In 2022, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection, Yuga Labs, is expected to generate revenue of $455 million, mainly from the sale of virtual land in a future metaverse. The Block reports.
In 2021, the project’s net revenue reached $127 million. Sales of the project’s collectible tokens topped $1 billion, including the secondary market.
To diversify its revenue streams, Yuga Labs has decided to move beyond its NFT collection.
“We want to build something that expands the BAYC universe and invites a broader NFT community to participate,” the company said.
Toward this goal, Yuga Labs plans to create a game-oriented metaverse called MetaRPG. An important component of the future space will be the APE Coin token. The asset will be used for purchases in Yuga’s app store.
The first phase of the MetaRPG launch will be the sale of virtual land in NFT form. In two sales in March and August, the company will distribute 200,000 parcels. Yuga Labs expects to generate $178 million in revenue and keep part of the land in its own ownership.
The company said that to kick off the project, Animoca Brands—the owner of the popular virtual world The Sandbox—will participate.
This has been building over the last seven months. @AnimocaBrands will launch the first phase, and there’s more to come. P.S. we don’t like KYCs either, but we think you’re going to want to be a part of this.
— Bored Ape Yacht Club (@BoredApeYC) March 10, 2022
“This has been built over the last seven months. Animoca Brands will launch the first phase, and there’s more to come,” the Yuga team wrote.
Users were also warned that to participate they would need to undergo KYC.
Yuga Labs acquired the intellectual property rights to the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections from Larva Labs.