The founders of Bored Ape Yacht Club have been confirmed to be Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow, childhood pals now in their thirties. Solano and Aronow, both from Florida, are behind the BAYC NFTs of cartoonized anthropomorphic apes.
Several celebrities, including Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, and Gwyneth Paltrow, own BAYC NFTs, which have seen their prices soar over time. The BAYC NFT project began in April 2021 by a company called Yuga Labs, but its founders’ names were unknown until recently.
The identity of the BAYC founders was first disclosed in public business papers for Yuga Labs, according to BuzzFeed News. In the search, an address related to Solano and other details associated with Aronow were revealed, also indicating their roles in Yuga Labs.
Nicole Muniz, the CEO of Yuga Labs, later verified that Solano and Aronow were the BAYC NFT project’s co-founders.
BAYC NFT
The BAYC is a collection of 10,000 algorithmic creations, one-of-a-kind illustrations of apes in fancy attire.
With their pseudonyms, both founders of the BAYC were active on social media. While Solano, who is 32 years old, adopted the alias Gargamel, Aronow, who is 35 years old, adopted the alias Gorgon Goner.
They started the BAYC as a way to get into the crypto space, and they chose NFTs as their first project. Then, Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are digital collectibles whose ownership gets recorded on the blockchain.
Solano and Aronow likewise admitted that their identities had been doxed on Twitter. They also used the microblogging platform to share their original photos alongside their Bored Ape avatars.
Taking under a pseudonym is popular in the crypto world.
There are also two additional co-founders of the BAYC project who choose to remain nameless and go by the identities of No Sass and Emperor Tomato Ketchup.
In reality, the BAYC collection’s creator goes by the name Seneca. It also may or may not be the artist’s real name.
Bored Ape Yacht Club: Most exclusive NFT collection
The Bored Ape Yacht Club has likewise quickly established itself as the most exclusive NFT collection on the market.
The cheapest Bored Ape now has a floor price of ETH 74.69, which equates to $231,393. On the OpenSea NFT marketplace, the most expensive piece sold so far was for $2.7 million
The collection continues to rule the NFT marketplaces.
Justin Bieber added another Bored Ape to his NFT collection on February 6 by purchasing a new item for ETH 166 (about $470,000).