BAYC holder's self-report: How did I become a diamond hand?

Original Author: Zeneca

Original compilation: Jaleel, BlockBeats

Regarding BAYC, as a holder of more than two years, I have many thoughts and opinions:

Many may not have witnessed its early days, and many may not remember when the apes started like wildfire on NFT Twitter. Back then the timeline was filled with endless #apefollowape. Once a person buys an ape, he will immediately add 1,000 Twitter fans, and even be surrounded by "Twitter prison" for following too many people.

Artists are flooding the timeline with art derivatives thanks to full commercial IP licensing (always reminded that BAYC was not the first, as far as I recall Avastars was the first). People are getting creative with all kinds of business ideas: beer, neon signs, merchandise, coffee, bars, burgers, stories, comics.

The community is thriving. Honestly, the reason I buy Apes is because of "fear of missing out" (FOMO). I was on the outside looking in, watching them having fun, and I wanted to be a part of it all.

However, let's take a step back and look at why BAYC is so popular. They weren't the first 10k project, they weren't the first ape project, and they weren't the first in many things (although they did have many firsts). So what are they, what did they create so special, and how did the lightning in the bottle happen?

In my opinion it's culture. More specifically, counterculture.

From an outsider to an insider, the sense of belonging brought by monkeys

I'm sure most of us feel priced out of all the "cool" items. Many of us, especially those new to 2021, feel like we're coming too late. Punks are for the elite; what "regular person" can afford to spend more than 15 ETH on an avatar? I personally really, really wanted a Hashmask, but back then, even these were out of my price range. Then Meebits went live, and again I (or we) felt ignored, forgotten, priced out, like an outsider watching.

There was also a trend at that time, that is, the fake bond curve minting price, which is what we call "panic slope", "FOMO slope". I think my first thread is actually on this topic. Basically, the more people minting, the minting price goes up. Incredible ponzi scheme happening in the fastest time: mint the first 1k and you get it for 0.02 eth, the next 1k will be for 0.04, and so on until those "late arrivals" of people had to pay 0.2 or more. At the same time, interest in NFTs has been soaring. We entered the cryptocurrency mania, and NFTs are what everyone is talking about. Beeple's $69 million auction grabs headlines. More and more people are pouring into the space, looking for something to buy, hoping to be a part of it all. Everyone is thinking, if only it wasn't expensive.

That's when Yuga came along; they decided to release a series of 10k at a fixed minting price of 0.08 (for that time, this was considered very fair and reasonable, compared to other options).

While in Mint it wasn't doing too well, it took a week to mint and most of the Mint was on the last day. But our game competition has officially begun. Thousands of people are having fun with their PFP on Twitter. It feels like we belong in the same circle, we have a sense of belonging that we never had before.

Things spun wildly out of control, the wild frenzy of summer 2021 took everyone by surprise, and the apes had all the punch.

The only constant is change itself

The interesting thing about the PFP-based NFT community is that the community is always changing. At some point, the community of the first few weeks and months isn't what it used to be. Of course, BAYC has had many holders since the beginning, there are many outstanding community members supporting the community, and there are many new members who have also made great contributions.

But it changed. Change isn't always bad, it's always inevitable, so it's no surprise. The scale of the change, though, is the craziest part. Apes went from a counterculture, everyone-affordable PFP to the most expensive PFP in the history of the NFT space. Suddenly, it wasn't the usual "Jackson" and "Billie" who were buying these things, but celebrities and whales. At this point, I want to stress again that this is not necessarily a bad thing. The community just changed.

Despite all of this, Yuga has delivered some great experiences, and the community in general has been strong. But when you get as big as an ape, you become a target, and under a microscope. You become easy to hate because now all the new counterculture items are against your culture.

**Apes went from street beggars to elites; from mud swamps to the moon. **

So after a dire year of the bear market, the mood has shifted and there's something aversion to apes. But I'm not particularly surprised, after all, this has been the case for some time. It's no longer a project where 4 degen founders (probably) get excited and come up with funny ideas, hang out in Discord and resonate with the community.

It turned into a company that raised nine figures at a 10 figure valuation, was fighting lawsuits left and right, trying to create a whole new genre of games (MetaRPG). It has a DAO, an ERC-20 token, endless NFTs, complexity, depth, chaos, lore, chaos.

They are without a doubt one of the communities most likely to prosper ten years from now. 99.99% of NFT projects are running out of money and communities are dead. 99.99% of the NFT community is nobody talking about; Yuga got everyone talking about them, even if it wasn't always beneficial, BAYC was always in every conversation about NFTs.

BAYC is also compared to some "newer" style PFP projects: DeGods, Pudgies, Azukis. All of these are amazing communities, and I think they're all going to be successful and thriving as well. But they're different beasts, and it's not always fair to compare them just because they both have animal jpeg as their core offering. One more thing on the back of my mind: I often think about the early days, the apes I spent a lot of time with on Twitter, on Discord.

Many of them are still in the community, but many of us have started our own businesses. It is difficult to remain an active community member of BAYC when you have your own community. For me, BAYC and what it has done for me, my life, and my career in web3 will always hold the most special place in my heart. I know many people feel the same way. I'm lucky in a way that I'm not really bothered by price volatility - sure, it's never comfortable when the numbers go down, but I don't think it's the end of the world.

We have a tendency in NFT culture that when the price is high, we love the item, and when the price is low, we like the item less. It's crazy, but that's what most of us think. I think it's time to acknowledge how much things have changed since the early days.

BAYC is no longer the BAYC it was two years ago, and that's acceptable. It has battle scars, new members, and a million new things in the ecosystem.

Is BAYC more decentralized?

I don't know what happens to the price from here - it may continue to fall, it may stabilize, or it may recover. However, one thing I'm pretty sure about is if it's going to return to the crazy late 2021/early 2022 valuations, then that probably won't be dependent on what BAYC delivers. No one wants to spend $500,000 to own an avatar, acquire some land, play a virtual universe game, or go on a treasure hunt.

People pay big bucks because they want to be part of an exclusive digital country club. Being in the same club as celebrities and whales, members look out for each other, help each other, make connections, have amazing events and most importantly have fun together. That's why we've seen Azuki and DeGods flourish lately: because their communities are having a good time together. Of course BAYC is fun too, don't get me wrong. There are BAYC communities thriving all over the world, but not the same now, and I can't help but ask: Are BAYCs more dispersed?

The (not so) dirty little secret of this crazy PFP game we all play is that there's actually very little real value in it. The vast majority are speculation based on perception. I said this a year ago and it remains true today: one of the problems with our market is how much of it is driven by pure hype and speculation.

The "value" of most NFTs is simply "how much other people are willing to pay for them", and people decide how much they are willing to pay based on emotion, usually without any substance. When deciding whether to buy an NFT (for financial gain), what matters is not what I think about the project, but what I think other people think about the project. This can quickly become problematic when everyone is deciding whether to buy an NFT based primarily on what they think everyone else thinks.

I think all of this also does a good job of showing the difference between a PFP/NFT and an NFT with few external dependencies (i.e. Punks) and one with a lot of external dependencies. Having a roadmap is a double-edged sword, and this sword will eventually pierce most projects.

anyway. I've babbled enough, I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on BAYC as a long-term holder. Admittedly, I've been a pretty poor holder and community member this year, only focusing on my own projects. But I'm not losing faith in what BAYC is building, and what the community might achieve.

And at the end, all the remarks about "if Yuga fails, the entire NFT field will fail" are nonsense. If Yuga fails, the industry will surely suck and give some ignorant people ammunition to try to destroy us, but that will hardly change the long-term adoption of NFT technology. NFTs are not "make or break". 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 if we will see this, but when.