Yuga Labs, makers of Bored Apes Yacht Club, acquired the rights to the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections from Larva Labs.
The two most valuable NFT collections by market cap are Bored Apes and CryptoPunks, with a combined worth of at least $3.6 billion. Over the past several months, Yuga Labs has been rumored to be in talks about raising money.
The deal's terms were not announced.
The intellectual property rights of the characters have been owned by the creators of the projects. With this announcement, Yuga Labs signaled that they will be giving full commercial rights to the individual holders; they notably won't be transferring the full copyright, but is a step further than Larva Labs ever went and something owners had long desired.
Some big news to share today: Yuga has acquired the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections from @LarvaLabs, and the first thing we’re doing is giving full commercial rights to the NFT holders. Just like we did for BAYC and MAYC owners. pic.twitter.com/lAIKKvoEDj
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) March 11, 2022
The work of the project's creators, Matt and John, has long been admired by us. We are honored to carry the brands they have built into the future we are building at Yuga.
One of the earliest NFT projects and one of the most influential was launched in the year of 2017: the CryptoPunks project had 10,000 NFTs claimed by users for free. The cheapest portrait is now selling for nearly $200,000, while the most expensive is selling for millions of dollars. In May of 2021, the Larva Labs founders released a follow-up project called Meebits, banking tens of millions of dollars in primary sales within hours of launch.
CryptoPunks maker Larva Labs launches their new NFT project, Meebits
The Larva Labs founders have almost completely left the project at this point, with Yuga Labs detailing in a post that they had also acquired 423 CryptoPunks and 1,711 Meebits from the company, leaving them with just a few of each.
Yuga Labs revealed a partnership with the Bored Apes project.
We never talk about what's next for us until it's ready, but in general we're excited.
Flashback to my CryptoPunks feature last year…
“It was never our intention for this to sort of be our careers,” [Larva Labs co-founder John] Watkinson says.https://t.co/X4iTSl6FjC
— Lucas Matney (@lucasmtny) March 11, 2022
All Rights Reserved © 2024
