ApeCoin DAO has just launched the bespoke NFT marketplace exclusively for the blue-chip NFT collections in Yuga Labs' portfolio. The brand-new official platform went live on November 23rd, allowing users to trade top Yuga Labs digital assets from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, and Otherside metaverse collections.
Prior to the launch of the custom NFT marketplace, both Magic Eden and Rarible stepped forward with their intentions to build the platform with no upfront fee. However, they lost to a little-known startup dubbed Snag Solutions, which won 88% of the votes from APE token holders to build the new marketplace.
Snag Solutions was founded about half a year ago by the former DoorDash employees Zach Heerwagen and Jason Jong. The startup specializes in building white-label marketplaces for NFT collections and already has some top-tier projects behind the belt, including marketplaces for Goblintowns' Truth Labs, Crypto Chicks, and others. Snag Solutions is currently closing its pre-seed round.
Interestingly, the startup initially wanted a $50,000 upfront payment and higher fees for employees for constructing the ApeCoin marketplace, but after Magic Eden's and Rarible's proposals, it dampened its expectations
“Magic Eden’s proposal was super feature-rich and built by a market leader,” Heerwagen said, adding, “And so we pivoted our entire kind of smart contract stack to be entirely on-chain and open-source so that we could lean into the narrative that Magic Eden is fairly centralized and doesn’t play well by Web3 values.”
While Yuga Labs’ BAYC, MAYC, and other NFTs are being traded on OpenSea with a 2.5% fee, the ApeCoin marketplace offers a lower fee of 0.25% on listings in APE and 0.5% on listings in ETH. From those, Snag Solutions takes 0.25% of the fees in Ethereum, while all other fees go to the ApeCoin DAO treasury. Another beneficial feature is that the new marketplace is integrated with the Bored Ape ecosystem, including in-built NFT metadata on its dashboard as well as the upcoming ApeCoin staking details for listed NFTs.
On top of that, against the backdrop of the overwhelming zero-royalty hysteria, the ApeCoin NFT marketplace is honoring creator royalties, delivering half of the seller fees back to the DAO. Moreover, the platform adds royalty fees to creators for listings it aggregates from the platforms that had primarily adopted optional or zero royalties.
As for other Yuga Labs' collections like Meebits, CryptoPunks, or the new addition to the portfolio named 10KTF, they are said to be added in a while.
With so many beneficial features for both creators and collectors, the ApeCoin NFT marketplace will definitely draw all existing and many new clients to the Ape ecosystem.
