What Is the Bored Ape Yacht Club?
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is an NFT collection created by Yuga Labs on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Each individual NFT is referred to as an Ape.
These digital artworks portray, well, bored simians. They all share a common look and feel, yet each Ape features a unique combination of facial expressions, accessories and outfits, so no two are the same.
It’s this combination of features—or the relative rarity of each combo—that may be the very thing that underpins the popularity of the Bored Apes. In the BAYC community, “rarity” is a formal measure of the uniqueness of each Ape.
There are dedicated websites that score Apes for their rarity. According to Rarity Tools, Bored Ape No. 8135 recently held the highest “custom rarity score.” Notable features for Bored Ape No. 8135 include a dagger in its mouth, a “trippy captain’s hat,” and a silver stud earring.
Other than rarity, there’s nothing ostensibly unique about the artworks themselves—they’re just pictures of monkeys, after all. What separates BAYC from the crowd is that it has become a cultural phenomenon.
For the NFT cognoscenti, owning a Bored Ape means more than just possessing a digital cartoon monkey—it’s a ticket granting the holder access to an exclusive membership club with perks like merchandise, parties and ApeCoins (APE), among other things.