday and then on Friday I was talking to them
vision, same way I'm sharing it with you right now. And kind of by the end of it, man, maybe it's time to buy a grail, like a grail grail, right? Like maybe it's time I like move on this cuz I do feel like
things can come back and you are saying like the right things. should I buy? And I was like, well, these are the ones, you know, that are And they were like, yeah, but I don't want those ones. Like I want this other
I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. That's like off market. It's a grail, listed. And that's, you know, I thought about that have like you know, 50, 100 ETH that they want to
it. It feels like an obvious problem as like able to like start something to solve that. And so like, hey, is there anybody that is holding
beans or whatever that you haven't listed it, but you'd be open to a conversation. open to a conversation. And so similarly, if you're in the same
grail like these other people, just like let me know. And like my inbox again got like, okay, like we need to actually start quick fix thing. This is actually something that there's like
people want this. So, that's how we started Grails OTC and we're seeing like collecting cuz people are tired of talking about the floors, man. Like they want to talk about ceilings, right? Like they want to talk about like how big can
this go? And I think that that has really also brought a focus back to, you know, the traits and the story within within the club. And like, well, so okay, why is that trait seen as more rare than
this other trait or more desirable? And like, what makes a good mutant? And want if you really want people to fall you want people that could connect for an emotional reason. And so, I think
it's been really positive and it I do think it's part of what has had an trick. Like it's it's just a lot of these things put together. It's just building bullish momentum for people that might be like yourselves
who are traders or flippers or people who are brokers or market makers. Like uh make some money on things and they they're in and out of positions. You're looking for that kind of motion and I
motion. Agreed. Yeah, I mean, I like seeing I was looking this morning on my stream at the OpenSea activity. I filtered it by the OpenSea activity. I filtered it by 100k sales and if you go back a a month
CryptoPunks and art. And now we're just seeing so many Bored Apes uh with these that. Uh for me, that was a very positive thing. Uh I want to jump a bit into uh Otherdeed. Um maybe lay out that vision for us as a
game. I'm not sure if you've seen it's called Sandbox, but it's like S and Box. It's launching to or tomorrow, yeah, April 28th on Steam. Uh and it's going to be, you know, user-generated content. You could build worlds, you
could earn from it. Uh but it it's locked within Steam. Like I can't get my know, the meme NFTs fix this. Like, hey, NFTs fix this. Uh how are you guys Otherdeed and what's your vision for it?
you've created or is it all going to be created by the players where I can does that work? And then maybe we jump into how the NFTs, the Otherdeeds and Kodas tie into all that. Totally. So, I I actually think we have
saying. Like the reason why people bought it and collected it and going on this whole time because like they are being traded. There is no, you now based off of like their inherent utility.
utility. So, people are positioning right now. Um and I think that when you say resources and artifacts and there's Kodas and and different sediments, the expectation is there's some sort of
game around those resources, right? And so like that's what the team is focused on and we're aiming at that. Um that is one component of this world. that I always bring up is like Warcraft
But Warcraft III had a whole campaign mode and it had like its own point of view on like, how do the trees work in this world? How do the archers system. But they also had this other thing
called use map settings. And use map settings was like kind of you could just game. And you'd get games like uh protect the man or like tower defense games that you would build in kind of like a UGC environment.
And uh from that came Dota, Defense of the Ancients. definitely spent way too much time playing it. I have the GPA to prove it. I have definitely affected my school studies. But like when I
when I see how popular that was and then they made Dota 2 outside of the Warcraft ecosystem. And then also they made League of Legends outside of the Warcraft III ecosystem. And both of those turned out to be multi-billion
dollar franchises, right? It is clear that while the first party the creators uh opinion on this world really matters and the resource game matters and all that stuff, we need to have
stuff, we need to have um an angle of regard that is open to outside developers, you know, garage tinkerers that want to take the same resources or, you know, sorry, assets of the world of Otherdeed, I should say,
and take those primitives and kind of like personify them in their own ways. development kit. It's kind of like an SDK. Basically allows you to go in and make anything you want that's possible in Unreal. And what comes with it is our
network stack. So, like what's really interesting about Otherdeed is like you hundreds and thousands of people inside any one instance of the game. Like that's that's unique, you know? Uh most other Unreal setups to cap out about 100
players. It's like a it's a technical limitation. We are the platform where you can do thousands. And so for social things, it's really strong, you know? Like there's just this past weekend, we had like a 300-person
Otherdeed. And we do things every Saturday. So, I think that it's both a combination of what we put our opinion on as like a first party developer, but also making sure that third party developers are able to take these assets
amortize them in new ways. Cuz we're making a big investment into these like, you know, create an environment for their own community and theme it, that's another thing. Like
some of these other digital social spaces, they're kind of vanilla with their opinion, you know? It's just like land. But Otherdeed has 29 different biomes. It's like very different types of land. So, there's a lot more hooks
for it. So, you might want to get like a lava land or ice land and like get something that kind of like matches with your experience and build on that. So, Otherdeed. That is also a long pull thing. But, you know, I'm I'm pretty
stoked to see on other side how many people are building things and we've got the Daniel Arsham drop this week. Um, keep your eye out on the other side account for more information. And uh, yeah, just this past week we had
the the highest weekly active users since launch. So, we're actually seeing like really durable retention there and um, I can't wait to continue working on where we could really open the spigot and turn on like user acquisition.
does that drop work? Yeah, so, you know, there's not going to be enough inventory for everybody that wants it. Um, but that's that's not a the case in collectibles, especially if you like create enough demand for it and
Um, so the price point's $200 and it'll have to be a raffle. But the way that that raffle works is like you kind of you enter into it and so you you basically only have like this week to to
get your entries in and I believe. And [clears throat] weights. One weight is like what do you hold, right? Well, I have a mega coda, I a board ape, you know, like there's what
you hold as your NFTs and you get a certain weight for that. But then there's also like are you participating? Like there are people inside of other side that are grinding beyond level 40 and if you're grinding beyond level 40
at some point, like that is worth as much as passively holding some of these other assets. And so we've created a system that balances both engagement actively and then engagement passively to make sure that people have like a
their holdings. At least that's the probability. So, um, anybody can actually enter. You don't need an NFT to enter, but you do other side. So, you need to play for a little bit to get like your entry in,
but that's that's just a new endpoint because we think we want to like bring in more activations like that that bring in like, you know, either a cool distribution partner or a cool artist to make more collectible objects inside of
I like that idea. I recently entered a raffle for the um, Riftbound, the League of Legends trading card game and I lost and I'm mad I'm like, I wish they connected it to my account. Look how much I play still to
this day and be like, hey, this guy deserves to win. He's like he's grinding every day here. Uh, so I really like that idea. As a as a player, am I able to create my own drops? That's one thing in the sandbox I saw some devs already
they're trading for decent money. Uh, but again, all controlled by Steam and collections out of nowhere if they decide to. Uh, is that something I'm going to be able to do and do I need to collect resources in game in order to
craft or to create my own items to sell or trade with other people? complexity that gets added later on, but to keep it simple, it's like we right have formed and they've done their drops, whether it's ETH mainnet or
ApeChain and like we recognize those tokens and if the builders of those tokens create 3D avatars, we link them in other side. So, right now actually I'd say like the biggest
signal we're getting in other side is that we have over 500,000 unique avatars in other side and over 200 communities that have either done a drop, maybe it's free, maybe it's a sale, but there are people in addition to that
accessory systems for their own avatars, right? So, they're like swapping out shoes or swapping out attributes on their avatars. And so, people are we try to like be as permissionless as possible also
within reason though because, you know, like if somebody's like stealing an IP use it, we have to respect that stuff, but other than that, you know, we we try to keep it everything, you know, just as as broad as possible because it just
new going on there and it doesn't look like anything else that has happened Like you would think, oh well, I already have my avatar. Why do I need like 30 Collectors collect, man. Like people just like collecting stuff and like they
of that community. So, when they participate in that community's events, avatar um, and and feature that community. you know, if the game is a success,
imagine it's still a lot of web three players. Yeah. What do you imagine the the web two success, how long do you see that? Games take way longer than any web like, oh, you drop an NFT, next day game's done. No, stuff takes years. Oh,
yeah. And I think like maybe game is too constricting too. I think like platform the way like Twitter and Discord are are probably like more apt ways to think about it because like there are games, yes. Like there have been activations,
but I also think like features, we have a feature called bubbles in other side. And bubbles is basically like it's like Twitter spaces, but in 3D. So, like like 300 people in a bubble and we're talking to each other, but we could see
And like that's not a game, but that is platform feature. And uh, I think there's a ways to go. Like we we are again one of the few people that have the resources to
continue building that and building like the network effects that more features offer. Uh, we can continue building that for some time. Um, do it. Obviously, you know, we want to
be at a place where we're creating a lot of signal. It's just that like I don't think currently right now and at least for the next few months at the very least that pushing on UA is a good ROI cuz like when you push for user
acquisition, there's a certain customer acquisition cost and there's a certain acquisition cost could wind up being quite high and retention quite low right now if we were to like, you know, drop a million dollars into it. I think it's
the product and make the product better because at a certain point you can get a feature set that like leads to potentially organic growth. And I think resources and again, it's because because we have the resources to do
that. I think we have to plan long-term and like that's the way to do it. But, certainly like we need to be in a different place a year from now than we And I already think today we're in a different place than we were a year ago.
like I don't think it's at the point where we should be funneling like tons and tons and tons of UA money yet. We need we still need to continue working on the product and making it sharper and sharper.
Uh, is I know it's powered by ApeChain and ApeCoin. Would Otherdeed ever have Ape that's the main coin for Otherdeed? Ape is the coin of the realm and so we've been building the ecosystem around Ape and that is that is the main focus.
You know, I think that the theories around what coins are and what they can Um, and so I wouldn't close off any future network effects, but like that's not really the main focus right now. I think
Ape is really the main focus and until there's like a net new utility or a major shift in perspective that becomes obvious, I think that's the best place to put our attention because like it is servicing a lot of what we needed
And as soon as you catch that new narrative shift, like I think that's energy both ApeChain and ApeCoin. back to the I know we wanted to stop talking about floors. We'll talk about
talking about floors. We'll talk about ceiling. What's your your target ceiling one. I don't want people to be, oh, he said it's going to be this price. No, no. What I what I have in mind?
No, what I can say is like I want I want certain conditions to be healthy. Like I don't think um, I want to see unsteady growth. I think steady growth is really key. Like again, one of the things that I am
really bullish on is the number of unique holders, right? That means that a lot of people have one. And as the price goes up, you know, Like maybe somebody needs to pay off like a student loan or they want to buy
something and it's like yeah, they might go and do that, but also if it's the only one they hold, it's a lot harder to let it go. And so I I would I really like to see that unique holder number just as strong
like doing our meetups right, doing a lot of that stuff right. I think you need to see that number hold steady along with the growth of the network price of the floor. Like I those are the things that I think are important over
Um, I'm you know, big pumps and then, you know, retraces, but like over time that's the behavior that we're looking for. And then
think like I do think that the Bored Ape Yacht Club is a thing that has broken through into the mainstream. And I want the that
so that's less qualitative, but like I things that we accomplish and like that's a really important target for me to hit. Love it. Well, I look forward to hearing
you taking the time to do this interview with me. Appreciate everybody for you have anything you want to leave people with before we go? Yeah, that's it. I mean, stay tuned for the Daniel Arsham drop and keep your eye
on Bored Apes. There might be a meetup near you. So, if this is something that even be happening with stuff that you might be interested in anyway. Like I meetups. Like Bored Apes might just show up to that stuff. So, if you're in
communities where people are gathering, see if there's a way for Bored Ape Yacht Club to get involved and um, we hope to see more people join the club. Thanks so invite, man. Uh, yeah, anytime. I would love to do
for watching. We're going to end it here. here. Thanks.