Dismantling the three major ecological empires of NFT: How did they expand their influence?

This article comes from the WeChat public account Laoyapi (id: laoyapi).

This article comes from the WeChat public account Laoyapi (id: laoyapi).

A business empire is generally defined as a large business organization or conglomerate owned or controlled by one person or entity. These organizations are powerful and governed by a centralized authority. For example, think of the big tech giants of the Web2 world - Meta, Amazon and Google. Since much of the core ethos of Web3 revolves around decentralization and community control, it is against the ethos of Web3 to describe any Web3 organization, large or small, as an empire. However, this appears to be what some Web3 organizations are becoming.

Let’s take a look at three of the largest NFT entities and disassemble how they are using NFTs to expand their reach in games, books, TV, audio, merchandise, events, digital environments, and more.

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1. Yuga Labs

Yuga Labs is currently the largest player in the NFT space. Since launching the Boring Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) in April 2021 and skyrocketing, Yuga Labs has achieved incredible financial numbers: 92% net profit ($127 million) on $138 million in revenue . Almost all of these revenues come from initial minting and secondary royalties from the Boring Apes Yacht Club and their respective spinoffs. (Includes Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Bored Ape Kennel Club.)

Then comes March 2022, the most profitable month in Yuga Labs' short existence. First, the company released a 10-day trial of their play-and-earn game Apes vs Mutants, and then went on an acquisition spree, acquiring the full intellectual property rights to two of the biggest projects in the space: CryptoPunks and Meebits. Originally owned by Larva Labs, both CryptoPunks and Meebits have fairly strict copyright restrictions that do not allow holders to profit from their IP. Yuga Labs plans to change that, granting two projects Creative Commons Zero (CC0), allowing all Punk and Meebit owners to create derivative works from their art. This move has transformed Yuga Labs from a powerhouse player into a premier entity in the NFT space, further strengthening their IP portfolio as they venture into media and events."BAYC founder Wylie Aronow (Gordon Goner) told The Verge in an interview:"

We’re seeing our tentacles starting to spread: streetwear, events, games, NFTs, and more. For now we just need to find a new scene and start accessing our IP

A week later, Yuga Labs announced the long-awaited launch of ApeCoin for BAYC NFT holders and ApeDAO, a synchronously governed DAO that will be funded by an initial ApeCoin sale. ApeCoin itself will initially be used as an in-game cryptocurrency, but will soon have utility far beyond the Yuga Labs ecosystem.

In late March, Yuga announced their biggest move yet (another one well received by the community): a $450 million funding round led by Silicon Valley VC firm Andreesen Horowitz, known in the NFT space as a16z. The seed round brings Yuga Labs' valuation to $4 billion and makes one of the world's largest financial institutions a key stakeholder in the DAO and Yuga Labs' future.

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Citation source: Bloomberg

With top-notch talent and capital resources at their disposal, only time will tell how far Yuga Labs' territory can expand.

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2. Tally Labs

Tally Labs recognizes IP's pivotal role in the Metaverse, and bet its future on it. Unlike Yuga Labs, they are approaching the dominance of cryptocurrency content from a slightly different angle. Believing that the next generation of family characters will live on the blockchain, Tally Labs is partnering with existing projects (and those they hold), licensing their IP, and creating all forms of community-generated media, including books, movies, audio etc. They're also acquiring and revamping bad projects, while creating their own proprietary worlds and characters to build a broad library of crypto-native IP.

To fund this mission, Tally is launching Writer's Room NFTs, a collection of 6,942 genesis NFTs that grant holders the right to vote on the creative direction of all future Tally Labs projects -- from Jenkins the Valet The first novel begins. Jenkins is Tally Labs' first and foremost fictional character (a boring ape), whose character was created via BAYC's CC0 approach, providing all holders with full commercial license to their ape IP.

Once released to Writer's Room holders and distributed through the public mint, the NFT book will serve as an access key to The Writer's Room 2.0, and holders will face a game theory-based decision: "burn" their book NFT or stake it .

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Source: JENKINS THE VALET medium"Decentralized Media Empire"。

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Additionally, Tally Labs built CharacterDAO to manage the creative decisions behind their own proprietary family characters (Jenkins, Jenkins the Mutant, and Goodboy). To earn Character DAO's governance tokens, you must stake your Writer's Room NFT.

MEET GOODBOY, JENKINS, AND JENKINS THE MUTANT

Tally Labs and Writer's Room have a lot going for them, and with less than 2% of the total Writer's Room NFTs listed for sale, it's clear the community is behind the vision and holding on to it.

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3. Doodles"One of the most sought-after PFP projects in the world, Doodles is a collection of 10,000 generative NFTs. with most"community first

Unlike other projects, Doodles gives its community a say in the full direction of its roadmap. All proceeds from Doodles' initial minting and secondary royalties go to the Doodlebank treasury, which has been used to fund Doodles' live events, digital characters, merchandise, team development, and more. Operating like most DAOs, Doodles' decisions around the treasury and future roadmap are made through community proposals, with one Doodle equaling one vote."Doodles is taking a more approachable approach through live events at cultural hubs like Art Basel and SXSW."Vegetable

approach to building community, the events feature collaborations with Shopify and Behr alongside musical performances by artists like Diplo."Space Doodles"On the digital front, they recently released the long-awaited

, a non-dilutive expansion project that will further promote the Doodles brand within the NFT community. While much of the Doodles team's plans remain under wraps, their ambitious community-led goals are clear.