How to Value Bored Apes Yacht Club NFTs

A DappRadar valuation report for the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection

On April 23 2021, Yuga Labs launched the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 NFTs living on Ethereum. Bored Apes were available for minting to the public for 0.08 Ξ and lasted less than 12 hours before selling out. This was only a sign of bigger things to come for this NFT collection.

“The year is 2031, the world is token by BTC and ETH; everyone who aped into crypto is rich beyond their dreams but now they’re just [expletive] bored. They just want to hang out with fellow apes and to do that, you’ve got to go somewhere special, a ramshackle yacht club in the middle of the Everglades” 

Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) is a collection of 10,000 unique digital apes created by a custom generative algorithm from 170 different traits. Technically, each Ape is an ERC-721 token, the NFT standard popularized by CryptoKitties. These tokens are hosted on the Ethereum network whilst their actual metadata is stored via IPFS. 

When valuing an NFT, several factors should be considered: the art itself, the uniqueness of its traits, the team behind the project and the utility granted by owning one or more pieces.

Table of contents

• Yacht Club overview
• Apes traits analysis
• BAYC becoming a brand through added utility
• Ape follow ape: BAYC community overview
• Dappradar NFT value estimator
• In summary

Yacht Club overview

BAYC was revealed by Yuga Labs, an unknown group at the time of the launch. During mid-April, the team announced their NFT collection on Discord and Twitter without generating too much hype. The situation changed once they revealed the art. 

With a primary market price of 0.8 Ξ, the collection sold out in 12 hours. BAYC kick started a movement on social networks, especially on Twitter where several collectors started using their recently acquired apes as profile pictures. While this movement had already surfaced in other projects like CryptoPunks or Avastars, it helped form one of the strongest communities across the entire NFT industry. 

During their first month of existence, the Apes amassed over $16.6 million in sales volume. In the following months, the volume kept growing substantially. By the end of June, the BAYC collection was one of the most traded projects in the  NFT space, generating more than $44 million in sales volume.

BAYC trait analysis

The uniqueness of each NFT is perhaps the most important factor when valuing a single piece within a whole collection. As previously mentioned, BAYC consists of 10,000 unique apes programmatically built from 170 different traits. Unlike other collections like CryptoPunks or Meebits, all Bored Apes belong to the same type, relying only on the traits’ random generation to grant each piece a certain level of rarity or uniqueness. 

Each Bored Ape might include from 4 to 7 of the different traits. Traits include background, clothes, earrings, eyes, fur, hat and mouth give each avatar different looks, attitudes and moods. 

Since Apes are not classified by types, the number of traits gain relevance when trying to estimate the collection’s prices. Contrary to common belief, Apes with only four traits are amongst the rarest (3%), followed by seven traits (19%), five traits (25%) and six traits (53%) being the most common. The effect of the number of attributes is directly reflected in BAYC NFTs price.

Diving deep into each trait, scarcity is present in 6 of the 7 attributes. Besides the background color, the rest of the traits play a more important role in the asset’s price. For instance, in-depth analysis of the eyes, showed a positive correlation between price and certain types of eyes. Specifically, Apes with blue beam eyes (0.49%) were sold for an average $22,947 on secondary markets. Laser (0.69%) and cyborg (1.08%) eyes were also highly valued, netting average sales prices of $13,400 and $9,080 respectively. It is interesting to note that although the holographic (1.51%) and hypnotized (2.20%) eyes are among the scarcest type of eyes, their average price does not surpass the $6,000 threshold, showing that aesthetics play a role in the buyer’s preferences.

Another trait that appears to have a strong influence on Bored Apes value is their fur. Solid gold, the rarest fur among apes (0.46%) was traded for $47,593 on average. The next scarcest fur – trippy (0.77%), was sold on average for $29,006. The gap between the rest of the fur types is considerable. The death bot fur (1.75%) came third averaging only $11,000 per sale. 

The Bored Unshaven Pizza mouth is the scarcest trait of the entire collection (0.26%). Apes with a pizza mouth were sold for $29,814 on average. The Bored Unshaven Dagger mouth (0.42%), the second scarcest trait in the collection, was sold for $18,136, once again proving that scarcity does not necessarily translate into high prices.

On the other hand, background color is the less correlated variable to the asset’s price. Eight different colors are evenly distributed among all apes. Color probability ranges go from 11.70% (grey) to 12.91% (purple). While the average sale price may vary from each color, no trend can be differentiated.

​​Overall, the rarity of a piece is the main driver of the price. However, it is not the only factor to consider in the valuation. Except for four trait apes, rare items usually result in a price appreciation. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that aesthetics add a biased layer to the valuation. While unique items are highly coveted, the combination of two less scarce traits may provide an Ape with the mood someone is looking for.

BAYC becoming a brand through utility

Bored Apes are not ordinary NFTs. Yuga Labs originally designed the collection to reward BAYC owners with added use-cases. The team revealed a very clear roadmap after the project launched. 

For instance, Ape owners get an exclusive membership that grants access to the Yacht Club. Currently, activities are limited to the bathroom, a members-only space where the community can draw pixels on a digital board, yet additional features are expected in the future. 

A 24 hour YouTube channel with LoFi music started to broadcast, and although there are no access restrictions, it positions the brand within the most important media channel. In addition, the Bored Apes community launched a member-exclusive BAYC merchandise store. BAYC owners could translate their ownership into real life by donning Limited Edition branded apparel.

However, the cherry of the cake was announced in June. Yuga Labs decided to reward Bored Ape Yacht Club owners with another NFT piece that matches their corresponding apes, the dogs portrayed in the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC).

The dogs that accompany their ape friends, have doubled the success achieved by the Yacht Club. Since the BAKC collection dropped in mid-June, it has already reached $24.4 million in sales volume while reaching 4,300 different holders.

Summing up to the utility layer, collaborations with Decentraland and The Sandbox have been announced. For instance, more digital items were dropped to Ape owners, this time in the form of wearable hoodies with BAYC branding. The virtual outfit can be now worn at member-exclusive meetings in the Decentraland’s world. 

While Yuga Labs was not a recognized brand in the industry at the time of the launch, the original and conceptual art along with a strong social media management, were sufficient to start with the right foot. It is clear that the team behind the apes planned very carefully even the most imperceptible details.

Ape follow ape: BAYC community overview

As previously mentioned, not everything went smoothly during the BAYC launch. However, once the art was revealed, the colorful apes began to appear as profile pictures for hundreds of Twitter and Discord users. In a matter of hours, the Ape community was born under the #Apefollowape hashtag on Twitter. 

As the days went by, and more details about the project were coming to light, the hype train was unstoppable. A crossover with NBA Top Shots was probably the beginning of a myriad of celebrities joining the collection. Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs, confirmed via Twitter about entrance into the club. Several stars like NBA LaMelo Ball and Josh Hart, NFL player Dez Bryant, Jay-Z, NBA owner Mark Cuban and Gary Veynerchuk, Belarusian entrepreneur and creator of VeeFriends would join the club too.

Currently, the BAYC community has around 4,900 holders. This, translates into a 49% holder ratio, another indicator that bodes well for a NFT collection of this size. For comparison, CryptoPunks holder ratio is around 26% whereas Meebits is close to 24%. 

In social media channels the ape community is quite robust as well. In Twitter, BAYC has reached more than 38,500 followers, which represents a 352% increase from the start of June. Whether by sharing industry insights and funny anecdotes on Discord or hosting Twitter Spaces on a regular basis, the Apes embrace the true definition of a community. 

It is a fact that the Ape community has become one of the project’s most solidified and positive aspects. All in all, it has definitely been a very positive factor when it comes to the collections overall value. 

Dappradar NFT Value Estimator

Providing an accurate valuation is a difficult task for humans. Several factors should be considered besides the simple rarity of a certain trait. Embedding an additional computer technique, may add plenty of value into the process. 

A perfect example is Dappradar’s NFT Value Estimator. Relying on Machine Learning, the algorithm is trained using daily prices, thus providing an accurate estimate of real valuations. As of now, the tool can provide NFT enthusiasts with close appraisals of CryptoPunks and the BAYC. DappRadar will include more NFT collections in upcoming months. 

Having a reliable benchmark to provide estimations can result very useful to NFT owners and traders.

In-summary

Even though there is no straightforward methodology to tackle the valuation of a Bored Ape, certain patterns can be drawn. Traits like the golden or trippy furs, or certain types of eyes all but ensure a high percentile valuation. Since aesthetics and other external factors are virtually unmeasurable, an unanimous assertion cannot be made. 

Furthermore, when analyzing the Bored Apes Yacht Club from a macro perspective, the collection feels established already. The strong bond with the community and the added utility make the BAYC a very attractive option in the market. As the avatar NFT space may feel like a collection of copycat blueprints, both the social and the utility factors can be decisive in the long-term.