Profiling BAYC holders [Part 1]
Intro
Before we deep dive into Ape holders' onchain behavior, is worth doing a recap on the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s road from its launch in 2021 to a $4 billion valuation of its parent company Yuga Labs, which raised $450 million from A16z last year.
The launch:
Launch in April 2021, the BAYC launched as a 10K PFP collection at the 0.08 ETH mint price and quickly sold out.
Secondary prices hit double-digit barely 3 months after launch (11.89 ETH on August 4th) and at the time of writing BAYC median price is ~70 ETH.
The BAYC NFT also worked as a membership NFT to grant access to its “yacht club” online community and IRL events.
From inception, Ape holders had full IP rights to create brands and businesses around their apes like Bored & Hungry, Jenkins the Valet, or even an upcoming TV show that got paused because the creator got his Ape stolen.
The road to Yuga’s $4 billion valuation:
Still, in 2021, BAYC’s universe expanded with the launch of Bored Ape Kennel Club and BAYC’s upgrade to Mutant Ape Yacht Club (via the airdropped Mutant Serum).
The most expensive Bored Ape sale was BAYC #8817, which was auctioned offchain in October 2021 for $3.4 million by Sothebys, according to Investopedia. BAYC #3749 was the most expensive Ape acquired onchain by SandBox for almost $3 million.
Owning an Ape PFP quickly got social validation and status amongst the NFT community and crypto Twitter, but also notability thanks to celebrity holders like Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Paris Hilton or Steve Aoki and brand partnerships with Adidas for example.
2022 milestone #1: Yuga Labs acquired, from Larva Labs, two NFT OG collections CryptoPunks and Meebits, and consolidated its leadership in the NFT market.
As you can read in this Deep Water article: 5 out of 9 Outliers NFT collections belong to the Yuga Labs*, namely BAYC, MAYC, Otherdeed, and CryptoPunks.
2022 milestone #2: ApeCoin DAO (a separate entity from Yuga Labs) launched and airdropped 15% of $APE (ApeCoin) supply to BAYC, MAYC, BAKC’s holders - a governance token in the DAO, a staking mechanism for holders and to unlock rewards in Web3 games (partner games or future Yuga’s initiatives).
2022 milestone #3: the next step in Yuga’s vision was the reveal of the Otherside metaverse with the initial sale of 55K Otherdeeds virtual land NFTs. The virtual land had a 305 ApeCoin pricetag (you could only buy with the BAYC ecosystem token), it sold out in hours and Yuga netted $317 million from the launch.
That leads to a $450 million seed round led by a16z and the $4 billion valuation of the parent company Yuga Labs.
At the end of 2022, Daniel Alegre was appointed Yuga’s new CEO. Alegre came over from the role of President at the gaming giant Activision Blizzard, a clear sign to holders and the NFT community overall of the ambition to build its Otherside’s metaverse into an “immersive Web3 world”.
2023 kick off with the expansion of the BAYC universe with the launch of the NFT-gated game Dookey Dash.
The trial of Jimmy's teaser and game announcement led to a spike in BAYC, MAYC, and BAKC NFT secondary volume.
BAYC, MAYC, and BAKC holders could claim a free Sewer Pass. A holder could get a different Sewer Pass tier depending on its Yuga NFTs holdings (MAYC = Tier 1 vs BAKC + BAYC = Tier 4)
Dookey Dash is part of the “Chapter 1” narrative experience of the larger interoperable vision for Yuga’s metaverse Otherside. The sewer game closed Feb 8th and on the 15th it will unlock “The Summoning” - new power sources for the highest scores in the Dookey Dash game and the next phase for the 2023 BAYC’s lore and roadmap.
*NFT collections > 2K ETH last 30 days volume at the time of the article publication.
All in the NFT community have witnessed the tremendous success that BAYC and Yuga built since 2021. We now turn our attention to BAYC holders to see what insights surface from their onchain behavior.
Some questions that guided this analysis:
How many BAYC are held per wallet?
Who are the top holders of BAYC (and how much MAYC and BAKC do they own)?
What NFT collections are BAYC holders buying? And selling?
What were BAYC most expensive sales?
What BAYC were traded the most times?
What’s the impact of BAYC traits rarity on a specific trait floor price?
What NFT Marketplaces are used to trade BAYC?
What other collections do BAYC holders hold?
H/t to @cryptuschrist for some great BAYC Dune dashboards of which we used some of his queries as a base for the development of these dashboards.
Check our Dune Analytics dashboards that were developed as a base for this analysis and please note that data used is as of Feb 8th 2023:
Profiling BAYC holders 🐒
BAYC traits overview - Analysis of most valuable ape traits 🐒
How many BAYC are held per wallet?
There are ~5,967 unique holders of BAYC (~60%).
More than 92% of BAYC holders, hold just one or two BAYC in their wallet.
Holders that have more than 20 BAYC on the wallet are less than 0,5% of total holders (16 holders).
BAYC's distribution per wallet shows a widespread community, with a high number of smallholders and a low percentage of holders who own a high number of BAYCs. In comparison, BAYC has a higher unique holder ratio (60%) than other popular NFT projects such as Azuki (50%), CloneX (50%), or CryptoPunks (37%), indicating a larger community.
Who are the top holders of BAYC (and how much MAYC and BAKC do they own)?
BendDAO, an NFT liquidity protocol supporting instant NFT-backed loans, is the top holder of MAYC and BAYC as it holds ~640 MAYC and ~620 BAYC (on mayc.benddao.eth and bayc.benddao.eth respectively). BendDAO’s BAYC holdings represent ~6,4% of its total supply.
Paraspace, a cross-margin NFT financialization protocol, also holds 355 MAYC and 178 BAYC.
dingaling currently holds 101 BAYC, 99 MAYC, and 110 MAKC, which makes him the #4 holder of BAYC (and one of the first individuals if we exclude NFT financialization protocols holdings).
MachiBigBrother a well-known BAYC holder, is the #11 holder of BAYC+MAYC+BAKC with 99 NFT (54 BAYC, 43 MAYC, and 2 BAKC).
The fact that the top holders of BAYC are NFT financialization protocols is a strong indication of its status as a highly valued blue-chip NFT that is widely accepted as collateral for loans. However, a high concentration of assets in these protocols can increase market volatility, especially during downturns, as a large number of BAYC can flood the market and negatively impact the price.
What are BAYC holders buying and selling?
For this analysis, we are considering the last week.
In the last 7 days, BAYC holders bought and sold the most Sewer Passes (which grant access to Yuga Labs’ Dookey Dash interactive skill-based mint, available on mdvmm.xyz from January 19, 2023, through February 8, 2023).
The second collection more bought is Checks - VV Edition, by Jack Butcher (check our latest Dune Dashboard covering Checks).
Other collections highly traded in this timeframe by BAYC holders were Otherdeed for Otherside, 10KTF Stockroom, Dooplicator, MAYC, and BAKC.
BAYC’s holders mostly traded Yuga-owned collections (Sewer Pass, Otherdeed for Otherside, BAKC, MAYC), Blue-chip related NFTs (Dooplicator) with the notable exceptions of Checks - VV Edition, a recent collection by Jack Butcher that got a lot of hype and attention from the NFT community and WagmiSan’s 10KTF Stockroom, another notable project in the NFT space.
What were BAYC most expensive sales? What BAYC was traded the most?
The top 5 most expensive BAYC sales were above $2 Million USD (and above 500 ETH each).
The most expensive BAYC-bought on-chain was #3749, which was bought by The Sandbox, more than a year ago, for almost 3 Million USD (740 ETH).
Deepak.eth, Chain CEO, bought #232, the second most expensive BAYC in terms of USD and the most expensive in terms of ETH (1.080 ETH).
Out of curiosity: BAYC #1156 was traded 20 times, #4962 was traded 15 times and #9109 was traded 14 times.
What’s the impact of BAYC traits rarity on a specific trait floor price?
The most valuable BAYC traits in floor price are Solid Gold Fur, Bored Unshaven Pipe Mouth, Bored Unshaven Dagger Mouth and Laser Eyes. In general, these are one of the most rare traits and it’s market value is correlated to its rarity.
In fact, if we analyze the most expensive BAYC sales, they all included traits of high value/rarity such as Solid Gold Fur, Laser Eyes, Trippy Fur.
Even if a higher rarity trait is correlated with a higher floor price, this is not always true since some traits (or combination of traits) gained more cultural significancy than others.
Check our Dune Dashboard (BAYC traits overview - Analysis of most valuable ape traits 🐒) where we analyzed the relationship between BAYC traits and trait categories and their perceived market value (floor price) and explored the relationship between market value and rarity.
What NFT Marketplaces are used to trade BAYC?
For this analysis, we are considering the last 120 days.
In the past, BAYC was essentially traded on OpenSea. But with the introduction of new NFT marketplaces, OpenSea started to lose market share to LooksRare, X2Y2, and lately Blur.
In the last 120 days, ~50% of BAYC trading volume happened on Blur, while OpenSea only accounted for 22% and X2Y2 for ~20%.
BAYC’s holders are seemingly following the NFT marketplaces’ disruption trend that we’ve covered extensively in our previous article 🏴☠️ NFT Marketplaces sea battle 🏴☠️ where pro-traders and low-to- zero-fees NFT marketplaces gained rapid market share from the incumbent OpenSea in 2022.
Additionally, as covered in that previous article and corroborated by our Dune Analytics NFT Marketplaces: Blue-chip vs Other Collections, OpenSea is less reliant on blue-chip collections trading like BAYC and other Yuga’s NFTs, opposite to Blur with ~43% of trading volume is blue-chip at the time of the writing.
What other collections do BAYC holders hold?
The collections that are cross held for more BAYC holders are also Yuga owned (such as BAKC and MAYC).
Besides MAYC and BAKC, ENS, Artblocks, CloneX, 10KTF, Cool Cats, World of Women Galaxy, and Moonbirds are the non-Yuga-owned collections that most BAYC holders also own.
To be continued…
As the article title clearly states this is Part 1 of an ongoing analysis of BAYC holder's onchain behavior, where first wanted to characterize the BAYC’s community.
As a teaser for the next chapter(s?), we go deeper into the financialization of BAYC’s NFTs, and BAYC holders’ DeFi usage to understand what insights we can bring to the surface from one of the most significant NFT collections in this space.
As a final note, we want to hear from you:
We started with BAYC profile onchain analysis, but what other NFT collections would you like for us to profile? CryptoPunks, Azuki, Doodles, Moonbirds?
Simply reply to this email or DM us on Twitter your answer.
For this analysis we used the following Dune dashboards:
Profiling BAYC holders 🐒
BAYC traits overview - Analysis of most valuable ape traits 🐒
NFT Marketplaces - Blue-chip vs Other Collections