Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), or simply Bored Ape, is a non-fungible token (NFT) collection built on the Ethereum blockchain. The collection features profile pictures of cartoon apes that are procedurally generated by an algorithm. Yuga Labs is the parent company of Bored Ape Yacht Club.[1] The project launched with a live pre-sale on April 23, 2021.[2] Owners of a Bored Ape NFT are granted access to a private online club, exclusive in-person events, and intellectual property rights for the image.

The popularity of BAYC was considerably documented by 2022; sales of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have totaled over US$1 billion and celebrities have purchased these non-fungible tokens.[3][4] The collection has also received criticism from online users for a variety of reasons including electricity waste, money laundering, and inclusions of Nazi symbolism.[citation needed]

According to the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) website, the NFT collection was created by four friends who "set out to make some dope apes, test [their] skills, and try to build something (ridiculous)."[3] Bored Ape NFTs, like other NFTs created are used for the digital art purposes aim to provide its owners the "original" artwork.[5][6] Bored Ape NFTs owners are considered in possession of "a unique unit of data recorded in a digital blockchain, which permanently records its provenance or sales history."[6]

The collection exists on the Ethereum blockchain and contains 10,000 unique NFTs.[7] The NFTs dually function as a membership card to Yacht Club. Membership to the club includes access to "The Bathroom" (stylized in all caps), a digital graffiti board.[7] The NFTs were originally sold for 0.08 ether each, around $190 at the time of their April 2021 launch.[8]

As BAYC "has made it clear that NFT holders have full commercialization rights to their ape," Bored Apes differ from other NFTs in that "whoever owns a Bored Ape can spin it into whatever film, music, TV, book, or media project they want."[9]