Mudwater Claim: How Bored Ape and Mutant Ape Holders Get Their Free Packs

The Mudwater claim is open: since 23:35 UTC on 17 October 2026, every holder of a Bored Ape (BAYC) or Mutant Ape (MAYC) can collect free trading card packs from Yuga Labs' new collection. Each Bored Ape gets 10 packs, each Mutant Ape 2, claimed on the official Mudwater claim page until 19 January 2027, 00:00 UTC. The packs themselves are free. You only pay Ethereum gas and a cross-chain fee, and the packs arrive in a Solana wallet.

Yuga Labs announced the launch on X in the middle of ApeFest 2026 in Charleston. Shortly before, the Bored Ape Yacht Club had dropped a so-called Totem to every ape, which unlocks the claim. Below you will find what Mudwater is, how the claim works step by step, what it costs and how to spot fake claim sites.

What is Mudwater?

Mudwater is a trading card game from Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The first set is called "Swamp Origins" and, according to the official site, has 120 card designs with foil and serialized editions, 2.4 million cards in total. The rarest tier is a serialized "cracked ice" one of one, and there are eight of them. Every card exists twice: as an NFT on Solana and as a printed card kept in a vault. A token can be redeemed for the physical card, and a physical card can be mailed back and turned into a token again.

It is Yuga Labs' first collection on Solana. CEO Michael Figge calls it an experiment in aligning projects and collectors: every trade of a Mudwater NFT carries a 2.5 percent reflection that buys ApeCoin (APE) and pays it out to holders. The game is already playable in Otherside, for now with demo cards. In the Ante mode both players stake three cards and the winner takes one of the opponent's at random.

Source: mudwater.bayc.com, as of 18 October 2026.

Who can claim Mudwater packs?

Every Bored Ape and every Mutant Ape. The Bored Ape Yacht Club has paired a Totem with every BAYC and MAYC, built on the ERC-6551 standard for token-bound accounts. That Totem is what the claim page checks. The allocation belongs to the ape, not to the wallet: if an ape changes hands before its packs are claimed, the page tells the seller that this ape is no longer theirs to claim, and the new holder can claim instead.

If you keep your apes in a cold wallet, you do not have to connect it directly. The signed claim configuration references the delegate.xyz registry, so a hot wallet with a delegation for the vault should be recognised. If it is not, connect the wallet holding the ape, ideally through a hardware wallet. ApeFest visitors also get a sealed box per ape, according to the official site. What an airdrop is in general and what to watch out for is covered in our guide to crypto airdrops.

How to claim Mudwater: step by step

The claim takes a few minutes and consists of a sign-in, one transaction on Ethereum and the delivery on Solana. Here is how it works:

1. Open the official page. Type mudwater.bayc.com/claim yourself or use the link on bayc.com. The club says it has updated bayc.com, yuga.com, Discord and all social channels with the official links so that you can cross-check them.
2. Connect your Ethereum wallet. Click "Connect Ethereum Wallet" and choose the wallet that holds your apes, or the delegated hot wallet. Your wallet asks you to sign a login message. According to the claim page, this does not approve a payment.
3. Check your Totems. The page shows how many Totems and packs you are eligible for, based on your apes.
4. Connect a Solana wallet. The packs are Solana NFTs and need a Solana address, for example in Phantom, Solflare or Backpack. Choose carefully: according to the claim page, the recipient is fixed after the first successful transaction. All packs from the same Ethereum wallet go to that one Solana wallet.
5. Claim all packs. "Claim All" sends a single transaction on Ethereum. Your wallet shows the gas and a fee limit for Chainlink CCIP, the protocol that carries the claim over to Solana. Unused CCIP fees are refunded. According to the signed configuration, one transaction carries up to twelve messages of six packs each, so up to 72 packs.
6. Wait for delivery. The page shows the dispatch status. Do not claim a second time, you can close the page and come back later. Delivered packs show up under "Inventory".

What does the Mudwater claim cost?

The packs are free. Mudwater pays for delivery on Solana, you cover the Ethereum gas and the quoted CCIP fee. Further costs only arise when you open packs, convert cards or trade.

Source: Mudwater claim page and signed release configuration, as of 18 October 2026.

Opening all ten packs of one Bored Ape therefore costs an extra 80 USDC. Payment is in USDC on Solana: after signing in, Mudwater shows you its own Solana address to which you send USDC for these fees. That is also where you can withdraw unused network fees from the claim. Whether you open, keep sealed or sell is a decision you do not have to make right away.

Mudwater packs on OpenSea: the first hour

OpenSea lists Totems, packs and cards as separate collections: Mudwater Totems, Mudwater Packs and Mudwater Cards. About an hour after launch, at around 00:35 UTC on 18 October, OpenSea showed 831 claimed packs held by 87 addresses. Four were listed, the cheapest at 1.90 SOL, about 196 US dollars. None had sold yet. That is a snapshot, not a price: with four listings, the floor says little.

The 5 percent fee that OpenSea displays is the sum of both parts: 2.5 percent buys APE for holders, 2.5 percent goes to the publisher as a royalty. How much APE actually reaches holders depends on trading volume, and NFT volume has been thin for months. A Bored Ape costs about 97 percent less than at its peak, as our overview of NFT prices in October 2026 shows. Mudwater is Yuga Labs' attempt to bring new buyers from the Solana side into the Ape world, and the APE reflection is the hook. If you want to trade NFTs, check the fees first with our NFT marketplace comparison.

Staying safe: how to spot fake Mudwater claim sites

The Bored Ape Yacht Club ended its own announcement thread by asking holders to cross-check every link against the official channels. Big NFT claims attract copycats, so four rules apply:

• Only mudwater.bayc.com. No links from direct messages, replies under posts or ads.
• Only sign-in and claim. The real flow asks for a login signature and one claim transaction. If a site asks for "setApprovalForAll", for your seed phrase or for a transfer of your ape, stop.
• Check the amounts. The packs are free. The claim costs nothing beyond gas and the CCIP fee.
• Protect your vault. Keep valuable apes in the cold wallet and use delegation or a hardware wallet. Our hardware wallet comparison shows which devices fit.

What comes next for Mudwater

• Serialized packs: according to the official site, they will be randomly awarded 30 days after the initial claim.
• Combine: 24 pack tokens make a sealed box, ten boxes make a case. Coming soon.
• Convert: switch cards between printed and digital form, also coming soon.
• ApeChain communities: they receive their own pack allocations, and ApeCoin promises details this week.
• Glyph: Yuga Labs' wallet is set to add a Solana address in the future, according to Figge.

Our take: Mudwater is the most tangible thing Yuga Labs has handed its holders in a long time. The claim costs only gas and the CCIP fee, the window runs until January, and nobody has to decide today whether to open, hold or sell. Whether the APE reflection gives holders a noticeable share will only show in the trading volume of the coming weeks.