Yuga Labs, the crypto startup that began with a thread of text messages overnight among friends Gargamel, Gordon, Tomato, and Sass, mostly known by the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFTs, has acquired the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT Collections from Larva Labs.
The deal included the two brands, the copyright in art, intellectual property rights alongside 423 CryptoPunks, and 1,711 Meebits.
Larva Labs and its team will not make part of Yuga, since the spirit of the acquisition is that Larva Labs keeps creating and shaping the future of Web 3.0.
On their side, Yuga Labs will take a series of legal steps to provide holders of CryptoPunks and Meebits with the same licensed commercial rights that holders of the Apes collectibles enjoy, which allow holders to monetize their tokens, except that CryptoPunks and Meebits will not become part of a ‘Club’.
Secondly, in an act of coherence with the ethos of the crypto space, Yuga Labs will hand the commercial rights to the crypto-community, allowing a wide range of third-party developers and creators the chance to incorporate the two NFT collections into new Web 3 projects.
In a more philosophical tone, Yuga Labs considers that NFTs are essentially culture and make a vital part of the community-owned brands in a decentralized environment. Moreover, CryptoPunks ascribe a historical significance as they represent the inspiration of the modern CryptoArt movement with a unique collection of 10,000 characters with proof of ownership on the Ethereum blockchain.
At the same time, Yuga Labs acknowledges that NFTs such as CryptoPunks and Meebits can bring more utility beyond digital art and stories with an immutable record, since an NFT that can be irrefutably authenticated, is a key to access other content, experiences, apparel, or anything the creativity can conceive.
That is, whilst an NFT opens portals to new adventures, it can aggregate value as it occurs with membership rewards or exclusive cards. For the same reasons, Yuga Labs intends to bring additional use cases to both collections under a stewardship role, i.e., acting as a forum where the community, once with commercial rights granted, will freely express and make decisions. The ride has just begun and there is no rush for Yuga Labs. The fate of CryptoPunks and Meebits is about to be written.
