Three of the biggest properties in the NFT universe now have the same owner.
On Friday, Yuga Labs, the creator of the hugely popular Bored Ape Yacht Club, announced that it will acquire CryptoPunks, one of the oldest and most lucrative crypto-art entities, along with the popular Meebits series.
The announcement marks one of the first signs of a major consolidation in the NFT world. Imagine if Delta announced it was buying American Airlines and Southwest to boot.
Yuga Labs, which was founded less than a year ago, purchased the intellectual property of the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections from their creator, Larva Labs. Yuga Labs also acquired 423 CryptoPunks and 1,711 Meebits from Larva Labs’ stock as part of the deal. The total value of the transaction was not disclosed.
“Yuga Labs are the best in the world at what they do and are the ideal guardians of Crytopunks and Meebits,” Larva Labs co-founders Matt Hall and John Watkinson said in a statement. “In their hands, we are confident they will continue to be vital and thriving projects in the emerging decentralized web.”
One of the biggest distinctions between the owners of BAYC and CryptoPunks to date was that the former owned the copyright to their NFTs, allowing them to profit from the art and make derivatives, while the latter did not. . Following the acquisition, Yuga Labs plans to transfer IP, commercial and proprietary licensing rights to individual NFT holders.
Hall and Watkinson, two Canadian bitcoiners, created CryptoPunks in June 2017. Each of the 10,000 unique characters is a 24 x 24 pixel avatar whose individual traits (mohawks, sparkly eyeshadow, eye patches) are algorithmically generated. The value of the character is determined by the rarity of its characteristics.
Larva Labs released 9,000 Punks for free to any Ethereum user willing to claim them, while keeping 1,000 for themselves. (This is essentially how they got paid for their work on the project.) In the years that followed, CryptoPunks’ popularity skyrocketed, as did their value on the secondary market, where total sales reached $2. .2 billion, according to OpenSea.. In June 2021, a single alien punk sold at Sotheby’s for $11.75 million. Owners of the characters include celebrities Jay-Z, Serena Williams and Snoop Dogg.
larval laboratories, Meebit #6337 (2021). Courtesy of Christie’s.
Meebits, the highly anticipated sequel to CryptoPunks by Larva Labs, was released in May. It’s 20,000 3D voxel characters, also created by a custom generative algorithm. In nine months, they generated a total of $244 million in sales, according to OpenSea.
CryptoPunks and Bored Apes had a different path to monetization. Yuga Labs receives a 2.5% royalty on each sale of Bored Ape; to date, Bored Apes and their associated characters (Mutant Apes and Bored Ape Kennel Club), have generated nearly $2 billion.
Larva Labs, meanwhile, put its eggs in the IP basket, signing with Hollywood agency UTA last summer. He also generated money from his stockpile of punks and Meebits, which he would strategically sell. The IP address and many stored NFTs now belong to Yuga Labs.
The founders of Yuga Labs said they had no clear plans for their new NFT properties beyond “giving people their IP address, seeing what they’re building, and listening.” Holders of CryptoPunks and Meebits will soon receive new terms and conditions for their NFTs, according to the announcement.
Yuga Labs was founded in 2021 by Miami-based crypto enthusiasts Wylie Aronow and Greg Solano. The duo operate under pseudonyms, but their identities were revealed by Buzzfeed in February.
The news of the acquisition immediately served to increase the prices of the three collections at a time when the war in Ukraine had caused NFT prices to drop significantly. Less than two days after the announcement, the floor price (or lowest price) of a Bored Ape rose by more than 30%, to 97 ETH ($250,000). The floor price of CryptoPunks jumped 11%, to 75 ETH (about $195,000), and that of Meebits jumped 32%, to nearly 5.6 ETH ($14,500).
For more on Yuga Labs, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and their future in the NFT space, read our deep dive into Artnet News Pro.
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