Bored Ape Founder's Interview: We Have Huge Ambitions to Defeat Some Metaverse Giants

On the evening of February 4 this year, 33-year-old Greg Solano and 35-year-old Wylie Aronow learned at their respective homes that BuzzFeed News was about to disclose their true identities, which they had carefully concealed until then.

Earlier this month, Solano recalled at a hotel in downtown Manhattan, "We received a 20-minute warning."

Just like Solano and Aronow did when making significant decisions, they immediately made a call to discuss their next steps. Aronow said, "To be frank, we have very real security concerns." Bad actors might attempt to invade their accounts. People could show up at their homes or do worse things. Both of them said, "We don't know what will happen."

They began to remove personal information from the internet. Aronow recalled that he disabled his Instagram, fearing it might contain clues about his family's location, and then they warned their family about what was about to happen to prevent them from becoming targets as well.

Although Aronow's immediate family completely understands why the upcoming article would attract such attention, Solano had to explain the specifics to his father. He and Aronow are the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, one of the hottest NFT projects on the internet. They launched the Bored Ape Yacht Club through Yuga Labs in April 2021, and the company is currently valued at $4 billion.

Bored Apes are a collection of 10,000 unique digital ape avatars, each with its own distinctive combination of traits, ranging from the common "bored" mouth ( to the ultra-rare "solid gold" fur ). Last October, a rare ape sold for a staggering $3.4 million at a Sotheby's auction. In the same month, veteran artist manager Guy Oseary, who represents Madonna and U2, became a business partner of BAYC.

Today, Bored Apes are everywhere in popular culture, from T-shirts sold by Old Navy to VMA-nominated music videos featuring Snoop Dogg and Eminem. Celebrities like Steph Curry, Justin Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, Post Malone, and Seth Green all own Bored Apes. Other high-profile holders include Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton, who had a controversial exchange about their apes on The Tonight Show in January of this year. ( Solano and Aronow said they were not aware of Fallon's remarks in advance, and they thought discussing it on the show was "very surreal."

Despite the crash of the cryptocurrency and NFT market this year, Bored Apes are still considered a "blue-chip" investment in the field. Currently, the floor price for a single ape is around $140,000, down from a high of about $434,000 in April. With each secondary sale of a Bored Ape NFT, Yuga Labs earns a 2.5% royalty fee.

Solano's father knew that his son was working on a project in the NFT and cryptocurrency space, but it wasn't until that night in February when he received a call from his son that he learned the details. Solano, who has Cuban heritage, explained, "I didn't tell my father because he would tell everyone. He would tell the women at la carreta) coffee shop(--- 'My son is the mastermind behind it!' Who else wants to know, who else wants to know?"

This was originally a problem, because before the BuzzFeed article was published, most people only knew the usernames they used online—Solano used Gargamel, taken from the villain wizard in The Smurfs, and Aronow was Gordon Goner, a punk-inspired name, along with their corresponding monkey avatars.

The other two co-founders of BAYC are also responsible for the technical aspects. 32-year-old Zeshan Ali is known as No Sass, later abbreviated to Sass, and 31-year-old Kerem Atalay, also known as Emperor Tomato Ketchup(, takes his name from an album by the indie pop band Stereolab).

Moreover, all four of them want to maintain this status. In their view, Solano and Aronow have been poached. ( The identities of Ali and Atalay were not disclosed in the article. ) Katie Notopoulos, a senior technology reporter at Buzzfeed News who wrote the article, disagrees with this assessment. Notopoulos told Input: "I would characterize it as news. Many other rational people would think the same way." As she explained in the Untangled podcast in June, "We don't understand" the operators of a company worth billions of dollars, which seems to violate all social norms.

During a phone call to formulate an action plan, Solano and Aronow decided it was best to first post their photos on Twitter to "dox" themselves. Solano exclaimed, "Aronow quickly found a good photo of himself. They didn’t beat BuzzFeed’s report, but revealed their true selves to the internet an hour after the report was published."

Four days later, Ali and Atalay followed closely, posting their names and photos on Twitter. Atalay said: "We want to have more control over the narrative and make it something more worthy of celebration than Greg and Wylie."

A few months from today, Solano and Aronow are trying to regain control over their own narrative. Therefore, this meeting, accompanied by their PR personnel, finally tells their story in full for the first time and publicly addresses the major controversy that has troubled them for more than a year.

"Evil Troll"

During our time together, Solano and Aronow exuded a brotherly yet guarded atmosphere. Solano said: "We are the most superstitious people in the world." He wore a brown T-shirt for the interview because Aronow thought he needed "yellow energy."

Aronow was wearing an amber bracelet that he considered "positive" and barely touched his cheeseburger. At one point, Solano good-naturedly teased his friend's eating habits. He said, "Wylie only eats things like cheeseburgers and chicken wraps. We joke that he has a 'baby mouth'."

I later learned that this is caused by a debilitating disease, which has kept Aronow bedridden for most of the ten years since he was in his twenties. He is now able to manage the condition, but it remains unstable, and even salad poses a threat to him, which could lead to his disease ( he won't say what it is ) to flare up again.

Pressure is just like that. As Yuga's current public face, it seems to be a headache. The company is growing: in March, it purchased two of the most popular NFT collections, CryptoPunks and Meebits, from the creators Larva Labs. Shortly thereafter, Yuga launched its own cryptocurrency, ApeCoin.

In the days since our conversation began, Yuga will host a large-scale demonstration of Otherside, an immersive game developed in collaboration with the UK studio Improbable. However, this is not just a game ------ it is the beginning of the Web3 Metaverse, open to the public beyond the Bored Ape community. Yuga will compete directly with major companies like Meta.

However, the greater pressure comes from the lawsuit. In June, Yuga sued conceptual artist Ryder Ripps( for trademark infringement, similar to the incidents involving artists like Kanye West and brands like Gucci), as he created an NFT series identical to the Bored Apes in May. The project is estimated to have generated a profit of $1.8 million.

But Ripps' counterfeit project (, known as RR/BAYC), is only part of the problem. Since the end of last year, Ripps has been very vocal in accusing BAYC of being filled with racist and neo-Nazi symbolism. The founders of BAYC have denied these allegations, stating that they are all part of a plan to stir public interest in Ripps' counterfeit apes.

Solano said: "For anyone who understands our history, it is extremely obvious how ridiculous this is. That said, the persistence and malice of the trolls, frankly, how evil the whole thing is, is hard to comprehend."

A serious expression flickered across Aronow's face as he described the impact of the online hatred they have received due to these accusations. He said, "It's like this every day."

Strange Partners

Aronow said: "In terms of background, we are really a pair of quirky partners." He was referring to his friendship with Solano. This is obvious. The first thing you notice is the huge height difference between the two business partners: Aronow stands 6 feet 2 inches tall, towering over Solano.

Aronow has thick black hair and is covered in tattoos (. He feels embarrassed about the lifelike portrait of writer Charles Bukowski on his right arm, which he got when he was a teenager ). His voice is deep and resonant. He is the human embodiment of the NFT enthusiasts' rallying cry "LFG" ( "Let's Fucking Go" ). Solano is a bald man with a goatee and a gentle demeanor; he describes Aronow as the perfect motivational "workout buddy."

Aronow said: "We will fight over every idea, whether it's a simple tweet or an entire NFT project. In fact, our friendship began with a fight. About ten years ago, we first met at a dive bar in Miami during a university break, where they started debating the merits of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Solano hadn't even read the book, but he reflexively hated it because his creative writing classmates praised it highly. They kept in touch long-distance, arguing about books, movies, and ideas, and played World of Warcraft together online."

A few years later, in 2017, the two began discussing cryptocurrency. Like others, they tried to make some money during the bull market. But what interested them most was the possibilities brought by the Ethereum blockchain, on which decentralized applications were built, including gamified collectibles like CryptoKitties, where you can buy, trade, and breed unique cartoon cats to create more Kitties.

Although he was very interested in digital collectibles, Solano didn't buy his first NFT until early 2021. Shortly after that, in February, Solano texted Aronow, saying they should start their own NFT project. Aronow said: "We immediately began brainstorming. One of the ideas was a public digital canvas, which Aronow shared with his old friend Nicole Muniz, who is now the CEO of Yuga. She astutely predicted that someone would draw a little brother on it."

These people just did that. Aronow said: "At that moment, I thought, where would you draw a penis? The answer is: on the bathroom wall of a dive bar. What kind of person would go there?" The kind of people he knows on cryptocurrency Twitter, who gained wealth from cryptocurrency but still just want to play MMORPGs online instead of living the luxurious life expected of a millionaire.

Aronow sent a "full article" to Solano to plan this idea, in which the name "Bored Ape Yacht Club" appeared. Aronow recalled: "As a great editor, Solano said------'That's it. That's it' ". This concept evolved into------millions in cryptocurrency.