The story of web3, the routine of web2, the boring ape is very good

Text | Play Generation

“Shan Ye NFT, Hai Ye NFT, why are cats and dogs in NFT” – rapper MCHOTDOG recently released a new song, accusing the nothingness of the metaverse.

Whether you understand it or not, the Metaverse is undoubtedly the hottest thing right now. Although no one can really explain it clearly, the art of NFT encryption is getting closer to real life.

Especially the NFT rookie “Boring Ape”, trying to use the narrative method of encrypted art to create a new Disney-like story-walking out of the nihilistic web3 world, moving towards the real economy, and entering many fields such as film and television, music, catering, clothing, art, etc. Create an IP ecosystem of “Ape Universe”.

The Bored Ape Series NFT was launched by the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), with a total of 10,000 Bored Ape, each unique. It is automatically generated according to the characteristics of clothes, earrings, hats, fur, backgrounds, etc., according to the random function mechanism and parameter settings. Probabilities vary, and the more scarce, the higher the value.

“One Monkey” propped up a $4 billion valuation, and its parent company Yuga Labs received $450 million in seed financing.

Putting aside the future that has not yet come, based on the present that has happened, this article attempts to strip the cocoon and read it again.

The web3 world is full of web2 routines

When it comes to NFT encryption art, the originator – Mosaic-style CryptoPunks cannot be avoided.

Five years ago, nothing was more cyberpunk than having a CryptoPunks “avatar”. CryptoPunks pioneered it as both a social media avatar symbol and an on-chain status symbol.

CryptoPunks

Many explosions that were born subsequently continued this feature.

For example, another Internet celebrity Hashmasks, which was born later, based on the “avatar”, collectors can freely create as a blessing for the artistic value of the purchased collection.

To incentivize purchases, Hashmasks set a floating pricing mechanism, in short: the earlier customers buy, the cheaper the price. Although the Hashmasks sale continues to spree, this mechanism has been criticized.

Hashmasks

The Boring Ape team keenly captured this point, so they put a slogan on the official page, pointing to the pricing mechanism of “senior”.

A wave of “touching porcelain” and “pulling and stepping” rubbed the first wave of natural traffic. In addition, Boring Ape also pulled to two important KOL platforms in the early days: J1mmy.eth, founder of NFT collectibles project Avastars, and NFT collector @Pranksy NFT. Both of them “bring goods” online on Twitter, and wholesaled 100 and 250 monkeys respectively.

The news of “big guy buying monkeys” spread like wildfire on social media, and soon the boring ape was snapped up, with a total income of 800 ETH (about 2.8 million US dollars at the time). Its worth has also skyrocketed, with an increase of up to 900%, and the number of holders has also expanded to 3,600.

Soon after, the monkey was listed at Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses in succession. Boring Ape #8817 sold for $3.4 million in November. Overnight, “pheasants fly to the branches”, is not what it used to be.

In addition, MEEBITS, which was airdropped and released by the team behind CryptoPunks, suffered from word-of-mouth collapse and was criticized as “the privilege of the rich”. Once again, the Boring Ape team sensed an opportunity, turned airdrops into member benefits, locked users with various “free giveaways”, and received a wave of good reviews.

Beeple, the artist who sold his digital work “Every Day: The First 5,000 Days” at Christie’s for $60.25 million, released his new work “MEEBITS VS BAYC” on Twitter. Adding another fire to the boring ape.

All the way to gain momentum, most of them can’t do without Twitter.

In particular, Twitter is the leek garden of the currency circle, and it is already an open secret. According to the “2022 Twitter Trend Report”, in the past year, there were more than 332 million NFT-related tweets worldwide, and more than 70% of users under the age of 34 paid attention to NFT topics.

— In addition, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has many backers in the currency circle, which is really a conspiracy.

— BTW, in China, Weibo is the traffic in the encrypted world. According to a Weibo report circulating in the industry, 65% of NFT content discussions on the entire network come from Weibo.

In Europe and the United States, celebrities such as hip-hop singer Snoop Dogg, NBA star Stephen Curry, and Brazilian football star Neymar have “monkeys in their hands”.

According to OpenSea, at the beginning of this year, Jay Chou also received a giveaway, the boring ape numbered #3738, and has since been “incorporated” into the boring ape club. In the Chinese music scene, Lin Junjie, Shawn Yue and other “tide people” also took the lead.

Afterwards, Chinese investors began to follow suit. Zhu Xiaohu, a big man in the investment industry, Cai Wensheng, founder of Meitu, Lin Jiapeng, founder of LinkVC, and Zhang Liao, founding partner of Tongzhou Capital, all began to “buy monkeys”. The Boring Ape has reportedly garnered 28 star support.

The “precious circle” has become more and more like the entertainment circle, the capital circle, and the rich circle. The boring ape has thus become the new “identity label”. Once you get the membership of the boring ape, you get the social tickets of “Guiquan”.

The boring ape pinched the traffic password——

Big star KOLs bring goods, social media topic hype, touch porcelain marketing. “Familiar Recipe, Familiar Taste”.

I can’t help but sigh that the Boring Ape just used the hype of Web2 to repeat it on Web 3, and the “birth of a new top stream” has not changed or innovated in essence.

Another recent “ugly but popular” NFT project, Goblintown’s strategy is a large-scale “rubbing”, and successively tweeted “posts” with DJ musician Steve Aoki, digital artist Beeple, Canadian 3D Celebrities like artist Frederic Duquette and rapper Snoop Dogg.

Goblintown

Art is “flying” freely, and premium is also flying freely. 160 times in 10 days, it can only be said that touch porcelain marketing, really fragrant!

Goblintown tweeted a picture suggesting “we are from Yuga?”, and according to the income situation in Yuga Labs Deck, the parent company of the boring ape, the source of 1% of revenue is Goblins. You taste, you taste carefully.

After all, the right to speak of encrypted art is still in the hands of “a few people”. In the decentralized web3 world, there is still a sense of “centralization”~

Nowadays, the NFT market is like a “free fall”, but the story of the boring ape is unique. According to reports, Yuga Labs, the parent company of the boring ape, recently completed a $450 million seed round at a valuation of $4 billion. BAYC contributes more than 90% of the company’s sales.

According to data from NonFungible, an NFT market analysis platform, compared with the peak period in September 2021, the average daily sales of NFTs has dropped by 92%. According to Google Trends data, people’s attention to NFTs has dropped by 80% from January this year.

Just recently, YugaLabs acquired competing products, “the originator of NFT avatars” CryptoPunks and Meebits, and obtained the intellectual property rights of the two, thus realizing the unification.

“Ape Universe” keeps walking, and new stories have to be continued. There is a point of view whose benchmark falls on Disney.

The IP story supported by liquidity, but this does not hold in China

What makes Boring Ape unconventional is that it has designed a unique community equity mechanism. All members who hold Boring Ape enjoy part of the intellectual property rights, have the right to commercial development, and can independently develop and sell derivatives, create second-generation products, etc.

excerpt from official

It is precisely because of its unique community culture that it has brought new trends in the licensing industry:

First, it is also reshaping the perception of IP copyright and changing the development efficiency of the cultural industry. On the one hand, the IP authorization process is simplified, and on the other hand, an IP copyright can be disassembled into multiple fragmented individuals, each of which can operate independently.

Monkey King Monkey King and his clones

Second, the development and operation of IP is also “decentralized”, and the holder of the boring ape can also become the “operator” of the boring ape IP , and the design producer is no longer the only IP operator. The way and efficiency of IP development are also changing.

Boring Ape Yacht Club member Andy Nguyen bought Boring Ape #6184 for $267,000 and opened a Boring Ape-themed restaurant for it.

Pop-up restaurant opens in California

The boring ape BAYC physical tide play doll and the boring ape mobile game have been released one after another. Universal Music Group has announced the formation of a virtual band of “Boring Apes”. A three-part series featuring the Boring Ape character is also on the way.

In April this year, the Boring Ape pop-up store opened at K11 Art Mall in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. The holders of the collection brought the peripheral products derived from the boring ape to the exhibition site for sale, including cultural shirts, canvas bags, mugs, etc.

New ways of playing are emerging one after another, and the boring ape NFT continues to expand into the real world, forming an increasingly large ecosystem. Across the fields of film and television, music, catering, fast-moving consumer goods, etc. All this in just one year.

But this does not mean that the producer has lost its “absolute status”.

Two event intercept points worth noting:

First, the Boring Ape fell into the “ape universe scam” last month. The parent company of Boring Ape announced the Otherside metaverse plan and launched the initial contract NFT sale on May 1. Netizens spit on it in the Yuan Universe to fry land. This new project, called “Monkey Land”, fell rapidly after a brief surge, falling more than 50%. Even the boring ape also fell.

Second, Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently replaced his Twitter avatar with a boring ape, and joked, “I don’t know…it seems to be a bit replaceable.” The implication is that even if the NFT is recorded on the chain, it cannot be prevented from being stolen. As a result of this incident, the price of the boring ape fluctuated again.

Markets are price sensitive. If it is out of the support of the price system, we all need to face it squarely: do you like this monkey, or do you crave its multiplied body?

MCHOTDOG new song

With the image of NFT, it has been noticed and recognized by people, and then quickly expanded to the field of pan-entertainment consumption, forming the IP ecology of the Ape Universe. Such extreme development efficiency was unimaginable in the past. But Disney’s strength is not in its century-old foundation, but in its ability to maintain IP vitality, cultural influence, worldview output, and emotional empathy over the past century.

If you want to become a classic, not a short-lived trend, let’s go through a time cycle first~

Many speculators just use NFT as marketing capital, and there are also many pseudo-artists who blindly pursue the craze to whitewash the void. Traffic is hot, but most of the work that floods the exchange goes unnoticed.

What is scarce is not the design and image (JPG).

On the other hand, in China, content IPs are frantically adding digital collections, museums, movie roaming, online cartoon images, trendy game IPs, brand cartoon images—there are no IPs without IP.

But in fact, there are essential differences between domestic data collection and overseas NFTs.

In the domestic market, most of the NFT trading platforms are based on a centralized “consortium chain”. The user’s transaction behavior needs to be reviewed by the “consortium chain” manager. Digital collections purchased by domestic players often only have the right to use, not ownership.

Moreover, the domestic market emphasizes “de-financialization”, and the gradient cannot be opened without circulation.

The reason why the boring ape can become a boring ape is inseparable from the market environment in which it is located. The open and decentralized secondary trading market environment is also inseparable from the favorable time and place at that time, as well as its unique community culture.

This also determines that many NFTs do not have the same conditions for playing.

For example, the well-known NFT “stickman avatar”, which accepts the CC0 protocol. CC0 means that creators voluntarily give up all rights to their works. Everyone is free to use, copy, modify, distribute and perform, even for commercial purposes. Different empowerment determines the vastly different development paths.

Mfers

The invisible battlefield of the brand needs a new way to open it

Brands are crazy about NFT data collection, which became popular last year and even worse this year. Almost every week, we see brands seeking distribution partnerships.

Shuzang has also become an invisible battlefield outside of 618 selling goods. Tmall not only launched the “Metaverse Virtual Shopping Venue”, but also continued the gameplay of last year, and launched customized NFT digital storage in conjunction with Xiaomi, Razer, Midea, Oaks and other brands. JD.com also integrates digital collections into the whole chain of 618 publicity and consumption. The so-called “whoever enters first, whoever makes the rules first”.

In the marketing world, virtual idols + encrypted art + virtual space are regarded as a “metaverse three-piece set”. From the time line, this is more like the evolution of brand marketing layer by layer. Brands are running into the market, and their calculations are far from “selling a picture”.

Superficial [translation]: Social avatar PFP is an avatar logo for users, with its own personalization and scarcity; buying NFT is equivalent to joining a brand membership; sending airdrops is to send benefits to members, only members and others No, it is a member-only version of the lottery lottery; add medicine to the private domain, emphasize community culture, and create a threshold for the circle, such as the boring ape throwing a party on the yacht to make users happy, and then use the cultural atmosphere to attract potential users … In the end, the user is not the data lying in the system algorithm, but the virtual person, locking the person in the metaverse brand space.

The unique community culture and empowerment of Boring Ape is the biggest benefit for brand marketing. China’s Li-Ning, health and smart hardware companies listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, Beichuan, and Greenland Group voted for the boring ape with their purchases.

China Lining officially announced on Weibo that the image of Boring Ape #4102 is the new brand manager, and simultaneously launched a series of products of China Lining Boring Ape Trend Sports Club, including clothing, ultimate Frisbee, surfboard, etc. China’s Li Ning’s boring pop-up store followed in Sanlitun, Beijing.

According to OpenSea data, the last transaction price of BAYC#4102 was 120 ETH, about US$330,000, equivalent to RMB 2.2 million.

Spend a small amount of money to buy a popular top-notch, which not only strengthens the trend label, but also takes advantage of the situation to market, and can also develop peripheral products, “independent and free”.

In contrast, Liu Genghong’s business cooperation has soared to 5 million, only titled live broadcast implantation, and no goods. Really fragrant is there wood?

As the popularity rises, the NFT digital assets held will rise, and you may even earn a fortune.

Plus, it saves the brand a hidden cost. As we all know, the licensing of well-known IP is a long process, and some negotiations are even based on years. And the constraints are complicated, including the development category, sales cycle, promotion cycle, etc.

China Li Ning bought the boring ape #4102, and obtained the corresponding derivative development rights, and there is no category or time limit.

Brands are enjoying it and increasing their Metaverse marketing budgets. A person from a 4A advertising company revealed that although many brands have not yet included the “Metaverse” in their budget plans, it is expected that the marketing budget for the Metaverse will be as high as 50% in 2022.

Many brands look at NFTs (digital collections) from the perspective of advertising and marketing ROI.

They are more concerned with: How much topic discussion can I get? Can it be on the hot search? Can you play with young people? It’s better to bring goods~! As for the underlying technology, public chain or alliance chain? Brands don’t care.

According to observations, the two official topics #boring is not boring# and #4102# initiated by China Li Ning have not exceeded 40 million on Weibo. One of the main products, the limited monthly sales of Li Ning’s boring ape limited T-shirt in the Tmall flagship store. Under the related topics of the official Weibo, most of the active people are the crypto art hobby circle. There are hundreds of millions of Internet topics that are calm.

At present, domestic users lack awareness of Web3, encryption art has not been popularized by the public, and the market trend is still unclear.

Today, when the domestic regulatory policy is still unclear, the NFT marketing of most brands still stops the issuance of digital collections.

The key to the “Pandora’s box” of encrypted art lies in how to open it.

The text and pictures in this article are from Titanium Media