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In this episode of Edge of NFT, Greg Solano, co-founder of Yuga Labs, joins us live from Korea Blockchain Week to discuss the growth of Bored Ape Yacht Club, the future of Yuga Labs, and the transformative potential of NFTs in media and community building. Greg shares insights into storytelling, challenges in the NFT space, the ApeChain initiative, and Yuga's innovative Web3 projects like OtherSide and Project Dragon.
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Key Topics Covered:
- Yuga Labs’ Journey and Community Growth: Greg shares how Yuga Labs has evolved over the past three years, including the global influence of Bored Ape Yacht Club and ApeFest events.
- ApeChain and Community Initiatives: Discover how ApeChain, chosen by Apecoin DAO, is empowering creators with tools for building within the NFT ecosystem.
- Project Dragon and Monthly Releases: Greg discusses Project Dragon, a multiplayer game built on Otherside, and Yuga’s commitment to releasing new experiences every month.
- Expanding the NFT Ecosystem: Hear about Yuga’s brand collaborations, including partnerships with BMW and BAPE, and how NFTs are enabling unique user experiences worldwide.
- Future Vision for NFTs: Greg shares his thoughts on where NFTs and Yuga Labs are heading in the next five years, with a focus on content, community tools, and immersive Web3 experiences.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@edgeofnft/
Episode Highlights:
- Greg Solano: “It’s been amazing to see how Bored Ape Yacht Club has inspired people around the world to create their own businesses and art. What started as monkey JPEGs has evolved into a global community with a deep, shared culture.” (Timestamp: 5:45)
- Greg Solano: "At Yuga, we see the future as decentralized. We're focused on giving our community the tools and content to help them build alongside us, making NFTs and metaverses meaningful in a way that drives real engagement." (Timestamp: 22:15)
- Greg Solano: “ApeChain is about community-led innovation. We’re excited to see what unique experiences the DAO and creators can build that wouldn’t be possible on other chains.” (Timestamp: 37:32)
For the full transcript, see further below.
People and Resources Mentioned:
- Yuga Labs Website: Yuga Labs
- ApeCoin DAO: ApeCoin DAO
- BASE by Coinbase: BASE Website
- Project Dragon: Learn more about Project Dragon and OtherSide
- BMW Collaboration: BMW NFT partnership
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About Our Guest:
- Bio: Greg Solano is the co-founder of Yuga Labs and an early pioneer in the NFT space. With a background in book publishing and poetry, Greg has a unique perspective on the role of storytelling in building Web3 communities. Under his leadership, Yuga Labs launched the Bored Ape Yacht Club and has expanded into innovative Web3 projects like ApeChain and OtherSide, revolutionizing how communities interact with NFTs.
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Transcription:
Intro: Welcome to the Edge of NFT, the podcast that brings you the top 1% of Web3 today and what will stand the test of time. We explore the nuts and bolts of the business side and also the human element of how Web3 is changing the way we interact with the things we love. This podcast is for the dreamers, disruptors, and doers who are pumped about this ecosystem and driving where it goes next.
Josh Kriger: GMGM, everyone.
Greg Solano : Welcome to Korea, Greg. Thank you. Yeah, it's my first time here. So it's I'm still a bit jet lagged, but it's been beautiful. I've had a lot of good food.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I was gonna ask that question. You know, this is my third year here and at Korea Blockchain Week, they do an amazing job putting together great talks, great people, but I remember the food the most. So what have you discovered? I guess there's actually some Bored Ape restaurant out here, right?
Greg Solano : Yeah, yeah. Last night, we had a little bit of a meetup at Bored and Hungry Seoul. It's a great cheeseburger. I hear the shrimp burger is actually really good, too. Yeah, and just the decor, the mural outside the store, it's pretty great.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, that's cool. I think that's like a great example of sort of things that happen that you don't expect when you create some art, right?
Greg Solano : Yeah, we're going on a little over three years since the birth of Boarded Yacht Club and BOIC and to be halfway around the world at a restaurant that one of our holders created is just incredible.
Josh Kriger: This is a special conversation for me because Edge of NFT podcast was actually created a week before Bored Apes launched. And I think it's been an incredible journey for us. I'm sure for you, the last three years, I think none of us could have predicted the highs and the lows in our industry.
Greg Solano : Yeah, absolutely. It's been a wild ride for me over these three years.
Josh Kriger: So we'll talk a little bit about that. But one thing that I found interesting is you have a background in publishing, book publishing. And I sort of have thought a lot about the future of media and content creation from different lens, obviously, our industry, and then personally being a content creator. And I feel like I heard a quote recently that media is dead, but journalism is alive and well. And I think the point there being, it's all about storytelling, and that companies have to do that, and that individuals have to do that. And there's opportunity with, I think, any sort of NFT collection to tell amazing stories. So I'm just curious what your thoughts are in terms of the evolution of IP in the context of media and its future.
Greg Solano : Yeah. Yeah, my background is in book publishing and poetry. I have a master's in fine arts and poetry of all things. And my co-founder, Gordon, he's a writer as well. That's actually how we connected. And I think in crypto in particular, like, messaging is so important. Managing expectations, getting your message out there to your holders is just... you see it in the projects that are most successful, and you also see it in a way where storytelling helps empower communities in a lot of ways. I never would have thought by making monkey JPEGs that all of a sudden you'd have businesses all across the world, Bored and Hungry here, Bored Brewing, a distillery, we've got 400 plus made by its businesses around the world, some doing over, you know, some doing multi-million a year in ARR. And it's, I think a lot of it comes down to just stories that people connect with and the opportunity to tell their own.
Josh Kriger: Absolutely, that's amazing. So we talked about some of the challenges in this space and Yuga hasn't been immune from that. You made a decision after a hiatus to step into the role of CEO again, which definitely caught a lot of headlines. And you've talked already about sort of why you did that. I'm really curious about what it was like getting back into the driver's seat and sort of what were some of the changes that you made since inheriting that role again.
Greg Solano : Yeah, so yeah I co-founded Yuga three and a half years ago and just stepped back in as CEO about six months ago and really The only way I know how to run a company is to be extremely hands on and product all the time. And it was a weird sensation with, you know, after the tremendous success of our first year as a company, we had just felt like there was a bit of imposter syndrome settling in and felt like we needed to bring in, you know, mommy and daddy to show us how to really run a company. And I think we lost something special in doing that. And really, as I've stepped back in and changing the way that we work, a lot of it comes down to shipping much more quickly, iterating, and I think Yuga, when it's at its best, it functions almost more like a product studio. It's a creative place, it moves fast, and when we don't do that, and we function more in this kind of web-to-corporate way, it doesn't work for anybody.
Josh Kriger: To be fair, though, as Yuga has shipped more product, I think there's been more attention and more eyeballs on Yuga than traditional PFP projects that can get away with, quote, being an experiment and exploring. Do you feel like there's been extra pressure on you and the team that you've had to address in terms of sort of balancing this culture of sort of meeting a broad set of expectations that are sometimes unrealistic, but also sort of shipping product fast?
Greg Solano : Yeah, look, I think in the same way now I think we talk about meme coins and pumped up fun and we look at like, you know, we can see the on-chain data of the million tokens that have come out in a quarter or whatever it is. I think sometimes a month now. A month? Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, the numbers have gotten absurd. At the same time, I think we all forget, you know, three years ago it felt like every once a week there was 10 new you know, bored ape derivative projects that were launching and raising a bunch of money and piecing out. So I have a lot of respect for the people that are around still building, you know, from that cohort in 2021. And I do think as a founder, you have to have tough skin. It's not for, you know, the weak of heart. I, you know, luckily, I think I do. And the best way to get over, you know, to deal with anything on Twitter or whenever you're down, it's just to get back and create stuff and ship. So I try not to focus on that side.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I mean, fortunately, people have short term memories. And I think when they when you ship something amazing, that's what they're focused on at that point is that that next great win. Right. Yeah. I mean, musicians, they have hits and they have some songs that don't land. Right. Same thing. Book publishing.
Greg Solano : Right. It's yeah. Publishing is always a hits driven business and content is. And that's what we're doing here after all, actually, I think with NFTs.
Josh Kriger: So I think there were some lessons learned with Project Dragon. It got mixed reviews. I'm curious what you learned from that project and where it's going and how that's applying to some of the other upcoming projects that we'll talk more about later.
Greg Solano : Yeah, so Project Dragon is an other side experience that we launched for the first time two months ago, or actually a month and a half, I think. It's a mass concurrency kind of team fight shooter, so you're defending parts of the map. I think we had 1500 people in one space, which for a shooter game is impossible for most platforms. But very much it was us building in public, and with the Express, we tried to put everybody on notice that we're building this with the same exact tool set that we're making available to our community via the ODK. Right now it's a small group of five that's opening up to about 20 over the next little bit here, and with the idea of opening up to more and more as the year goes on. And what I'm proud of is that we had some hiccups on the first one. We did the second event a couple weeks later. And it's just getting better and better. And I'm excited to ship again this month and go away from these long, quiet periods to shipping other side every single month alongside our community.
Josh Kriger: Right on. So I think one reason everyone's here, and you know, I certainly get the target with wearing a hat, Edge of NFT, and Yuga gets it, is reflections on the industry as a whole. And are NFTs dead? That's the headline that's constantly there. Do you feel like we're past the greatest challenges with NFTs, or are there more challenges ahead?
Greg Solano : I think there's a huge amount of opportunities ahead with NFTs. It's the thing that brought normal people on-chain outside of the walled gardens of centralized exchanges, really. I can't tell you how many people first installed MetaMask or any wallet, frankly, just so that they could participate in an NFT ecosystem. It's the first time they used it as a token-gating mechanism, a key for merch or events or other things. And instead of just, you know, heading to Coinbase or Binance or somewhere else, you know, and just watching numbers go up and down on the screen. I think over the past two years, as you know, we've taken some kicks here in crypto. It's one of the things I miss most and what I'm most excited about is getting people back on chain, away from sexism and just having fun.
Josh Kriger: So what does the future of NFTs look like to you and is there a geographical shift in the mix there? A lot of it I think the initial energy stemmed from the United States and sort of broadened from there. And in my travels, I've seen a tremendous amount of passion, interest in NFTs to this present moment in Asia, Korea, whatnot. So, you know, both from a sort of experience perspective, application perspective and from a geographical perspective, where do you think NFTs go next?
Greg Solano : Yeah, I mean, we've certainly been astounded at the reception that we've gotten across the world. We held ApeFest last year in Hong Kong. We're doing it this in two months in Lisbon, Portugal. Yeah, they've been looking for love out there for a long time, and I'm excited to head back to Lisbon. And you can see it, I think, even in just what holders are building around the world. Bored and Hungry that we talked about earlier, they actually were featured on Korea's longest running variety show on like Sunday or Monday of this week. That's like airtime that somebody would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars getting, but they're getting reached out to because, you know, they're so fascinated about what that team is doing, rightfully so. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of energy in Asia for the brand and for NFTs more broadly.
Josh Kriger: And is it about the art? Is it about applications to gaming? Is it about lower cost NFTs that are more addressable to a broader market? Or is it going to continue to be a mix?
Greg Solano : I think it's going to be a mix. I think at the end of the day, what We collaborate and partner with some of the biggest brands in the world. We have a Bape collab coming up. We had BMW out at ApeFest last year, and they're a great team, and we have some stuff coming with them. And what they are so interested in when they experiment and come into Web3, some of these big brands is, The level of community and engagement that they get is like nothing else they get anywhere else. Because once you fill up people's hands and you give them ownership and you engage with them in that way, they return it back to you. And I think BMW's tweet about ApeFest was like, by an order of several magnitudes, their most engagement they've ever had on a tweet. And for some of these legacy brands, that means a lot. And I think legacy brands or new ones like, you know, a level of intimacy with media is what NFTs end up offering.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I remember the first NFTLA that we hosted and all these projects came out and met each other, but many times they were meeting each other within the community for the first time, and I imagine the deep bonds that were built digitally, they only get amplified by the physical, and I think it's this cycle of deeper and deeper connections that can continue infinitely, right?
Greg Solano : Absolutely, I mean ApeFest was a crazy idea we had a couple years ago and it's my favorite time of the year getting everybody all over the world together in one place to just have fun and connect and you recognize people by the ape on their t-shirt more than their face but you still feel like your family.
Josh Kriger: So you're pretty relaxed but when we talked before about all the things going on, all the projects coming up, I'm impressed, so I need some CEO tips from you in terms of how to keep a chill profile. But let's talk about some of the exciting things going on, because there's a lot happening just in the next few weeks.
Greg Solano : Yeah, so actually sharing the news here first, we're going to tweet about it a little later today. Dookie Dash, our mobile game, is coming out next week on September 12th. I think the best mobile games are the right mix of stupid and stupid fun, and Dookie Dash checks that box.
Josh Kriger: A little round of applause there. That's really exciting. Congrats.
Greg Solano : Yeah, we're super excited that the game's been, you know, been getting tuned and we've had kind of little stealth tests around the world. But yeah, excited to kick off the real feature set with the launch next week. We have got a million dollar prize pool up for season one. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah, no, we're stoked. So, really, really happy about that. Bape is another collab that we just announced. I'm actually, I'm wearing the shoes. That's coming out soon. We've got something special with BMW. Something fun coming out with BMW. We've got ApeFest around the corner. And I think maybe the biggest thing, though, really, is ApeChain coming out in the next few weeks here with Mainnet.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, well, I want to talk about Other D, too, mainly because I'm a holder and I didn't get an ape in time. I saw them. It's one of my big regrets in life. But let's talk about Ape Chain first, because I think this is really interesting that this was a community initiative that was sort of created by someone in the community. It was a proposal that you guys got behind. So maybe you can talk about what's going on there.
Greg Solano : Yeah, so the Apecoin DAO is a really active DAO ecosystem, and they were looking at different Ethereum scaling solutions, you know, and so Optimism, Arbitrum, a few different people came in and made proposals, and the DAO voted for Arbitrum. We didn't vote, we didn't participate, we didn't even give our thoughts on it at the time. But since then, we've actually gotten really deeply engaged with the ecosystem. and are basically a major contributor at this point, and we're really excited for everything that's coming. I mean, 8Chain is really a bet that dApps at the end of the day are really what matter, and so everything about the chain is designed to facilitate discovery, incentivize creators, and make available, to speak about Othercide a little bit, the tool set that we're building Othercide ourselves with, something like Project Dragon, we're making available to the community through the Othercide development kit, and all that commerce happens on ApeChain, so the possibility set of the kinds of things people can build between Othercide and ApeChain I think are gonna be really spectacular, like really novel experiences that you can't do elsewhere in crypto or NFTs. At the end of the day, metaverses are a lot harder to build than layer twos, I think. So we've got, I think, a really robust ecosystem between the two.
Josh Kriger: Absolutely, congrats on that. It's really exciting. So, yeah, what else is going on with Otherside? I'm going to ask because I have a vested stake in it. We're tied, so what's going on there?
Greg Solano : Yeah, we've got Project Dragon that we're shipping monthly. It's our kind of team fight shooter game on Otherside. We've got two islands that we've visited so far, kind of BOIC Island, the swamp. We've been to Metropolis. The next island we're going to be opening up is the Nexus. It's the birthplace and home of the Kodas on other sides. So we're excited for that.
Josh Kriger: So if I hypothetically have a really rare Koda, is there any kind of potential features that I can take advantage of?
Greg Solano : Yep, you'll be able to hang out as your really rare spectacular Coda in the Nexus and play as them in Project Dragon and other experiences and also get access to some special stuff in the ODK. We've got that, we've also got a bunch of different mini-games that we're working on. We just did a poker event on the other side. We had a little VIP table, we raised $45,000 for charity, which is great. We're kind of focused on environments and getting our avatars and stuff into these new game modes. but also rolling out some new feature sets for social stuff. So poker, we got something special for doing kind of Twitter spaces on the other side coming out in the next bit. And yeah, we're just excited.
Josh Kriger: Wow. A lot going on for sure. Really exciting. It's been such an honor to be here with you at Create Blockchain Week and to learn about everything going on. One last question before we wrap is, what does Yuga Labs look like in five years?
Greg Solano : I think I said this a little bit earlier, I think Yuga at its best resembles like a product studio. And what I mean by that is a small team that's focused on taking the best stuff that we're seeing in crypto, adding our own creative flair to it, and seeing if we can get more people engaged. Especially by making, with everything that we do, we're focused on two things, content and tools. And so at the same time we're building other side, we're giving those tools to our community to build alongside us. The same way when we built the club, we decentralized the IP for board apes. I don't know, I don't have a crystal ball or a magic eight ball to shake to know exactly what we look like in five years. But what I can tell you is I hope that we're the kind of company that's just earnestly engaging with the best ways to bring people on chain.
Josh Kriger: Right on. Let's give it up to Greg. Thank you for your time. Thank you.
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