- In stunning news that was rumored yesterday, the two biggest startups in creating NFTs — Larva Labs the creator of the CryptoPunks and Yuga Labs the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club — both announced that Yuga had acquired the intellectual property to Larva’s CryptoPunks and Meebits.
- The deal involves the two biggest and most successful producers of NFTs.
This acquisition by Yuga Labs is akin to Apple acquiring the IP rights to Microsoft Windows.
- Matt Hall and John Watkinson, the co-founders of Larva Labs, explained their decision: “Our personalities and skill sets aren’t well suited to community management, public relations, and the day-to-day management that these kinds of projects require and deserve.
- “At the same time as we were working on possible solutions to the situation, we met and got to know the founders of Yuga Labs. We found many things in common, but we also saw in them the skill set and expertise in this space that we were missing. In many ways Yuga is the innovator of the model for the modern PFP project, and are the best people in the world at operating and growing these projects and communities around them. At the same time, we found they have deep respect for the history and origins of the NFT world, and want nothing more than to honor that while expanding its reach and size into popular culture at large.
- “As we discussed ways we could collaborate, it became clear to us that what would be best for the CryptoPunks and Meebits was for Yuga to take over operations and guide them in this new, much larger world. With that in mind, we are announcing today that Yuga Labs has acquired the IP of both CryptoPunks and Meebits, along with the majority of the developer-owned Punks and Meebits. Their first action in acquiring this IP will be to grant commercial rights to the community.”
- Yuga Labs said it plans on drafting content licenses that give CryptoPunks and Meebits owners full commercialization rights (similar to the full commercialization rights that Bored Ape owners own):
- “Now that we own the IP for CryptoPunks and Meebits, here’s what we’re planning to do with it. As a first step, we will soon be granting CryptoPunks and Meebits holders the same commercial rights that BAYC and MAYC owners enjoy. We’re working with our legal teams to draft the new terms and conditions for both collections, and expect to share these with the community soon. By handing over these rights, we’re further aligning CryptoPunks and Meebits with the web3 ethos, and we expect a wide-range of third party developers and community creators to incorporate CryptoPunks and Meebits into their web3 projects. We’ll be building the overall brand right alongside them.
- “What we don’t plan to do is shoehorn these NFT collections into the ‘club’ model we’ve developed for BAYC. We view BAYC as the center of the universe we are building at Yuga, and CryptoPunks as a historic collection. While we will work to bring additional utility to both the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections, we intend to do so as thoughtful stewards. We’re not in a rush here. We’ll be listening to the community before we decide what comes next.”
We now own the brands, copyright in the art, and other IP rights for both collections, along with 423 CryptoPunks and 1711 Meebits.
Yuga Labs
- Oh, and it’s only fitting that this bombshell NFT news would occur on March 11, 2022, on the one year anniversary of Beeple’s $69 million sale of Everydays: The First 5,000 Days NFT.