Beeple will serve as an advisor to Yuga following the incorporation of the NFT firm he co-founded into the Bored Ape team.
The creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Yuga Labs, is not done expanding. After acquiring CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT project intellectual property from Larva Labs in March, the startup announced today that it has acquired WENEW, an NFT startup co-founded by renowned artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann.
Since its introduction in June 2021, WENEW has collaborated with a variety of brands, including Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Playboy, and the Wimbledon tennis championship. The company is particularly well-known for 10KTF, an Ethereum NFT project centered on a fictional tailor who manufactures digital clothing for other high-value profile picture (PFP) projects, like Bored Apes.
Yuga Labs bought the startup, and WENEW co-founder and CEO Michael Figge will become the company’s new Chief Content Officer. Beeple, on the other hand, will work as an advisor for Yuga Labs. Who is best known for selling a single piece of NFT art at auction for $69.3 million in March 2021.
10KTF is a story-driven NFT project based on a fictional “digital artisan” named Wagmi-san. Wagmi-san makes custom outfits that owners of popular PFP projects, like the Bored Apes, Cool Cats, Nouns, Moonbirds, and others, can have put on their own NFT artwork. Owners can also order apparel with their PFP artwork on it.
10KTF has worked with apparel brands like Gucci and Puma on digital fashion projects in the past. Yuga Labs has already hinted that Wagmi-san will be used in some way in Otherside, their upcoming game about Bored Ape. A representative from Yuga Labs told that the terms of the deal are not being made public.
Welcome to the Otherside, Wagmi-san. pic.twitter.com/cNCNTqOd44
— Othersidemeta (@OthersideMeta) November 14, 2022
An NFT is a blockchain token that represents ownership of a special item. This is usually for digital goods like profile pictures, artwork, and collectibles. According to data from CryptoSlam, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most successful projects in the space. To date, secondary sales of the project have brought in nearly $2.5 billion.
Before the acquisition was announced last week, three co-founders of Yuga Labs wrote a blog post with 10KTF CTO Randy “Melonpan” Chung criticizing OpenSea’s position on creator royalties. The next day, after the post was shared, OpenSea changed its mind and said that it will continue to pay royalties on secondary sales.
In March, following the announcement that Yuga had purchased the CryptoPunks and Meebits ip, the business said that it had raised $450 million at a valuation of $4 billion.
FTX Ventures, one of Yuga’s funders, went up in flames last week after the popular cryptocurrency exchange crashed due to a liquidity constraint. On Friday, Wylie “Gordon Goner” Aronow, co-founder of Yuga, stated that the FTX collapse “has not affected us” and that the company has previously withdrew funds from FTX US.
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