Bored Ape NFT holders will receive ApeCoin: Dogecoin in NFT

Owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs -- including celebrity holders like Eminem, Steph Curry, Jimmy Fallonh and Mark Cuban -- will receive a brand new token called ApeCoin (APE), which will is another incentive to be part of the exclusive digital asset club.

The developer of the new token is ApeCoin DAO, which is separate from Yuga Labs.

Introducing ApeCoin ($APE), a token for culture, gaming and commerce to empower decentralized community building at the forefront of web3.

— ApeCoin (@apecoin) March 16, 2022

Owners of the BAYC NFT will be able to make each individual obtain about 10,000 ApeCoin, and the upcoming 1 billion ApeCoin tokens will be distributed to different people.

According to the ApeCoin DAO website, 62% of the total supply will be added to an ecosystem fund, 14% will be given to "launch contributors," 9.75% of tokens will be held by BAYC creator Yuga Labs, and 8% will be Going directly to the founders of Yuga Labs, the remaining 6.25% will go to the Jane Goodall Foundation, a charity dedicated to protecting chimpanzee habitat.

While the token itself remains technically independent from Yuga Labs, the company will fully adopt ApeCoin as the "primary token for all new products and services" that emerge from Yuga Labs. According to Yuga Labs, this includes an unreleased game, and the team plans to release a blockchain game in partnership with game developer nWay later this year.

ApeCoin will also be used for the upcoming play-and-earn game “Benji Bananas” from Hong Kong-based blockchain game company Animoca Brands, of which nWay is a subsidiary.

1/ @Animocabrands presented AIPs 4 and 5, which are live on Discourse for all to watch. AIP 4 covers a novel staking mechanism to reward @apecoin and BAYC ecosystem NFT holders. AIP 5 proposes the size of the pledged liquidity pool - 17.5% of total token distribution over 3 years.

— Yat Siu (@ysiu) March 16, 2022

Animoca Brands co-founder and ApeCoin DAO board member Yat Siu told Cointelegraph that ApeCoin is a step in the evolution of NFTs.

"ApeCoin is a token that represents the most important NFTs today - in a sense, it is a manifestation of the current culture of NFTs"

He stated that ApeCoin will be "the Dogecoin in NFT, whose utility is created by the community and valued by the community."

Siu is optimistic about the future of ApeCoin, but notes that the utility will be provided directly through the game "

"ApeCoin itself is starting to have some utility, [it will] start with games and more... the benefit will be to combine the creative energy of this combination of technology and culture that the BAYC community has started, [which] due to The fungibility and transferability of ApeCoin has a much larger audience.”

Since its launch last April, BAYC has grown to become the most talked about NFT collectible and has continuously added notable names to its owner list, which now includes Paris Hilton. Last week, Yuga Labs acquired two of the other largest NFT projects — CryptoPunks and Meebits, extending its dominance in the nascent NFT market.

According to the official website, ApeCoin will be available for purchase on all major exchanges.