Yuga Labs Dumps Moonbirds IP in Latest Pivot—Another ’Strategic Realignment’ for the Crypto History Books

Yuga Labs—the NFT powerhouse behind Bored Apes—just offloaded its Moonbirds intellectual property in a fire sale. The move signals another aggressive trim of non-core assets as the company scrambles to streamline operations.

Moonbirds, once hyped as the next blue-chip NFT play, now joins the growing graveyard of crypto projects sacrificed at the altar of ’corporate focus.’ Because nothing says ’long-term vision’ like dumping your IP when the market’s cold.

Insiders whisper this is part of a broader liquidation spree—Yuga’s been shedding dead weight faster than a Bitcoin maximalist drops altcoins during a bear market. Priorities shift, after all. Especially when your valuation’s riding on ape JPEGs and vibes.

Bonus finance jab: Another masterclass in ’creating shareholder value’—by selling low after buying high. Web3 innovation at its finest.

Now that the Moonbirds are out, will anything else Yuga-related be cut? In response to a post that suggested the ApeCoin DAO should also be shut down, Solano said that “eliminating cruft” and being “thoughtful but also kinda fucking ruthless” going forward is the goal.

“At the end of the day, I just want apes and our Core to fucking win,” the Yuga cofounder said.

Yuga cofounder Wylie Aronow agreed with the idea that DAO may no longer be needed, writing: “I think the DAO experiment for Apecoin may have run its course and with the regulatory nature changing rapidly in the States.”

So what’s next for Yuga now? In a January tweet, Solano said the team planned to get a “persistent” version of Otherside out by roughly June this year (which could mean a launch sometime this month). 

Otherside has been many years in the making. In case you forgot, the planned Otherside metaverse game held a massive “Otherdeed” virtual land mint back in 2022 that resulted in $561 million in NFT land sales within a day. It triggered massive gas fee wars where some paid thousands of dollars in ethereum network fees alone. That fee and minting chaos could have absolutely been avoided, according to one Ethereum infrastructure expert.

Yuga Labs has since been dealing with a lawsuit in the years since that mint (separate from its legal battle with Ryder Ripps). Yuga, along with numerous other defendants including various celebrities and firms like MoonPay, was sued in late 2022 for creating what the complaint alleges is a “vast scheme” to sell what the Plaintiff claims are securities. Nearly three years later, that lawsuit appears to be ongoing, per PACER records inspected by Blockworks.

Yuga, which raised $450 million in seed funding in March 2022 at a $4 billion valuation, bought the CryptoPunks IP that month alongside the Meebits IP. At that point, Yuga had plans to expand its crypto empire. But recently, it’s been selling off that IP in a MOVE that suggests it may have bitten off more than it could chew — or at least is dramatically pulling back.

Last month, Yuga sold CryptoPunks to a new nonprofit that plans to exhibit the NFTs at an art gallery in California. Yuga also sold Meebits to MeebCo in February, and sold off its HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara IPs to Faraway in April last year.

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