[Doyeri's NFT Radar] BAYC NFT trading volume surges… APE is also 'excited' by the launch of Apechain

The trading volume of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) Non-Fungible Token (NFT) project, which had been sluggish for a while, has recently increased sharply. With the launch of the Ape Chain associated with BAYC, it is showing an upward trend along with the Ape Coin (APE).

According to CryptoSlam on the 23rd, the trading volume of BAYC for the past week increased by 59.22% to $4.387 million (about 60.6652 billion won), ranking second among all NFT projects. During the same period, the number of transactions increased by 183.33% to 136, and the floor price on OpenSea was 12.649ETH on that day. On the 21st, the floor price had risen to 14.69ETH.

The launch of the Ape Chain is analyzed to have breathed new life into BAYC. On October 20 (local time), the Ape Coin team led by Yuga Labs, the developer of BAYC, announced the launch of the Ape Chain. The Ape Chain is an Arbitrum-based Layer 3 (L3) network, and the Ape Chain Bridge has also been activated, allowing users to transfer tokens to the Ape Chain and automatically earn staking rewards on APE, Ethereum (ETH), and stablecoins. Generally, when staking tokens on a blockchain, users need to repeatedly claim rewards and re-stake to earn compound interest.

Marcus Silen, CEO of 10x Research, said, "They have introduced an auto-compounding feature to incentivize users to stake APE on the Ape Chain," and "This new feature helps maximize returns over time by automatically reinvesting the rewards."

Following this news, APE has surged more than 70% in the past week. As of 4:07 pm on the same day, based on CoinMarketCap, APE recorded $1.29, up 77% from a week ago. It had risen to $1.7354 on the 21st, the highest since April 2022.

The Ape Foundation issued APE on March 17, 2022, and it took about 2 years and 7 months for the Ape Chain to be launched after the APE release. The total supply is fixed at 1 billion, with 62% allocated to the ecosystem fund. 150 million were allocated to BAYC NFT and MAYC NFT holders, and this amount was designed to be tradable immediately upon the APE release. 470 million were distributed to the Ape DAO's finance and resources, and this amount will be gradually tradable over 48 months. 16% was allocated to Yuga Labs and charities, with 150 million allocated to Yuga Labs, which can be sold over 36 months after a 12-month lock-up period. 10 million were allocated to the Jane Goodall Foundation, which has been dedicated to chimpanzee research during her lifetime. The remaining 14% was distributed to launch contributors, and 8% to the BAYC founders.

CoinTelegraph analyzed that "the launch of the Ape Chain has expanded the utility of APE within the Yuga Labs ecosystem, leading to increased demand for the APE token." In the same context, the expectation of ecosystem activation seems to have driven the rise in BAYC NFT prices. It remains to be seen whether the Ape Chain, which has successfully attracted attention since its launch, can secure competitiveness among the many blockchain platforms.

Reporter Yeri Do

yeri.do@decenter.kr