On Friday, Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, announced that it is taking a restructuring initiative that includes layoffs after the last October wave. The company has moved the NFT space with the announcement and aims to get back to its smaller and scrappier days like before.

 

Moreover, co-founder Greg “Garga” Solano returned as CEO in February and announced this on Twitter, along with screenshots of a Slack message sent to the team. He wrote, “I owe everyone a frank and honest explanation of what led to this decision. To put it simply: Yuga lost its way.” 

 

He further added, “Getting ourselves centered and on the right path means being a smaller, more agile, and crypto-native team. A team that does fewer things but does them brilliantly.” The company has revealed its goals and plans; however, the positions that will be affected are still unclear.

Yuga Labs Background

Established in 2021, Yuga Labs introduced the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project on Ethereum three years ago. The collection of 10,000 unique profile pictures (PFPs) became the biggest brand in the NFT space at $430,000 ETH in April 2022. 

 

Not to mention, the company raised $450 million in March 2022 and had a valuation of $4 billion when it acquired the CryptoPunks NFT project from Larva Labs. The crypto token of the Bored Ape ecosystem, ApeCpin (APE), was also launched, which rewarded NFT holders. Soon after that, Yuga Labs stepped into the gaming space with Otherside and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales in late April 2022.

 

Recently, Yuga Labs’ NFTs fell to a price 90% less than what it was at its peak. Hence, Solano expressed his views, saying that the company has not accomplished enough considering its growth. He stated, “The creative-first spirit that drove this company from inception has been getting muddied by labyrinthine corporate processes. We work hard and we care but somehow we end up with groups and committees. We plan more than we ship.”

 

In addition, he mentioned the recent sale of HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara gaming IP, saying that marketplaces are shifting away from honoring creator royalties and are playing in “hard mode” now and have to go “from zero to one again.” Solano wrote, “In the history of Yuga, our biggest home runs are things that went from a glimmer in our eye to shipped in under three months.”