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Noah Davis Quits Christie's To Join Rival NFT Marketplace Yuga Labs

Noah Davis, the AVP Specialist and Head of Digital Sales, Contemporary Art at UK auction firm Christie’s International PLC, has quit the British auction house three months after Yuga Labs bought the coveted CryptoPunks non-fungible token (NFT) project from the auction house back in March.

Davis, who has been a key part of the NFT team at auction house Christie’s, announced on Sunday via Twitter that he is now joining Yuga Labs in July to be the project’s brand lead.

While he will resume the new position at Yuga Labs next month, he will also be the leader of the Howlerz NFT project, which he will continue to lead.

Yuga Labs is a US blockchain technology firm that develops and sells NFTs and digital collectables.

In March this year, Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, bought the popular CryptoPunks NFT project, therefore putting the two popular NFT projects under the same management. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks, the two major NFT Profile for Picture projects, have long been fighting for market monopoly.

On social media, Davis announced: “If you’re a Punk holder and you care about the legacy/future of the brand I wanna talk one on one. I’ll be at the Punks Brunch during NFT NYC and will begin scheduling sit-downs immediately. Wherever Punks go, the community will help guide us.”

In March last year, Christie’s auction house grabbed the attention of the art and cryptocurrency worlds by selling an NFT artwork for $69 million. The digital piece from artist Beeple — a collage of his first 5,000 days of work — was the first auction of an NFT at Christie’s.

Davis leads up NFTs for Christie’s Auction House and was involved in Beeple’s $69 million NFT sales in March of the previous year. The NFT was the most expensive work of digital art sold and marked Christie’s first-ever sale of non-physical art.

The sale created a lot of buzz and spotlight regarding NFTs. It was validation that digital art could be bought and sold at high valuations from respected auction houses that deal with world-class art and luxury products for high-end clientele. With the success of its first NFT sale, Christie’s decided to auction more digital tokens afterwards.

MeebitsDAO Manager to Push Meebits Branding for Yuga Labs

Yuga Labs has revealed plans to onboard MeebitsDAO general manager Danny Greene as the new brand lead for Meebits at Yuga Labs.

The transition is best considered as a move to integrate Danny as a Yuga Labs veteran further but basically occupying the same role and tasks, he has been overseeing for MeebitsDAO over the past 8 months.

Since Yuga Labs acquired the Intellectual Properties attached to CryptoPunks and the Meebits non-fungible token (NFT) collection in March, the team has been making several strategic decisions to reposition the two pioneering collectables as the pride of the NFT world they once were.

At Yuga Labs, Danny will help in building a dedicated community for Meebits while also carving out creative utilities for the NFT collection. As Meebits brand manager, Danny will also be tasked with the responsibility of acting as a liaison between the brand and the broader Web2.0 and Web3.0 worlds, respectively.

Danny’s wealth of experience as a former VP, in charge of global marketing for Curio NFT, and a consultant to Activision Blizzard on matters pertaining to the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops III, made him the ideal candidate to take up this challenge.

The entire Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) ecosystem is all about branding with collections like BAYC and CryptoPunks naturally speaking for themselves. Despite this, The Yuga Labs team employed Guy Oseary, Madonna’s brand manager, as the NFTs’ spokesperson and representative.

With the collective work that has been done thus far, BAYC has gained tremendous traction amongst top fashion brands, with the likes of Gucci recently integrating ApeCoin into its payments rail. The branding that Danny Greene is coming to commence is bound to be a build-up on what the other Yuga Labs collections have been able to pull thus far.

CryptoPunk, Meebits Owners can now Create Commercial Projects With Their NFTs

Owners of CryptoPunk and Meebits non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can now create commercial projects and products based on their NFTs.

The announcement comes following Yuga Labs’ release of its long-awaited intellectual property (IP) licensing deal for CryptoPunk and Meetbits NFT holders on Monday.

Yuga Labs first bought the collections from Larva Labs in March, and holders of these NFTS have been awaiting the announcement since then.

The new IP licensing agreement has put these NFT holders on the same level as the IP rights enjoyed by the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s holders, as the deal will give them full commercialisation rights to create projects and products based on their NFTs.

Some of the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s holders have already used the IP in projects.

For instance, American actor, producer, writer and director Seth Green is launching a show based on his recently-returned Ape. He reclaimed his stolen bored ape avatar NFT by spending over $300,000.

While restauranteur Andy Nguyen also opened Bored Ape-themed restaurant Bored & Hungry in Los Angeles in June 2022.

Although Yuga Labs own the IP, NFT holders can license it.

However, in a different scenario previously, Larva Labs received criticism for handling IP licensing differently and retaining the intellectual property rights to the collections. Larva Labs’ decision also prompted at least one NFT holder to sell their CryptoPunk in protest.

Several other NFT collection creators have taken different approaches to handling IP rights.

Moonbirds NFT earlier this month switched to a public domain usage model, adopting the Creative Commons CC0 copyright code, which has provided access to anyone to commercially use and reproduce art from both Moonbirds and Oddities – its sister project.

However, this decision has also attracted backlash as holders have complained that they had bought into the project believing they had exclusive rights to their NFT.

MTV Awards Feature Eminem and Snoop Dogg as Bored Apes

The push into the metaverse is taking a new turn for the positive as the Snoop Dogg and Eminem duo performed in the metaverse at the MTV Music Video Awards on Sunday.

While their performance as Bored Apes remains the highlight of the event, the debut of the MTV Music Video Awards opened a new category for the best performance in the metaverse for the first time.

Eminem and Snoop Dogg’s performance was set in the Yuga Labs’ owned Otherside metaverse platform. The duo’s debut into the metaverse began with the smoking of an oversized pot.

According to popular media descriptions of the performance, it features some choice acting from the rappers, who fall down a swirling multicoloured vortex and morph into the Bored Apes they own. There are also cameos from Kodas, the mysterious creatures created by Yuga that live in the Otherside.

The embrace of the metaverse by MTV connotes many positive things for the broader Web3.0 world. It highlights how much traction the metaverse is gaining amongst major entertainment brands. It also shows how far the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Otherside project is going far in bringing value to its community of users across the board.

The MTV MVA’s best performance title was won by South Korean girl band Blackpink, ahead of Justin Bieber and Charli XCX.

The Otherside metaverse is pitched as the media empire of the Bored Ape enterprise.

While there are significant events that have been recorded thus far, Yuga Labs has reiterated the fact that more use cases are in the works for the project as it looks toward creating significant value for the other NFT collections under its collections including Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), CryptoPunks and Meebits.

The metaverse is a remarkable world that many entities are working hard to develop. The idea is that in the next few years, the metaverse will define social interactions and activities.