Yuga Labs launches BAYC council, Animoca backs Cool Cats and more…

Yuga Labs has announced a new Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) com­mu­ni­ty coun­cil to help the project “grow and thrive.”

The team revealed sev­en coun­cil mem­bers in an Oct. 5 blog post, not­ing that they are all OGs who have been around since the ear­ly days of the BAYC. 

Yuga Labs said it assem­bled a new com­mu­ni­ty coun­cil made up of “Apes with a proven track record of proac­tive­ly and pos­i­tive­ly con­tribut­ing to the club since the start.” 

The mem­bers include, @beijingdou, @SeraStargirl, @TheMiamiApe, @OxEthanDG, @OxWave, @negithenagi, @peterjfang.

“This coun­cil was formed with the inten­tion of rep­re­sent­ing the club at large and pro­vid­ing an avenue for new per­spec­tives,” Yuga Labs wrote. 

Yuga Labs stat­ed that they will engage with the com­mu­ni­ty and gath­er feed­back for the firm, work with Yuga on com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven ini­tia­tives such as com­mer­cial projects, mee­tups and char­i­ty work. 

“Every Ape in our com­mu­ni­ty has direct­ly impact­ed our deci­sions-mak­ing from day one. This coun­cil, and future coun­cils to come, puts a more for­mal, effi­cient and con­sis­tent process in place for Yuga lead­er­ship to get com­mu­ni­ty feed­back and advice on an ongo­ing basis,” it wrote.

Yuga Labs also teased that it could soon launch com­mu­ni­ty coun­cils for its oth­er NFT projects includ­ing Cryp­toP­unks, Meebits and the Oth­er­side mov­ing forward. 

Today, Yuga Labs wel­comes the first BAYC com­mu­ni­ty coun­cil that will assist us in shap­ing the future of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. For more details on the coun­cil head over to our offi­cial blog at https://t.co/MSD3M1QkfE

— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) Octo­ber 5, 2022

Animoca Brands partners with Cool Cats 

NFT ven­ture fund giant Ani­mo­ca Brands has made a strate­gic invest­ment into blue chip NFT project Cool Cats to help the project expand into new avenues such as gaming. 

The Oct. 5 announce­ment from the duo states that the “part­ner­ship will dri­ve Cool Cats’ mis­sion to become the largest glob­al NFT brand and a robust media and con­tent com­pa­ny, includ­ing through expan­sion of its gam­ing offerings.” 

Cool Cats was launched in July 2021 and con­sists of 9,999 car­toon cat avatars. The project has gen­er­at­ed $369.2 mil­lion worth of NFT sales vol­ume to date as per Cryp­toSlam data. The lat­est announce­ment has also coin­cid­ed with Cool Cats sales vol­ume pump­ing 220% over the past 24 hours. 

The move also fol­lows a part­ner­ship with Ani­mo­ca Sub­sidiary GAMEE from Sept. 1, a vir­tu­al plat­form focused on con­nect­ing cre­ators, brands and play­ers in the Game­Fi space. 

1/ .@animocabrands is excit­ed to announce our part­ner­ship with @coolcatsnft one of the ear­li­est, impor­tant and cutest #NFT meta­verse first col­lec­tions out there, to cel­e­brate I picked up a few #Cool­Cats includ­ing this rare beau­ty #Cool­Cat­sNFT #7807 a lit­tle pic.twitter.com/oYzRYHU4XC

— Yat Siu (@ysiu) Octo­ber 5, 2022

Solana NFT sales volume surges past $100M in September

NFT sales vol­ume on the Solana blockchain tagged $130.1 mil­lion in Sep­tem­ber, with that fig­ure mark­ing an 82.2% increase com­pared to the $71.4 mil­lion post­ed in August. 

While the fig­ure still places Solana well behind Ethereum, which host­ed $354.3 mil­lion worth of NFT sales vol­ume last month, the dif­fer­ence between the two’s num­ber of unique buy­ers is much smaller. 

Accord­ing to Cryp­toSlam data, Solana NFTs saw 143,997 unique buy­ers in Sep­tem­ber (up from 95,516 in August) com­pared to Ethereum’s 166,168 that month (down from 202,467).

While the fig­ures may indi­cate that Solana is mak­ing up some notable ground on Ethereum, the lat­ter still hosts the major­i­ty of blue chip NFT projects. 

Look­ing at data over the past 30 days, only one Solana NFT project makes the top 10 in terms of sales vol­ume with tenth ranked y00ts mint t00b’s $13.3 mil­lion worth of sale vol­ume. In com­par­i­son, eight Ethereum-based projects make the top 10 dur­ing that time frame. 

Mommy, I want that NFT! 

Gary Vaynerchuck’s NFT project VeeFriends has penned an exclu­sive deal with Macy’s and Toys “R” Us to sell phys­i­cal plush and fig­ure col­lectibles fea­tur­ing VeeFriends NFT characters. 

The col­lectibles will be avail­able in stores from Oct. 17th, and will be priced from $9.99 to $29.99. The char­ac­ters include Com­mon Sense Cow, Will­ful Wiz­ard, Prac­ti­cal Pea­cock, Grat­i­tude Goril­la, Gen­uine Giraffe and Be The Big­ger Person. 

Relat­ed: Three Arrows Cap­i­tal’s NFT col­lec­tion to be liquidated

Hodlers who own the NFT ver­sion of the char­ac­ters will receive the asso­ci­at­ed phys­i­cal col­lectibles, with the more expen­sive plush and six inch fig­ures going to sea­son one NFT holders. 

Notably, the hodler’s won’t get a kick-back from the sales of the phys­i­cal toys however. 

Other Nifty News: 

Hori­zon Blockchain Games, the devel­op­ers of pop­u­lar NFT card game Sky­weaver have raised $40 mil­lion in Series A fund­ing, the com­pa­ny dis­closed on Oct. 4. The round was led by Bre­van Howard Dig­i­tal and Mor­gan Creek Dig­i­tal, with addi­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion from Poly­gon, Take-Two Inter­ac­tive, and Ubisoft to name a few. 

NFT mar­ket­place OpenSea announced in a series of tweets on Oct. 5 that the plat­form will offi­cial­ly allow its users to bulk list and bulk pur­chase up to 30 dig­i­tal col­lectible items in a sin­gle flow.