The day I became an ape
The birth of Boring Bored Ape aka BBA
BAYC
Boring Ape Yacht Club is getting a huge amount of attention since the project was sold out 3 weeks ago.
The community is growing super fast (reached 3K unique owners), crazy Twitter Spaces or Clubhouse chat are happening every single day and a DAO might be created quite soon.
The fact that BAYC creators gave licensing rights to apes owners unleashed a torrent of creativity and awesome projects like a BAYC comic, an audiobook, and even a video game are being built as we speak. There are also some talks with The Sandbox to bring apes in the metaverse and RTKFT will make sneakers for apes OR RIOT.
But despite all of this excitement, what people are really interested in is the boring story behind Bored Ape #6743, aka Boring Bored Ape. That’s why you’re here right?
Digital identity
The digital identity topic has been on my mind for quite some time.
I’m quite bored and as you can imagine I spend a lot of time online.
Social media and especially Twitter are a unique way for anyone to express their opinions freely. You can potentially interact with millions of people worldwide and have the opportunity to not be judged on your sex or skin color, nor your wealth (that doesn’t work if you own an Alien punk though). But what if you don’t want to share those opinions with your family or your coworkers? I don’t think the "opinions are my own” thing works.
Also, I believe crypto and COVID have started a paradigm shift about the way people work and interact together and I think it will be totally fine to use a digital identity as your main identity outside your close inner circle in the near future.
So what do you do? For me, the obvious answer was creating my own digital identity.
Why the ape?
Using NFTs for digital identity is not new. CryptoPunks or Avastars make great avatars. Some owners are making wonderful use of them and the associated value of owning a punk has been demonstrated many times.
The best example is probably @punk4156 who is using their punk to not only build a very strong digital character recognized by their peers but also to create experiments that are either incredibly innovative like Ape Stage Capitalism or funny as hell.
4156 is a daily source of inspiration and definitely one of the reasons I decided to build my digital identity.
Of course, there are many others that are doing that brilliantly but I prefer not naming any to name just a few.
So why the ape?
I’ve been in the NFT space for a few months already and even though I’ve discovered some amazing artists and NFT, I didn’t feel a connection with any of them. I tried but it just didn’t stick.
What about a CryptoPunk? I may or may not be able to afford one but I couldn’t imagine myself buying a floor CryptoPunk I didn’t really like just because it’s a punk. I understand those doing it but it’s just not for me.
Then enters BAYC.
I have to be honest here. I discovered the project a few weeks before it was sold out. I really liked the art and the associated proposition but sales were quite low and I told myself I would come back a bit later.
Fast forward to May 1: I’m in public transportation buying a few apes in panic minutes before they are sold out.
Although I did get some averagely rare apes and ALL APES ARE BEAUTIFUL, I didn’t feel a special connection with any of them.
While the rares apes were going for crazy amounts, I looked for something else: a cool ape that I would be comfortable using as my avatar for the decades to come.
And then I found #6743.
I immediately loved the ape. He looks cool, wears double BAYC merch, and is looking BORED AF which is what BAYC is all about right? In my eyes, he was the alpha bored ape.
I found out the owner was the legendary @j1mmy and managed to contact him on Discord and basically begged him to sell it to me for a reasonable price which he politely declined. Then a few hours later I saw it was on sale for 0.88 ETH.
That’s a lot of real-world money for me but I was lucky enough to sell another ape for approximately the same amount so I decided to pull the trigger.
It was pretty much an all-in move at this point but why would I care if this would be my digital identity for the next 50 years?
I was now bound to Bored Ape #6743.
I feel so connected to my ape right now that I feel like I would have to include myself in the package if it was ever for sale at a Sotheby’s auction.
Yeah but why?
Now what?
I now had a cool sexy looking ape but it still lacked a purpose.
From day one I loved the vibe of the BAYC community and felt like it had an incredible potential to grow to infinity so I wanted to do my part.
While I’m working on a few NFT projects on my own, I have nothing to sell and I don’t any particular artistic talent so I decided that my ape would be a Twitter celebrity and influencer whose goal would be to bring light to the BAYC and bring value to the collection as a whole.
Since my ape is not rare at all the plan was to make him the most boring of bored apes and play around with that theme. And it worked. People love boring. I even somehow managed to get some viral tweets.
It’s been a bit more than 2 weeks and I’m not sure it brings actual value to BAYC but numbers have been quite impressive… and it’s a lot of fun!
And that’s just the beginning.
Proof of ape
Apes everywhere. The number of Twitter users using a Bored Ape as their avatar has skyrocketed in the last few days.
But hey what’s the point of owning an ape if you can’t prove it’s actually yours?
Owning an ape already grants some crazy cool perks like free CAMELS, $APES airdrop, mass follows from fellow apes and I guess it will only grow in time.
Also, it may at some point give the owner some credibility in the NFT space like it seems to be the case for CryptoPunks.
4156 just launched a very interesting experiment that could help demonstrate the value of being in possession of a coveted NFT.
This being said, there’s quite a lot of shady Twitter accounts using CryptoPunks as avatars to get some fake credibility in order to try to scam people.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened to BAYC as well very soon.
Please report that kind of accounts.
So how do you prove you actually own your ape?
Punk owner @0xTycoon published a very handy tutorial explaining how to do it using signature verification. It’s for punks but it also works for apes.
It’s free and quite easy to do so I would recommend all apes to do so.
Here’s mine: https://etherscan.io/verifySig/2642
Bored forever
I have to be honest here and admit that I have bigger plans for my apes than writing tweets about me brushing my teeth or having a cup of tea.
Of course, I will continue to do just that but I want to explore all available possibilities offered by the fact BAYC gives commercial usage rights to apes owners and the NFT technology itself.
This is the list of projects I have in no particular order:
Build a DAO for Bored Ape #6743 so that holders can decide my roadmap
Create an official #6743 remixes collection with some innovative mechanics which will reward both collectors and artists
Collect as much as #6743 remixes from actual artists to give them as much visibility as possible
Make #6743 famous in the real world
Have more followers than Paris Hilton
Bored Ape #6743 by brainpasta
So yeah I want to become the Kim Kardashian of Bored Apes but much cooler and without the billionaire part.
Boring Bored Ape already has its own song so I guess I’m on the right path.
And the goal will remain the same: make the BAYC community shine all over the world.
Boring
I could have continued writing for hours but I’m sure that was boring enough and not many of you will have made it this far.
If you did, reply to this Tweet with “Boring.” for a chance to win something boring.
See you next time for another boring issue of The Boring Newsletter. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to talk about the best technique flossing techniques or the day I watched a 10 hours video about a guy counting to 1 million.
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And remember, stay bored!