What is ApeCoin? How to Start Aping
The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), known for its well-known ape NFT avatar collection, surprised the NFT holders with a surprise on March 16, 2022, when it air dropped its newly created ape tokens to its NFT holders! This surprise airdrop shook the crypto world and drew much attention to the newly minted coin. Each NFT owner received 10,094 Ape coins. At the current price of $13.48USD per token, that is equal to a $136,067 gift! No wonder, everyone is buzzing about Ape coin!
Let's take a deep dive into the world of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the newly created Apecoin, the tokenomics of Apecoin, and the future plans of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Background
Apecoin was recently created from the well-known NFT creator Bored Ape Yacht Club. The ape avatar NFTs are viral, well-known and loved by NFT collectors around the world. The NFT itself doubles as a membership pass to a metaverse club for apes located in a swamp. This is a unique creation as only BAYC NFT holders have access to this unique club for apes in the metaverse.
The Ape Coin, according to the website, is ready to take on the web 3.0 economy and has been designed to do so by being easy to use and already poised for being accepted by merchants. The Saltwater Brewery in Del Ray, Florida is already accepting the coin as payment and as a reward will give users a 50% discount on beer. Talk about fast adoption and promotion! Now, let's get into the heart of the Ape coin economy!
Tokenomics
Ape coin is an ERC20 based token. That means it was created off the Ethereum blockchain, like many other tokens, and exists within the Ethereum ecosystem. This allows it to be highly convertible to other ERC20 tokens, in other words it can be exchanged easily. As of writing there is not much information on any incentivization. There does not seem to be any staking methods or bonus for token holders. However, that still might be yet to come. Keep in mind that Ape coin totally appeared literally overnight and according to Yuba labs there are still a lot of great things planned for development. While these new features are still under development, let's take a quick look at the pricing history of Ape coin.
Ape coin was launched on March 16, 2022 and started trading at $20 USD. It was quickly sold off–why not? Free money–and that pushed the price down to $6.50 really quickly. However, in two days the price started to rebound rather fast and hit a high point of around $17. The coin then started to sell again and that movement pushed the price down to $10 two days later. Then we started to see some buying action which has leveled off the price to about $13 at the time of writing on 25 March 2022. Since this is a new coin, on the market for barely 2 weeks, it is very hard to judge the stability of the price. Now, let's look at the supply.
Like Bananas, there are billions
The total supply of Ape coin is set at 1 billion. According to the website, this amount can never increase nor decrease, there can be no token burning nor mining. So the supply is set and won't change. However, there are 4 specific areas that large portions of this coin are going to fund.
The Allocation Breakdown
There are 4 areas where a certain percentage of Ape coin are locked and they are going to fund parts of the organization. So, let's take a look at these.
Ecosystem Fund
The ecosystem fund has secured the largest amount of tokens at 62%. This is for BAYC and MAYC (M stands for mutant) and includes the treasure and resources. 150,000,000 tokens for BAYC/MAYC holders at launch and 470,000,000 for DAO and Treasury Resources. 117,500,000 unlocked at launch, then 7,343,750 unlocked per month for 48 months. These are to fund the token's initiatives.
Yuga Labs and Charity
Yuga Labs, the company behind the creation of the token and blockchain will get 16% of the allocation and donate 6.25% to the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation. Jane Goodall is famous for her life's work with apes in the wild. So that is 150,000,000 for Yuga Labs and 10,000,000 for the Goodall Legacy Foundation. Initially all the tokens will be locked for a 12-month period and then subsequently released for a period of 36 months.
Launch Contributors
This is for the companies and individuals that helped make Ape coin a success. The contributors will be awarded a pot of 140,000,000 tokens that will be divided by the number of contributors. This number of contributors is unknown.
BAYC Founders
This is for the 4 founders of BAYC. They will get 8% or 80,000,000 split 4 ways at 20,000,000 each. Again, subject to a lockup period for 12 months and then distributed over a 36 month period.
The DAO and Self Governance
Ape coin is set up to be a permissionless, self-governing token with what is known as a DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organization. The model of governance will drive the ecosystem, set spending and update as itself as needed by the members. Members are allowed to vote on issues that steer the direction of Ape coin. The only requirement for membership is to hold Ape coin. That means, the more Ape coin you hold, the more powerful your vote is. To learn more about different crypto currencies and associated terms, check out Atomic Wallet's Academy!
The Ape coin foundation is the company that sits atop Ape Coin and makes the decisions for it. The decisions it makes is driven by the DAO, which is driven by the coin holders' votes. Voting is done by a tool called snapshot. It was chosen because it does not require gas fees to vote. This is important because gas fees have gotten very high over the past year due to all the network activity created by NFTs. So there are no fees associated with voting and snapshot ensures transparency and provides access for all Ape coin holders.
In the future, the Ape coin DAO will transition onto the blockchain and offer full proposal and voting inside of a self contained platform. The DAO will elect board members each year, who will oversee the progress of the coin and the ecosystem.
Now, let's get on to some of the utility this token provides and the speculations about what Yuga Labs has in store for the future.
Speculation: Gaming and the Metaverse
NFTs have given rise to a whole new host of assets and how we use them. We have seen with the Sandbox that you can take your NFTs and use them to play games and build your own worlds, games, and experiences. You can also monetize these things in the games.
There is speculation as to what would or could come to light from BAYC. There is already a bit of a clue on the website, which has the clubhouse for apes. Access to the clubhouse is only provided by owning a BAYC NFT. Therein lies a clue as to what could be created by Yuba Labs.
Ape coin would most likely be the currency of this game and metaverse. Why would they use anything else, right? There is a very good chance that BAYC will follow a similar launch technique used by the Sandbox and Decentraland. That is by giving away land plots to NFT holders or auctioning them off. This will attract investors and other companies to getting in on the action and to be part of the metaverse games.
But before you can get in on all the gaming and metaverse action, you are going to need a place to keep all your ape coins in a safe place.
Atomic Ape Wallet
Atomic Wallet offers you a great place to store your Ape tokens. Besides just being a wallet for storing, sending, and receiving, you can do much, much more with Atomic wallet. Atomic Wallet has some great features such as having a built in decentralized exchange/swap where you can buy more than 300 crypto currencies and have them securely stored in your Atomic Wallet. What's more is that you can stake a number of tokens right in the Wallet! On top of that, for each transaction you make in Atomic Wallet, buying, selling, or swapping, you are eligible to get up to 1% back per transaction paid out in Atomic Wallet's native token, AWC.
How to get started with Atomic Wallet
- Download the wallet
- Create an account
- Verify your ID
- Buy some Sand with fiat currency
- Start sending and receiving
FAQ
What is the Metaverse?
What isn't the Metaverse? It can be almost anything you can dream up. The metaverse is a term that describes an online and or virtual reality world where you can interact with other people by way of using an avatar to represent you in the metaverse. The Metaverse is a collective term that is used to describe all the virtual worlds that can exist. For example, Decentraland or the Sandbox.
What is an NFT?
An NFT stands for non-fungible token. Essentially, it is something unique, like an image, or artwork or even a virtual plot of land that is a store of value. NFTs became popular in 2021 with the rise of the BAYC and a few other artists who created collections that really took off and attracted a large number of people to the NFT world. Now NFTs are starting to be used in games as assets or characters or avatars.
What is the BAYC club house and how do I gain access to it?
The BAYC is a members only club house that exists on the BAYC website. To become a member all you need to do is own a BAYC NFT. The smart contract inside the NFT acts as your membership. While the clubhouse is limited in features now, there is speculation that it will grow and offer more benefits to members. Furthermore, it could also develop into a virtual world.
What is an ERC20 token?
When you see that a token is designated as an ERC20, that means that it was created from Ethereum and is easily exchangeable with other tokens. On the downside, since gas fees are so high right now, due to the expanded use of Ethereum, it means if you transact with Ape coin you will need to pay a high gas fee to do so. This should hopefully be mitigated once Ethereum is updated to 2.0 and a proof of stake validation method.
Who is Jane Goodall?
Jane is a British primatologist and anthropologist who became famous for her work with chimpanzees in the wild. She is known around the world for her work in Tanzania and at Gombe state park, which she is accredited for helping establish. Ape coin is making donations to the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation as part of their charity work and contributions.
Resources
The Bored Ape Yacht Club
Explore the website and look at the members only club house on the official site.
Ape Coin Website
Learn more about the ecosystem and how the coin works, at the official Ape Coin site.
OpenSea
Explore all the NFTs for sale on the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea.
CoinMarketCap
Follow the price and gather other data related to Ape coin or your other favorites on CoinMarketCap
