In Toronto, the computer scientist and founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin took the stage at the Blockchain Futurist Conference. An opportunity to talk about the arrival of “The Merge”, the hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain which will greatly improve its efficiency. In September, Ethereum 2.0 will allow reduced costs and accelerated transactions, which will help web3 developers to favor the blockchain even more for their project.
Among the projects of decentralized finance, there are of course NFTs. Impossible not to approach them and Vitalik Buterin knows it. But during his conference, the founder allowed himself a small well-targeted reference. He added a layer on the Bored Ape Yacht Cluba collection of 10,000 NFTs that rose to popularity in the spring and summer of 2021. Going against the hype around these bored monkeys, the man didn’t hide his fears.
A decidedly more fanciful goal
“The problem with the crypto space is that it has big incentives, but at the same time it has incentives to go in very weird directions sometimes”exclaimed billionaire Vitalik Buterin.
When building his blockchain and his crypto-currency, he was thinking above all of the legal battles and showdowns that his technology would provoke against states and their fiat currencies. Just like the social change possible with the improvement of individual freedoms. But he hadn’t imagined a use “for a decidedly more whimsical purpose, so they can swap pictures of monkeys”.
A wink referring to an interview given to the magazine Time in March, titled “The man behind Ethereum is horrified about the future of cryptos”. In it, Vitalik Buterin criticized the existence of the Bored Ape Yach Club for their lack of interest in support an important cause for the common good.
“The danger is you have these $3 million monkeys, I just want them to fund public goods”. Following the influence of stars like Eminem, DJ Khaled, Jimmy Fallon or Post Malone, who monopolized the collection to promote it, the increase in price of each NFT created a “dystopian potential”said the founder of Ethereum.
© Unsplash / PiggyBank
A very closed club
The fall of cryptocurrencies has taken the NFT market with it. It must be said that in 2021, most of the price increase was explained by extreme speculation based on very little concrete evidence to justify such a bubble. That said, some collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club have held up pretty well.
This is explained by the rarity of the products but also and above all by the story built around each numbered monkey. The members of Yuga Labs, at the origin of the creation of these works, arrived at create a story around and give each owner of an NFT BAYC the feeling of belonging to an exclusive group.
As a reminder, these “bored monkeys” feature crypto-currency investors, often qualified as “monkeys” among themselves according to an emotional qualifier. With their accumulated wealth, they would have become jaded with their situation. The “Yacht Club”, in which these monkeys would meet, would thus be an ultra selectmaterialized by an old boat abandoned in a port near Miami.
