BAYC holder confession: From swamps to the moon, have I lost faith in BAYC?
The original author is: Zeneca.
Original translation: Jaleel, BlockBeats
About BAYC, as a holder for over two years, I have many thoughts and opinions:
Many people may not have witnessed its early days, and many may not remember the situation when apes spread like wildfire on NFT Twitter. The timeline was filled with endless #apefollowape (ape holder mutual follow). Once a person buys an ape, they immediately gain 1000 Twitter followers, and may even be trapped in "Twitter jail" due to following too many people.
Due to the full commercial IP authorization (always want to remind that BAYC is not the first, according to my memory, Avastars is the earliest), artists are filling the timeline with art derivatives. People are becoming more and more creative in various commercial ideas: beer, neon signs, merchandise, coffee, bars, hamburgers, stories, comics.
In my opinion, it is culture. More specifically, it is counterculture.
From Outsider to Insider, Sense of Belonging Brought by Monkeys
I believe that most of us in the industry feel that we have been priced out of all the "cool" projects. Many of us, especially newcomers in 2021, feel like we came too late. Punks were designed for the elite; what "regular person" can afford to spend over 15 ETH on an avatar? Personally, I really, really want a Hashmask, but even those were out of my price range at the time. Then Meebits launched, and I (or rather, we) felt ignored, forgotten, and priced out once again, like an outsider looking in.
At that time, there was a trend of counterfeit bonding curve minting prices, also known as the "panic slope" or "FOMO slope". I believe my first topic is actually about this theme.
Basically, the more people mint, the higher the minting price will rise. In the fastest time, an incredible Ponzi scheme occurred: in the first 1k minted, you could get it at a price of 0.02 eth, the next 1k will be obtained at a price of 0.04, and so on, until those who are "late" have to pay 0.2 or more. At the same time, the attention on NFTs has been skyrocketing. We have entered a frenzy for cryptocurrency, and NFTs are the topic everyone is talking about. Beeple's $69 million auction made headlines. More and more people are flocking to this field, looking for things to buy, hoping to be a part of it. Everyone is thinking, if it's not expensive, that would be great.
At this time, Yuga appeared; they decided to release a series of 10k at a fixed coin price of 0.08 (which was considered very fair and reasonable compared to other options at that time).
Although the performance of Mint was not good during the process, it took a week to mint and most of the Mint was done on the last day. However, our game competition has officially begun. Thousands of people are having fun playing with their PFP on Twitter. We feel like we belong to the same circle and have an unprecedented sense of belonging.
The situation is spinning out of control, and the crazy frenzy of the summer of 2021 has taken everyone by surprise, with the monkeys having all the impact.
唯一不变的只有变化本身
translates to
The only constant is change itself
in English.
The interesting thing about the NFT community based on PFP is that it is always changing. At some point, the community that existed in the first few weeks and months is no longer the same. Of course, BAYC had many holders from the beginning, as well as many outstanding community members supporting the community, and many new members have also made significant contributions.
But it has changed. Change is not always a bad thing, and it is always inevitable, so it is not surprising. However, the scale of the change is the craziest part.
Apes, from a counter-culture, affordable PFP, has become the most expensive PFP in the history of the NFT field. Suddenly, the buyers of these things are no longer ordinary "Zhang San" and "Li Si", but celebrities and whales. At this point, I want to emphasize again that this is not necessarily a bad thing. The community has just changed.Despite all of this, Yuga still provides some excellent experiences, and overall the community has remained strong. But when you become as big as an ape, you become a target and are under a microscope. You become easy to hate because now all the new counterculture projects are against your culture.
The primates have gone from beggars on the streets to the elite class; from muddy swamps to the surface of the moon.
Therefore, after experiencing a terrible bear market for a year, people's emotions have changed and they have begun to feel some aversion towards the apes. But I am not particularly surprised, after all, this situation has been going on for some time.
It is no longer a project created by four degen founders (possibly) excitedly proposing funny ideas, hanging out on Discord, and resonating with the community.
It has become a company that has raised nine-figure funding at a ten-figure valuation, dealing with various lawsuits and attempting to create a new type of game (MetaRPG). It has a DAO, an ERC-20 token, endless NFTs, complexity, depth, chaos, legends, and chaos.
Without a doubt, they are one of the most likely communities to thrive ten years from now. 99.99% of NFT projects are running out of money and their communities are dying. 99.99% of NFT communities have no one talking about them; Yuga makes everyone talk about them, even if it's not always favorable, but BAYC always appears in every NFT conversation.
BAYC will also be compared to some "newer" PFP projects: DeGods, Pudgies, Azukis. All of these are amazing communities, and I think they will all be successful and thrive. But they are different beasts, and comparing them simply because they all use animal jpegs as their core product is not always fair.
There's one more thing on my mind: I often think back to the early days and the apes I spent a lot of time with on Twitter and Discord.
Many of them are still in the community, but many of us have started our own businesses. It's hard to continue as an active member of the BAYC community when you have your own community.
For me, BAYC and everything it has done for me, my life, and my career in web3 will always hold a special place in my heart. I know many others feel the same way.
From a certain perspective, I am lucky that I haven't been truly bothered by price fluctuations - of course, it's never comfortable when the numbers go down, but I don't believe it's the end of the world.
We have a tendency in the NFT space where we prefer projects when the prices are high, and our liking for them decreases when the prices are low. This is crazy, but it is the core of most of our space. I think it's time to acknowledge how much things have changed since the early days.
BAYC is no longer the same BAYC as two years ago, and this is acceptable. It has battle scars, new members, and a million new things in the ecosystem.
BAYC is more decentralized now?
I don't know what will happen to the price from here - it may continue to fall, stabilize, or rebound. However, one thing I am very certain of is that if it is to recover to the crazy valuations at the end of 2021/early 2022, it is unlikely to depend on the products delivered by BAYC.
No one wants to spend $500,000 to own an avatar, get some land, play virtual universe games, or go treasure hunting.
This crazy PFP game that we all play (not so) dirty little secret is that there is actually very little substantive value in it. The vast majority of it is based on perceived speculation. I said this a year ago and it still holds true today: one problem with our market is how much of it is driven by pure hype and speculation.
The "value" of most NFTs is simply "how much others are willing to pay for them," and people's decisions on how much they are willing to pay are mainly based on emotions, usually without any substantive things. When deciding whether to buy NFTs (for economic benefits), what is important is not my opinion on the project, but what I think others think of the project. When everyone is deciding whether to buy NFTs mainly based on what they think others think, this will soon become a problem.
I believe all of these also demonstrate the difference between PFP/NFT, which have almost no external dependencies (i.e. Punks), and NFTs with many external dependencies. A roadmap is a double-edged sword, and this sword will ultimately pierce through most projects.
Anyway. I have already talked enough. I just want to share some of my thoughts as a long-term holder of BAYC. It is undeniable that I have been a pretty bad holder and community member this year, only focusing on my own project. But I have not lost confidence in what BAYC is building and what the community can achieve.
And finally, all statements regarding "if Yuga fails, the entire NFT industry will fail" are baseless. If Yuga fails, the industry will certainly suffer and provide ammunition for some ignorant people to try to destroy us, but this will hardly change the long-term adoption of NFT technology. NFTs are not "either successful or failed". They are inevitable and unavoidable.
In the future digital world and even the entire world, NFT will play a fundamental role. The question is not whether we will see this situation, but when we will see it.
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