Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), the popular NFT collection, managed to announce the exact launch date of its metaverse, get on popular sports brand t-shirts, receive perpetual contracts and get hacked again in just a few days.
The past couple of days has been eventful for the BAYC collection. The creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club announced the exact launch date for the Otherside metaverse. A line of sportswear featuring images of Bored Ape #4102 was released. Derivatives exchange Injective Pro launched Bored Ape NFT perpetuals. BAYC’s official Instagram account was hacked.
Here’s more about it all.
Otherside Metaverse and MetaRPG
On April 24, Yuga Labs representatives revealed the exact launch date for the Otherside metaverse on Twitter. The studio will open access to the project on April 30.
The studio announced the metaverse back in late March but didn’t disclose the exact date and details. The promo for Otherside featured characters from BAYC and MAYC collections, as well as CryptoPunks and Meebits.
However, right after that, documents from Yuga Labs about the MetaRPG development, a role-playing game that combines NFTs from the collections, hit the web. Although the company didn’t confirm the document’s authenticity, users actively began discussing the future possibilities of the metaverse. They include:
- NFT holders will be able to use them as playable characters.
- Content creators will be allowed to design their own NFTs.
- Only half of the 200,000 pieces of land in the metaverse will be released in the initial phase.
- 30% of the released plots will be distributed to BAYC and MAYC holders during the airdrop. The rest will be offered for sale.
- Those buying the areas will have a chance to get a unique NFT from the new Kodas collection.
- The recently released ApeCoin (APE) token will play a key role in the metaverse.
Users will find out which of these assumptions will come true at the end of the month.
Bored Ape on Clothes
On April 25, Li Ning, a leading Chinese sportswear company headquartered in Beijing, revealed its plans to release a line of clothing featuring BAYC #4102, an NFT monkey image.
Li Ning will sell t-shirts and caps depicting BAYC. Hence, the brand aims to increase sales by taking advantage of the growing popularity of non-fungible tokens.
The company came to this decision after a series of articles in the Chinese media about the hype around NFTs. Non-fungible tokens gained popularity in China after Chinese sportswear brand Anta launched a series of digital collectibles as NFTs featuring the national sports team ahead of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.
Perpetual Contracts Tied to BAYC
Cryptocurrency exchange Injective Pro added support for perpetual contracts linked to Bored Ape Yacht Club tokens, according to a press release.
Crypto traders will be able to place long and short positions to speculate around the future market price of the BAYC collection with a minimum volume of $1.
Injective Labs CEO Eric Chen noted that the most popular BAYC and MAYC collections remain inaccessible to the majority of users precisely because of their high prices. Therefore, the new feature will enable “retail users to trade based on the floor price of NFT collections, without actually having to hold custody of the NFT itself,” Chen explained.
Injective Pro is working with NFTBank, an NFT portfolio management company, to “create a custom price feed for the BAYC collection, which validates the initial price of the market,” the release stated.
BAYC’s Social Media Attack
On April 26, the official Instagram account of BAYC was hacked. This was reported by Bored Ape representatives on Twitter.
A hacker posted a phishing link on the official page of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection. By clicking on it, users were led to a fake BAYC website with a non-existent airdrop. They were asked to sign a “safeTransferFrom” transaction, which allowed them to transfer their assets to the fraudster’s wallet.
According to analytics company PeckShield, the hacker managed to steal approximately 765.3 ETH and 91 NFTs. The attacker immediately sold 23 NFTs, including 4 BAYC, 6 MAYC, 2 CloneX and gained about $2.4 million. Analysts also report that the hacker transferred 1.6 ETH to a fund to help Ukraine.
This attack via social networks was the second in a month. Earlier hackers managed to crack the official Discord of BAYC and MAYC.
