Daniel Alegre, CEO of Yuga Labs, the popular company that owns the commercial rights to NFT CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club collections, announced today at X that the company’s restructuring is finally complete.
After a very tense period of downsizing and refocusing, Yuga Labs is now ready to focus on enhancing its brands and supporting the various communities that orbit around them.
First and foremost, the parent company of the industry’s top-rated NFTs is focusing on the development of the Otherside metaverse, which was announced about a year ago.
Otherside encompasses all the creations and products over which Yuga has control, including BAYC, MAYC, CryptoPunks, Meebits and other small collections of non-fungible tokens.
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News from Yuga Labs: Home of NFT CryptoPunks completes corporate restructuring
Daniel Alegre, CEO of Yuga Labs for the past six months, published a post on social media site X today giving an update on the company, which owns the commercial rights to the hugely popular NFT collections “Bored Ape Yacht Club” and “CryptoPunks”, as well as a number of other projects.
Following the announcement at the beginning of the year that Yuga was undergoing a corporate restructuring, which included staff cuts and reduced community activities, there is now a new positive impetus.
Alegre said that the restructuring is now complete and that the Crypto Signature team can now focus on improving its brands, collaborating with the outside world and expanding the Otherside metaverse.
This is a turning point for the company in the area of Web3 and NFTs, as evidenced by the words of its CEO, who described this milestone as follows:
“As difficult as it has been, the restructuring is complete and we now begin the task of sharpening our focus with our new team configurations”
All of this will go through the filter of the community, whose role, according to the company’s CEO, will be crucial in providing ideas and feedback.
The signals from Yuga Labs’ stakeholders are many and varied, both encouraging and demoralising, as the ecosystem of CryptoPunks’ parent company is made up of different groups, each primarily concerned with the project in which they have invested.
Alegre revealed that he arrived at Yuga six months ago with a desire to hear as many voices as possible from the various communities in order to identify all the facets that the project might be hiding behind its facade.
During this time, the company’s current CEO travelled extensively to various cities in the US and abroad to attend as many BAYC, CryptoPunks, Meebits and 10KTF events as possible.
After carefully analysing the situation, Alegre identified a tense relationship with the NFT CryptoPunks supporters that had almost reached the point of collision with the Yuga board. In order to resolve this tension, it was necessary to reconcile the parties by working on strengthening the brand through events and physical activities.
These are his words in his post on X:
“The relationship between Punks and Yuga when I came in was, I have to say, strained. We constantly felt that Yuga didn’t care – while at the same time there was a strong desire to be left alone.
As a result, we expanded our engagement with top museums to increase the already strong stature of CryptoPunks and broaden the appeal of the brand to art collectors. We have doubled… even tripled… community support”
On the BAYC front, however, Yuga will continue to support offline events and try to be selective in its commitments, focusing mainly on the multi-year deal with Gucci and the recently announced BAPE collaboration.
The CEO concluded by saying that there are a few more collaborations in the pipeline that will be announced soon.
Yuga Labs and the push to expand the Otherside metaverse
As mentioned in Alegre’s post on X, Yuga Labs will not only be working to repair the relationship with the NFT Crypto Punks holding community, but will also be focusing on the development of the Otherside metaverse.
On 30 April 2022, this virtual world was publicly launched, accompanied by an airdrop of virtual lands called “Otherdeed” to all holders of Yuga-branded NFTs such as BAYCs, MAYCs, CryptoPunks, Meebits and many more.
Otherside was designed as a home for all these crypto specimens, where they could find an alternative utility to mere display in virtual museums and non-fungible token marketplaces.
The launch was initially a success, although a year later Yuga found it difficult to develop his creation in the face of a collapse in media attention to these forms of entertainment.
Having completed its internal reorganisation, the NFT Brand Incubator is now able to focus on the development and creation of new digital experiences that can improve the state of the metaverse.
The uniqueness of these new ventures being designed and the support of a strong and scalable blockchain technology will be the drivers of Yuga’s business success, reports Alegre.
Describing Yuga’s primary goal in relation to the expansion of Otherside, he said:
“Building an immersive metaverse platform is difficult, both technically and creatively. Recently, you’ll have noticed a steady stream of announcements – from partnerships with Hadean and Big Rhino to the acquisition of Roar Studios – all aimed at accelerating the development of Otherside to become the digital connection and experience platform for our family of Yuga communities and beyond”.
To date, the scarcity of the speculative factor on NFT collections orbiting the metaverse has unfortunately not been conducive to Yuga Labs’ efforts to develop its decentralised ecosystem.
Analysing the floor prices of the two main collections on the market, we see that BAYCs have lost more than 80% of their value on the market since the highs of May 2022, when they were quoted at 128 ETH.
CryptoPunks, on the other hand, have lost around 60% of their value since the highs of October 2021, when each digital punk was worth a whopping 112 ETH.
