Bored Ape Yacht Club 2026: Who Calls the Shots at Yuga Labs and Where the Brand Is Heading

In 2026, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is run by a small circle: Michael Figge has led Yuga Labs as CEO since April 2026, co-founder Greg Solano, known in the community as “Garga”, is chairman, co-founder Wylie Aronow, alias “Gordon Goner”, has been out of day-to-day operations since 2023, and since July 2026 the major collector Adam Weitsman has sat on the board. Since the ApeCoin DAO dissolved in June 2025, holders no longer have a formal say. Five years after launch, the cheapest Bored Ape costs 5.62 ETH, 96 percent below its record, and ApeCoin trades 99.6 percent below its all-time high. With the trading card game Mudwater and live shows starting on 6 November, Yuga is attempting its next fresh start. Here you can read who makes the decisions, how much money has flowed and how often the direction has changed.

Key takeaways

• Michael Figge has been CEO of Yuga Labs since April 2026, after serving as Chief Product Officer; Greg Solano moved to chair the board.
• In March 2022, Yuga raised around 450 million US dollars at a valuation of 4 billion, and in April 2022 it took in around 285 million US dollars from the sale of Otherside land.
• In June 2025, the ApeCoin DAO voted 99.66 percent to dissolve itself; around 169 million APE went to ApeCo, which has been part of Yuga again since June 2026.
• All 1 billion APE have been unlocked since 17 March 2026; on 5 November the price stood at 0.107 US dollars, against an all-time high of 26.70 US dollars on 28 April 2022.
• Four CEOs in four years, layoffs in 2023 and 2024, and the sale of CryptoPunks, Meebits and Moonbirds in 2025.
• Adam Weitsman has been on the board since July 2026 and is one of the biggest buyers of Yuga NFTs, including more than 5,000 Otherside NFTs bought directly from Yuga.

What is the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)?

The Bored Ape Yacht Club, BAYC for short, is an NFT collection of 10,000 images on the Ethereum blockchain, each showing a bored ape. Yuga Labs sold the Bored Apes in April 2021 for 0.08 ETH each, and every image was generated by a program from more than 170 traits such as fur, headwear and facial expression. Owning a Bored Ape makes you a member of the club: the NFT works as a membership card, gives access to events such as ApeFest and allows you to use your ape's image commercially.

The family also includes the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC), with dogs for ape owners, and the Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), which was created in August 2021 through a Mutant Serum. Celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Eminem and Jimmy Fallon made the BAYC collection famous and turned it into a status symbol; according to media reports, Bieber paid 500 ETH for an ape in January 2022. Today, BAYC is above all a brand with a community, events and its own games.

Who calls the shots at the Bored Ape Yacht Club

Source: The Block, Decrypt, Bored Ape Gazette, as of 5 November 2026.

Greg Solano: “Garga”, the co-founder who took over twice

Greg Solano founded BAYC with Wylie Aronow in 2021. Both initially appeared under pseudonyms until media outlets published their names in 2022. In February 2024, after Daniel Alegre left, Solano took the helm himself, and during the second round of layoffs in April 2024 he said Yuga had lost its way. In 2025 he drove the dissolution of the ApeCoin DAO, which, according to Decrypt, he described as sluggish and full of governance theater. He has been chairman since April 2026. In the community he goes by “Garga”, short for his club name “Gargamel”.

Wylie Aronow: “Gordon Goner”, the co-founder in the background

Wylie Aronow is the second founder and is known by his club name “Gordon Goner”. In January 2023 he stepped back from day-to-day operations for health reasons, as he made public himself, and stayed on the board and as an advisor. He is still visible at events and on X, but according to public information he does not make day-to-day decisions.

Michael Figge: the CEO who brought Mudwater

Michael Figge joined Yuga Labs in November 2022 through the acquisition of WENEW, first as Chief Content Officer, most recently as Chief Product Officer. According to The Block, he was already running the company for several weeks before the change became official in April 2026. His first months were about scaling back and refocusing: on 28 May 2026 he announced that ApeCo, the DAO's successor, would be brought back into Yuga by 5 June. In June 2026 he toured Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul, where, according to Bloomingbit, he presented a clubhouse in Miami, more ApeFests, a lifestyle brand, an animated series and the expansion of Otherside. Mudwater followed in October, and the move into live shopping in November.

Adam Weitsman: the collector on the board

Adam Weitsman runs the recycling company Upstate Shredding in Owego, New York, and is regarded as a billionaire. In the NFT world he is one of the biggest buyers of Yuga assets: in 2023 he paid 1,000 ETH, about 1.6 million US dollars at the time, for a golden key from the game Dookey Dash. In August 2025, according to The Block, he bought more than 5,000 Otherdeeds and Kodas directly from Yuga. Since September 2025 he and a partner have owned the HV-MTL brand, which Yuga had given up in 2024. According to the Bored Ape Gazette, he holds six Bored Apes, 8,000 Otherdeeds and 1,036 Meebits, and in early November 2026 he added two more Bored Apes through a direct sale.

On 15 July 2026, Weitsman joined the board of Yuga Labs, unpaid and, in his own words, as a bridge between the community and the company, as the Bored Ape Gazette reports. It is a show of commitment that holders welcome, because it brings capital and attention. At the same time, Weitsman himself holds large positions in Yuga NFTs and, with HV-MTL, owns a brand from the same ecosystem. To our knowledge, Yuga has not published how it handles potential conflicts of interest on the board.

How much money Yuga Labs has raised

Few NFT companies have moved as much money as Yuga Labs, and almost all of it within a few weeks in the spring of 2022.

Source: Decrypt, The Block, Reuters, Cointelegraph, ApeCoin tokenomics data.

The funding round and the land sale alone brought in more than 700 million US dollars within two months. As a private company, Yuga does not disclose in detail what the money was spent on. What is visible is what came of it: Otherside has been open to everyone in the browser since November 2025, ApeChain has been running since October 2024, and several brands have been sold off again.

Bored Ape Yacht Club and ApeCoin by the numbers

Source: CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, 5 November 2026, 23:27 CET.

Over the past twelve months, APE fell from 0.38 to 0.11 US dollars, a drop of 72 percent. Since 17 March 2026, the last tranche of the total supply has been unlocked, so there is no more selling pressure from scheduled unlocks. What is missing is a reason to buy APE. Mudwater is the first attempt in a long time to create one: 2.5 percent of every Mudwater trade goes into buying APE, which is passed on to holders of Mudwater cards and packs. How ApeChain has fared since its launch is covered further down in this article. To find out where to trade NFTs from the Ape ecosystem, see our NFT marketplace comparison; you can buy ApeCoin in the EU from the providers in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

Changes of course since 2021: the milestones of Yuga Labs

Four CEOs in four years, two rounds of layoffs, five brands given up: that is the track record of a company that has changed direction many times. At times the metaverse was the focus, at times games, at times its own blockchain, and now trading cards.

ApeCoin DAO: from shared governance to central control

The ApeCoin DAO was the promise that holders would have a say. Anyone holding APE could vote on grant proposals drawing on a pool of several hundred million tokens. In practice, the money often went to projects the community still argues about today. Three examples:

• A BMW for an influencer: With AIP-502, the DAO approved around 210,000 US dollars in APE with 60.47 percent of the vote in September 2024 for a BMW that an influencer was to use to produce content about ApeCoin for three years. This was reported by the Bored Ape Gazette. An earlier proposal, AIP-459, had asked for a Porsche.
• Formula 1: In 2024, the DAO voted on 5.125 million euros over two years for a partnership with the BWT Alpine team.
• NFT purchases: In 2023, AIP-304 approved eleven million APE, about 12 million US dollars at the time, for buying NFTs, with a turnout of 6.6 percent.

On top of that comes a design flaw that critics pointed out from the start: 37 percent of all APE went to Yuga Labs, the founders and early backers, and only 15 percent was airdropped to ape holders. In votes with a turnout of just a few percent, large wallets decide the outcome.

In June 2025, the DAO voted 99.66 percent to dissolve itself, according to the Bored Ape Gazette with around 3,200 wallets and 46.6 million APE, which is less than five percent of the total supply. Around 169 million APE and the rights went to the new entity ApeCo. Eleven months later, Figge announced that ApeCo would be brought back into Yuga. That closes the circle: what began in 2022 as a decentralized organization of holders is decided in 2026 by a company in which the holders have no stake. The holders agreed to this themselves, partly because they no longer trusted the DAO to put the money to good use. Yuga has not created a new form of participation since.

ApeChain: what the club's own blockchain is still for

ApeChain launched at ApeFest in Lisbon in October 2024 and doubled the price of APE on its first weekend. A wave of meme tokens followed, and according to an analysis by ChainCatcher, only three of them reached a market value of more than ten million US dollars in the first week. According to DefiLlama, ApeChain had total value locked of just under 3 million US dollars in September 2026, and 2.3 million in early November.

The clearest signal came from the club itself: Mudwater, the most important product of the year, is launching on Solana, not on ApeChain. The cards are printed by Orange Cap Games, the company that bought the Moonbirds brand from Yuga in 2025 and in which Yuga took a stake through a 3.5 million US dollar seed round in June 2025. What Mudwater is and how the game works is explained in our Mudwater guide.

Otherside: a world record on the second attempt, open to all since 2025

Otherside was meant to become the apes' metaverse, with land for holders. Otherside set the Guinness World Record for the most players in an online shooter on its second attempt, on 22 February 2025, with 2,197 players; the first attempt on 31 January had failed with around 1,400 players. Both times, anyone could take part without an NFT. Since 12 November 2025, Otherside has been permanently open to everyone in the browser. That is good for reach, but it also shows that the holders alone cannot fill their own world.

ApeFest: from flagship event to a small stage

ApeFest was the big event of the NFT world: in New York in 2021 and 2022, with Snoop Dogg and Eminem on stage in 2022. In 2023 it moved to Hong Kong, where visitors complained of eye problems after the night, which Yuga attributed to UV lights in one part of the venue. In 2024 it took place in Europe for the only time so far, in Lisbon, in 2025 in Las Vegas, and in 2026 over a long weekend in Charleston, South Carolina, with the main night at Beeple Studios. Our recap of ApeFest 2026 covers all the highlights. To this day, the club has never held an official event in Germany. As its next project, Yuga has announced a clubhouse in Miami.

Controversies: Ryder Ripps, class action, SEC

• Ryder Ripps: In 2022, the artist released a copy of the collection and claimed the club contained racist references, which Yuga has always denied. Yuga sued and initially won around 9 million US dollars. In July 2025, the appeals court confirmed that NFTs can be protected as trademarks, but it overturned the judgment and sent the case back. In April 2026 the two sides settled, and the copy's contracts and domains go to Yuga.
• Class action: Investors sued Yuga, Sotheby's and celebrities over the promotion of the apes. A federal judge dismissed the suit in September 2025 because the plaintiffs had not plausibly shown that the NFTs and ApeCoin are securities, but allowed an amended complaint. The plaintiffs filed it in October 2025, and the court has yet to rule on Yuga's renewed motion to dismiss.
• SEC: The US Securities and Exchange Commission had been investigating since 2022; in March 2025, Yuga announced that the investigation had been closed.

What the Bored Ape Yacht Club needs now

BAYC has what other brands never had: a logo everyone recognizes, holders all over the world and a story that became pop culture. What it has lacked for years is reliability. In our view, it needs four things:

1. A direction that sticks. Metaverse, games, blockchain, trading cards: holders need a plan that lasts longer than one ApeFest.
2. A say after the DAO. A lean, binding form of participation that does not get bogged down in grant proposals again.
3. A presence outside the US. Europe has holders, capital and a trading card market in a frenzy, but no ApeFest since Lisbon 2024 and, according to our research, never an official meetup in Germany.
4. Bring in the holders who build. Those who carry the brand's platforms, events and one-of-a-kind pieces into the world belong at the center of the story, not on its fringes.

Disclosure: Dennis Weidner, founder of Cryptoticker, holds Bored Apes, Mutant Apes and Otherdeeds and owns the BMW Apecar. This article is an analysis with commentary, not investment advice.