BuzzFeed Slammed for Revealing the Founder of the BAYC NFT Series

American Internet media and entertainment company Buzzfeed announced two of the four founders of the BAYC NFT series, namely ""Gordon Goner" and "Gargamel", who are Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow in real life.

Journalist Kate Notopoulos wrote a Feb. 4 article titled "We Found the Real Name of the Anonymous Founder of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)."

Notopoulos was able to discover the identities of the two men by searching the public records of Yuga Labs, the company behind the series. Yuga was incorporated in Delaware with an address associated with Greg Solano and other records point to Wylie Aronow.

According to the tech reporter, “In the traditional business world, there is a reason why a company’s CEO or founder uses a real name rather than anonymity,” adding, “The people behind BAYC are attracting investors and running A potentially billion-dollar business."

"How do you hold them accountable if you don't know who they are?"

Executives of public companies must be mentioned in SEC disclosures and reports. For smaller private companies, banking regulations and "know your customer" laws require executives to use their real names in many cases.

"These laws are designed in part to prevent terrorists, criminals, or sanctioned nations from doing business in the United States," Notopoulos wrote.

However, the disclosure of Aronow and Solano's identities without their consent drew fierce criticism from members of the Web3 community, who described the article as a "human flesh search" rather than a proper journalistic practice.

In a Feb. 5 tweet, crypto podcast "Cobie" called the article "typical Buzzfeed crap," calling it "human doping of people for clicks and ad revenue." Meanwhile, venture capitalist Mike Solana wrote: "There is absolutely no reason to attack these guys," adding that "they're nothing short of cartoon apes."

Messari founder Ryan Selkis was also apparently unhappy with the story, sharing a 2009 tweet from Notopoulos that used insulting language.

As for Notopoulos, she appears to be relatively immune to this backlash. She posted a screenshot of a threat from someone to release her personal information, including "location, work, parents' home and siblings' addresses".

In response to the threat, she asked the person if they were a "big and strong guy" and they replied, "No, I'm a degen." She replied: " Ah, that sucks. They have a heavy dresser and need someone to move it to the garage."

On February 4 (the same day the article was published), Yuga Labs was in financing talks with A16z, one of Silicon Valley's top venture capital firms, valuing it at $5 billion.

Solano and Aronow are not the first big names in the cryptocurrency space to be publicly exposed this year. On January 27, Cointelegraph revealed the true identity of the co-founder of the DeFi protocol "Wonderland", "@0xSifu", who is also the co-founder of the now closed Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX.