Unless your internet connection has been off or you’ve been out on a boat with no connection to civilization, you’ve probably heard of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The name has made so many headlines that it probably rings a bell, even if you don’t completely understand what it is. Just to refresh your memory, if you’re still confused, Bored Ape Yacht Club is an iconic NFT project in which possession of one of the tokens grants membership into an exclusive club. Many celebrities, including Jimmy Fallon and Post Malone, have joined the club, and the cheapest token at the time of writing is around 74 ETH (which is right around $244k, with ETH price right around $3300).
So what is MAYC? It’s a value-add by the creators of BAYC for their already valuable Bored Apes in the form of an interactive serum token airdrop. Technically it is its own collection, but it’s heavily affiliated with the Bored Apes. The Mutant Apes, which were created by mixing a Bored Ape with the serum (with no negative effect on the original BAYC token), slightly resemble their Bored Ape hosts, but with some… mutated traits. Some are gross and have slimy-looking membranes, and others have some oddities, like having a few too many eyes.
A Mutant Ape could be created in two ways: by minting from the original MAYC drop or by introducing a Bored Ape to a vial of serum sent from Yuga Labs as mentioned above. The MAYC drop sold out in less than an hour, generating a whopping $90 million in sales. There were 20,000 in the MAYC collection total, some being created by original BAYC holders and the remaining being minted directly from the drop. A peek at Opensea reveals that there are some mutants yet to be created, as the MAYC collection is sitting right around 17.7k items at the time of writing.
So what was the purpose? BAYC has shown incredible ability to keep its holders engaged and active, from the Bored Ape Kennel Club (another incentive that was given to holders) to the interactive and mysterious storyline and vague riddles that are common to the project. MAYC was a value ad, allowing Bored Apes to profit off of their tokens without sacrificing their membership status. It also served as an on-boarding mechanism to allow new members access to the Bored Ape culture, with a reduced membership so as not to cheapen the OG tokens.
The MAYC serves as an excellent demonstration of the value-adding power of airdropping tokens to a project, as well as the power of story. By crafting a compelling and mysterious narrative around the serum, providing just enough information to be interesting but not enough to give away the surprise, BAYC enthralled its holders and captivated outsiders. This fixation led to their phenomenal drop, where MAYC tokens sold out of a Dutch auction that started each token at 3 ETH with a floor of .01 ETH. The floor is now around 14 ETH at the time of writing. Not a bad appreciation percentage!
MAYC is a sort-of spin-off of BAYC, with three primary objectives. The Mutant apes provided existing holders with financial upside, the method by which the serum that created the Mutant Apes. This helped maintain the wave of BAYC hype and promoted even higher engagement rates. And finally, the MAYC allowed new members to join the BAYC ecosystem at a more reasonable price, albeit with limited membership. This was all accomplished through brilliant marketing tactics and an ambiguous and exciting story and serves as an excellent example of NFT project potential.
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