Bored Ape Yacht Club Raises $450M To Create MMORPG Metaverse

Yuga Labs announced today that it has raised $450 million in funding at a $4 billion valuation! The team behind Bored Ape Yacht Club plans to use the money to create their own NFT empire.

The announcement comes just weeks after Yuga Labs acquired CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs. The acquisition made three of the most lucrative NFT collections under one roof.

In addition, the company also launched a cryptocurrency called ApeCoin last week. The token will be their primary currency, giving its holders a way to voice out their opinion on Yuga Labs’ properties.

Bored Ape Yacht Club Will Create ‘Otherside’ — A Broader NFT Universe

The team announced that their project Otherside will be an MMORPG that will connect the broader NFT universe.

According to Wylie Aronow, co-founder of Bored Ape Yacht Club, they hope to make an interoperable world that is gamified and completely decentralized. “We think the real Ready Player One experience will be player-run,” he added.

CEO Nicole Muniz stated that Yuga Labs partners with a few different game studios to bring Otherside to life. The game is not just for Bored Ape holders. The company plans to create tools that will allow NFTs from other projects to work inside their metaverse.

Web3 projects have been taking over the space lately. However, Yuga Labs thinks other companies have the wrong metaverse ideas.

Yuga Labs co-founder, Greg Solano, said that people won’t bond from spending time together in the same virtual space with nothing else to do. Instead, he says, people bond when they’re in a position where they need to collaborate.

“You only play with people and make friends because you’re getting your ass kicked,” Solano says. “Basically, we don’t think deep social experience comes from essentially a Zoom chat and walking around saying ‘hi.’”

Yuga Labs did not provide a timeline on the release of Otherside.