The Ape Saga; a Road to Accrued Profits or An Overselling Financial Mistake?

However, like cryptocurrency projects, NFTs are also encountering their share of scams. The Evolved Apes project recently proved that NFTs are not immune to rug pulls. The anonymous developer, Evil Ape, vanished with 798 ETH worth $2.7 million, as revealed in the traces of transactions discovered later. The funds came partly from the initial public sale of the NFTs and others commissions on the secondary market.

These events, coupled with the expensive nature of Ape NFTs, leave the question of whether they are a safe road to accrued profits or just an overselling financial mistake.

Evolved Ape Red Flags

Notably, the Evolved Ape project lasted only a week, but several red flags had already manifested. First, the announcements following the public presale were unprofessional, plus a couple of the project leaders were not part of the project anymore. The fallout resulted from the scam, although claims had it that they lacked experience at the time.

Second, it had emerged that the winners of the social media competition involving a marketing activity to create a buzz for the project were yet to receive their NFT prizes, and the artists had also not received payment. In the wake of these findings, the community members on Discord embarked on a mission to figure out what happened about the project and chose Mike_Cryptobull (not his real name) to lead the mission.

Cryptobull, the appointed fact-finding mission leader, had spent three ether buying 20 Evolved Apes and eventually gathered information on what transpired in a report. According to the report, Evil Ape, the developer, washed his hands of the project and vanished with the wallet holding all the ETH meant for all payments. From paying for the marketing, the giveaways, game development, rarity tools, the artists, and everything.

Lil Baby Ape Club NFT Collection

Lil Baby Ape Club NFTs mimic the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club and is a project of three NFT creators from Russia. However, barely five days after the three Russians published the project on blockchain on November 8, 2021, another project with the same name launched. Forensic investigations from Canadian NFT collector, Roh, reveal that the projects share the same artwork across their 5000 Baby Ape NFTs.  

Roh, the Canadian investigator, came across the Lil Baby Ape Club and even acquired three baby apes, oblivious that it was a copy of the original project. However, while on the community’s Discord the following day, a post appeared from the actual creators, claiming their project got ripped off.  Surprisingly, the message swiftly disappeared in less than half a minute. Roh managed to click a link on the message, which connected him with the creators. At that point, it became clear that the Lil Baby Apes were stolen.

The copycats had successfully lifted the entire project and launched it with an even more considerable hype than the original creators. Surprisingly, the counterfeit NFTs became one of the most popular NFT projects, with close to 3,000 people holding the 5,000 baby apes with a traded volume of $16.5 million. Despite even the iconography used on some Apes being questionable, the project managed to find token holders.

Bored Ape Yacht NFT Collection

Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are Yuga Labs’ creative collective. The project was created in April 2021 and has since exploded in the NFT space and built a dedicated fan base with big names like Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and Migos. It’s seemingly one of the major success stories in the NFT industry and even has a few other spinoff projects like the Bored Ape Kennel Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club.

The project has closed amazing deals, including a Bored Ape sale in October 2021 valued at $3.4 million, although the current Bored Ape Yacht Club floor price is 103 ether on NFT marketplaces.

Bored Ape Yacht has had a few rumors before but has remained away from controversy since its launch. Some of its widespread rumors include the $5 billion funding from Andreessen Horowitz that would value the project upward of $5 billion.

While the rumors remain unconfirmed, Yuga Labs has made tremendous growth on Bored Apes Yacht Club. Latest reports show that Yuga Labs raised $450 million in funding led by Horowitz and perhaps valuing the company now at $5 billion. Yuga Labs plans to use the money to build its Metaverse project, as revealed on Twitter.  Also, the project revealed in a tweet that its 7-day mobile game competition is now live.

Summing Up!

While some of the Ape NFT collections above have been at the center of controversy, the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection is seemingly redeeming the scandals around Ape NFT collections. Yuga Labs managed to launch a mobile game, a feature that Evil Ape promised the Evolved Ape project community. The promise, however, never materialized. Yuga Labs further claims that its collectors own the Bored Ape art entirely, meaning Bored Ape is nothing close to the stolen Lil Baby Ape project. It also recently launched its official ApeCoin token.  

The continued growth of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection proves the scandalous Ape projects wrong and paints Ape NFTs as a potential road to accrued profits. Besides, even the Evolved Apes victims are still hopeful about the project as Mike_Cryptobull leads others in building a new project dubbed Fight Back Apes. The Evolved Ape community intends to carry on, even though the project’s money disappeared. However, nothing entirely rules out the possibility of a repeat of rug pulls or other stolen projects.