Exclusive Interview with the Founder of BAYC: We Have Huge Ambitions to Defeat Metaverse Giants

One night in early February this year, 33-year-old Greg Solano and 35-year-old Wylie Aronow received shocking news at their respective homes - BuzzFeed would publish an article exposing their true identities, which they had been carefully hiding.

Solano recalled: "We only had 20 minutes of warning time." They immediately called each other to discuss countermeasures. Aronow said: "To be frank, we have real safety concerns." Bad actors might try to invade their accounts, or even do worse things.

They started deleting personal information online, warning family members about the upcoming events to prevent them from becoming targets as well.

A few days later, Solano had to explain the situation to his father - he and Aronow are the founders of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), which is the hottest NFT project on the internet. They launched BAYC through Yuga Labs in April 2021, and the company is currently valued at $4 billion.

BAYC consists of 10,000 unique digital ape avatars, each with its own unique combination of features. In October last year, a rare ape was sold at Sotheby's for a high price of $3.4 million. In the same month, Madonna and U2's manager Guy Oseary became business partners of BAYC.

Nowadays, Bored Apes are everywhere in popular culture, from Old Navy t-shirts to Snoop Dogg and Eminem's MTV music videos. Celebrities like Steph Curry and Justin Bieber all own Bored Apes.

Despite the collapse of the cryptocurrency and NFT markets this year, Bored Apes are still regarded as a "blue-chip" investment in the field. Currently, the floor price for one ape is about $140,000, down from a high of approximately $434,000 in April.

The pressure is immense. As the public face of Yuga Labs, this is a headache. The company is growing rapidly: in March, it acquired two more popular NFT series, CryptoPunks and Meebits, and then launched its own cryptocurrency, ApeCoin.

A few days later, Yuga will hold a large-scale demonstration of Otherside, an immersive game developed in collaboration with the UK studio Improbable. This is not just a game, but the beginning of the Web3 Metaverse, open to a broader public. Yuga will compete directly with large companies like Meta.

Greater pressure comes from litigation. In June, Yuga sued artist Ryder Ripps for trademark infringement because he created an NFT series identical to the Bored Ape series in May. However, Ripps' knockoff project is only part of the issue. He has also publicly accused BAYC of being filled with racist and neo-Nazi symbols.

Solano said: "For those who understand our background, this is obviously absurd. But the trolls' obsession, malice, and how evil the whole thing is, that's hard to deal with."

Aronow described solemnly the impact of online hate they suffered due to these accusations: "It's like this every day."

Strange Partners

Aronow said: "In terms of background, we are really an odd pair." This is obvious. First is their huge height difference: Aronow is 6 feet 2 inches tall, much taller than Solano.

Aronow has thick black hair and is covered in tattoos. His voice is deep and resonant. He is the embodiment of the NFT enthusiast slogan "LFG"(Let's Fucking Go). Solano, on the other hand, is bald with a goatee, speaks gently, and refers to Aronow as the perfect motivational "workout buddy."

Aronow said: "We will debate every idea, from simple tweets to entire NFT projects. In fact, our friendship started with an argument." About ten years ago, they first met in a bar in Miami and began debating the merits of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest." Since then, they have kept in touch and played "World of Warcraft" online together.

In 2017, the two began discussing cryptocurrencies. They were most interested in the possibilities of the Ethereum blockchain, where people build decentralized applications, including gamified collectibles like CryptoKitties.

It wasn't until early 2021 that Solano purchased his first NFT. Soon after, he texted Aronow saying they should start their own NFT project. Aronow said: "We immediately started brainstorming." One of the ideas was a public digital canvas, and Aronow shared this idea with Nicole Muniz, the current CEO of Yuga Labs. She predicted that someone would draw a little brother on it.

These people do it this way. Aronow said: "I was thinking, where would you draw a penis? The answer is: on the bathroom wall of a dive bar. And what kind of person would go there?" The kind of person he met on Crypto Twitter, who made money from cryptocurrency but still just wants to play games online.

Aronow sent Solano the "full article" to plan this idea, which included the name "Bored Ape Yacht Club." Solano said, "That's it. That's it." The concept evolved into - in cryptocurrency, millionaires are real apes, with "apes" meaning that people living in 2031 will impulsively invest in new projects without doing much research. Aronow stated that they registered the limited liability company the next day.

They were not artists; at that time, Solano was working in publishing, and Aronow was unemployed, so they hired a team to execute the idea. Muniz introduced a visual artist known as Seneca, who created the original BAYC concept art based on directions like "scrappy punk rock" and "swamp diving bars." Four other artists helped design the original 10,000 apes.

At the same time, Solano contacted his friends Ali and Atalay whom he met at the University of Maryland. Solano asked them if they understood JavaScript, which is not a blockchain-related programming language. The tech duo quickly learned the right language - Solidity. Atalay said: "This is the easiest part." because the ERC-721 token standard used for NFT programming has long been made public and can easily be used as a template.

The complexity lies in managing the multiple components of the project: the website, smart contracts, token-gated community space, and linking them together. Ali said: "There are only two of us, and we are both new to blockchain programming, which is a significant challenge."

But they did it. The presale and minting started on April 23. On the evening of April 30, the quartet released these monkeys at a price of $200 each. Then they went to sleep.

Around 3 a.m. on May 1st, Ali received a call from Atalay. Ali thought there was a "big problem," but on the contrary, he and Atalay watched these collectibles sell out in real time that morning. At that moment, they knew they had created something significant.

All of this happened 15 months ago. Shortly thereafter, the four co-founders began working full-time at Yuga Labs. Yuga added new NFTs to the Ape family, giving them Dog ( through a Bored Ape Club airdrop ) in June 2021, and gave the Mutant Apes in August; the latter's series sold for $96 million within an hour of its launch. NBA star Steph Curry was one of the first celebrity holders, purchasing his Ape for around $180,000 that same month.

In September 2021, Muniz joined ( as a partner, a month earlier than Oseary, and became the CEO in January of this year. In March 2022, Yuga Labs raised $450 million in a funding round led by a16z. Today, the company has about 70 employees. Aronow said: "I really want to talk to others who suddenly created something very popular. It’s truly an incredibly surreal experience."

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The four founders insist they have not lived a lavish lifestyle. They have all bought houses scattered across the United States but refuse to disclose their specific locations ) except for Solano, who lives in Miami (. They say they spend most of their time in their home offices, working at least 10 hours a day - Solano's office is undecorated, while Aronow's office is filled with BAYC items and children's wallpaper, which he says came with the house.

But they do get to see celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Colin Kaepernick. Aronow said: "Sometimes Guy introduces us to someone on a hands-free call. Oseary holds his phone up to the screen. He FaceTimes with someone I completely admire." Aronow's favorite celebrity is primatologist Jane Goodall). Yuga Labs donated 1% of the total supply of ApeCoin to her foundation(. Solano said he enjoyed meeting digital artist Beeple.

For Solano, the biggest change might be that he is now indifferent to receiving business calls from celebrities. He said that in the past he was so introverted that he "wouldn't think of calling to order pizza."

Strange Characters

Solano and Aronow both grew up in Miami, lamenting that the city has become less cool due to the industry they are in. Their Miami is not the concrete jungle of crypto brothers living in high-rises downtown. Aronow says his Miami is particularly "lush, beautiful, and full of very strange characters."

As a child, he encountered many characters like this - the powerful "80s Miami Vice heartthrobs", who were old friends of his father. They would take him out to lunch and tell stories about his father Don Aronow, who was murdered in 1987 when Wylie was still an infant.

Don Aronow was the son of Jewish immigrants from Brooklyn. He made his fortune in construction in the 1950s and later became a leading figure in the powerboat industry. He sold boats to "movie stars, kings, and queens." President George H.W. Bush was a friend who owned Don's boats. U.S. border security personnel used his boats - just like the drug dealers they pursued. John Travolta portrayed Don in the 2018 film "Gotti," which Aronow described as "terrible," and RogerEbert.com gave it half a star.

In 1987, 59-year-old Don was shot in his car on North Beach. About ten years later, two individuals, a former competitor in the powerboat industry and allegedly the hitman he hired, stated that they had "no objection" to the murder. However, there are still many conspiracy theories surrounding the businessman’s death, involving gang connections and supposed jealousy from a mistress. Online speculation suggests that Don was also a CIA agent.

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Regardless of the truth about Don's life and death, Aronow said the stories he heard from his father's friends often conflicted with the stories of his mother, model Lillian Aronow, before ) Wilhelmina. His death deeply affected Wylie's childhood. He grew up in a coconut grove with his mom, stepfather, and his 8-year-older brother, who was a "bar hero" in the Miami punk scene.

Aronow said he didn't want to offend his parents, but described the family environment as "poor." He spent most of his childhood playing video games like "Final Fantasy." Around the age of 12, he began to frequently run away from home to participate in local punk shows like his brother. There, Aronow found a group of similar...