Yuga has acquired the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT IP from Larva Labs. These include 423 CryptoPunks and 1711 Meebits.

We set out to create in the NFT space because we admired CryptoPunks and the founders' visionary work. A lot of their work influenced how we built BAYC and NFTs. We're proud to lead CryptoPunks and Meebits into the future as part of our broader ecosystem.

This deal grew out of discussions between our partner Guy Oseary and the Larva Labs founders. One call led to another, and now we're here. This does not mean Matt and John will join Yuga. They'll keep running Larva Labs and creating awesome projects that help shape the future of web3.

Next steps

Here's what we plan to do with CryptoPunks and Meebits now that we own the IP. Owners of CryptoPunks and Meebits will soon receive commercial rights equal to those of BAYC and MAYC holders. Our legal teams are working on new terms and conditions for both collections, which we hope to share with the community soon. We expect a wide range of third-party developers and community creators to incorporate CryptoPunks and Meebits into their web3 projects. We'll build the brand alongside them.

We don't intend to cram these NFT collections into the BAYC club model. We see BAYC as the hub of the Yuga universe, and CryptoPunks as a historical collection. We will work to improve the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections as good stewards. We're not in a hurry. We'll consult the community before deciding what to do next.

For us, NFTs are about culture. We're deeply invested in the BAYC community, and it's inspiring to see them grow, collaborate, and innovate. We're excited to see what CryptoPunks and Meebits do with IP rights. Our goal has always been to create a community-owned brand that goes beyond NFTs, and now we can include CryptoPunks and Meebits.

What are pre-sales and whitelists on NFTs?

An NFT pre-sale, as the name implies, allows community members or early supporters of an NFT project to mint before the public, usually via a whitelist or mint pass.

Coin collectors can use mint passes to claim NFTs during the public sale. Because the mint pass is executed by “burning” an NFT into a specific crypto wallet, the collector is not concerned about gas price spikes.

A whitelist is used to approve a crypto wallet address for an NFT pre-sale. In a similar way to an early access list, it guarantees a certain number of crypto wallets can mint one (or more) NFT.

New NFT projects can do a pre-sale without a whitelist, but whitelists are good practice to avoid gas wars and a fair shot at minting an NFT before launching in competitive NFT marketplaces like Opensea, Magic Eden, or CNFT.

Should NFT projects do pre-sales or whitelists? 👇

The reasons to do pre-sales or a whitelist for NFT creators:

Time the market and gain traction.

Pre-sale or whitelists can help NFT projects gauge interest early on.

Whitelist spots filling up quickly is usually a sign of a successful launch, though it does not guarantee NFT longevity (more on that later). Also, full whitelists create FOMO and momentum for the public sale among non-whitelisted NFT collectors.

If whitelist signups are low or slow, projects may need to work on their vision, community, or product. Or the market is in a bear cycle. In either case, it aids NFT projects in market timing.

Reward the early NFT Community members.

Pre-sale and whitelists can help NFT creators reward early supporters.

First, by splitting the minting process into two phases, early adopters get a chance to mint one or more NFTs from their collection at a discounted or even free price.

Did you know that BAYC started at 0.08 eth each? A serum that allowed you to mint a Mutant Ape has become as valuable as the original BAYC.

(2) Whitelists encourage early supporters to help build a project's community in exchange for a slot or status. If you invite 10 people to the NFT Discord community, you get a better ranking or even a whitelist spot.

Pre-sale and whitelisting have become popular ways for new projects to grow their communities and secure future buyers.

Prevent gas wars.

Most new NFTs are created on the Ethereum blockchain, which has the highest transaction fees (also known as gas) (Solana, Cardano, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, etc).

An NFT public sale is a gas war when a large number of NFT collectors (or bots) try to mint an NFT at the same time.

Competing collectors are willing to pay higher gas fees to prioritize their transaction and out-price others when upcoming NFT projects are hyped and very popular.

Pre-sales and whitelisting prevent gas wars by breaking the minting process into smaller batches of members or season launches.

The reasons to do pre-sales or a whitelists for NFT collectors:

How do I get on an NFT whitelist?

1. Popular NFT collections act as a launchpad for other new or hyped NFT collections.

Example: Interfaces NFTs gives out 100 whitelist spots to Deadfellaz NFTs holders. Both NFT projects win. Interfaces benefit from Deadfellaz's success and brand equity.

In this case, to get whitelisted NFT collectors need to hold that specific NFT that is acting like a launchpad.

1. A NFT studio or collection that launches a new NFT project and rewards previous NFT holders with whitelist spots or pre-sale access.

The whitelist requires previous NFT holders or community members.

NFT Alpha Groups are closed, small, tight-knit Discord servers where members share whitelist spots or giveaways from upcoming NFTs.

The benefit of being in an alpha group is getting information about new NFTs first and getting in on pre-sale/whitelist before everyone else.

There are some entry barriers to alpha groups, but if you're active in the NFT community, you'll eventually bump into, be invited to, or form one.

1. A whitelist spot is awarded to members of an NFT community who are the most active and engaged.

This participation reward is the most democratic. To get a chance, collectors must work hard and play to their strengths.

Whitelisting participation examples:

• Raffle, games and contest: NFT Community raffles, games, and contests. To get a whitelist spot, invite 10 people to X NFT Discord community.
• Fan art: To reward those who add value and grow the community by whitelisting the best fan art and/or artists is only natural.
• Giveaways: Lucky number crypto wallet giveaways promoted by an NFT community. To grow their communities and for lucky collectors, NFT projects often offer free NFT.
• Activate your voice in the NFT Discord Community. Use voice channels to get NFT teams' attention and possibly get whitelisted.

The advantage of whitelists or NFT pre-sales.

Chainalysis's NFT stats quote is the best answer:

Sure, it's not all about cash. However, any NFT collector should feel secure in their investment by owning a piece of a valuable and thriving NFT project. These stats help collectors understand that getting in early on an NFT project (via whitelist or pre-sale) will yield a better and larger return.

The downsides of pre-sales & whitelists for NFT creators.

Pre-sales and whitelist can cause issues for NFT creators and collectors.

NFT flippers

NFT collectors who only want to profit from early minting (pre-sale) or low mint cost (via whitelist). To sell the NFT in a secondary market like Opensea or Solanart, flippers go after the discounted price.

For example, a 1000 Solana NFT collection allows 100 people to mint 1 Solana NFT at 0.25 SOL. The public sale price for the remaining 900 NFTs is 1 SOL. If an NFT collector sells their discounted NFT for 0.5 SOL, the secondary market floor price is below the public mint.

This may deter potential NFT collectors. Furthermore, without a cap in the pre-sale minting phase, flippers can get as many NFTs as possible to sell for a profit, dumping them in secondary markets and driving down the floor price.

Hijacking NFT sites, communities, and pre-sales phase

People try to scam the NFT team and their community by creating oddly similar but fake websites, whitelist links, or NFT's Discord channel.

Established and new NFT projects must be vigilant to always make sure their communities know which are the official links, how a whitelist or pre-sale rules and how the team will contact (or not) community members.

Another way to avoid the scams around the pre-sale phase, NFT projects opt to create a separate mint contract for the whitelisted crypto wallets and then another for the public sale phase.

Scam NFT projects

We've seen a lot of mid-mint or post-launch rug pulls, indicating that some bad NFT projects are trying to scam NFT communities and marketplaces for quick profit. What happened to Magic Eden's launchpad recently will help you understand the scam.

We discussed the benefits and drawbacks of NFT pre-sales and whitelists for both projects and collectors. 

Finally, some practical tools and tips for finding new NFTs 👇

Tools & resources to find new NFT on pre-sale or to get on a whitelist:

In order to never miss an update, important pre-sale dates, or a giveaway, create a Tweetdeck or Tweeten Twitter dashboard with hyped NFT project pages, hashtags ( #NFTGiveaways , #NFTCommunity), or big NFT influencers.

Search for upcoming NFT launches that have been vetted by the marketplace and try to get whitelisted before the public launch.

Save-timing discovery platforms like sealaunch.xyz for NFT pre-sales and upcoming launches. How can we help 100x NFT collectors get projects? A project's official social media links, description, pre-sale or public sale dates, price and supply. We're also working with Dune on NFT data analysis to help NFT collectors make better decisions.

Don't invest what you can't afford to lose because a) the project may fail or become rugged. Find NFTs projects that you want to be a part of and support.

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Yuga Labs, the creators of BAYC, airdropped ApeCoin (APE) to anyone who owns one of their NFTs yesterday.

For the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club collections, the team allocated 150 million tokens, or 15% of the total ApeCoin supply, worth over $800 million. Each BAYC holder received 10,094 tokens worth $80,000 to $200,000.

But someone managed to claim the airdrop using NFTs they didn't own. They used the airdrop's specific features to carry it out. And it worked, earning them $1.1 million in ApeCoin.

The trick was that the ApeCoin airdrop wasn't based on who owned which Bored Ape at a given time. Instead, anyone with a Bored Ape at the time of the airdrop could claim it. So if you gave someone your Bored Ape and you hadn't claimed your tokens, they could claim them.

The person only needed to get hold of some Bored Apes that hadn't had their tokens claimed to claim the airdrop. They could be returned immediately.

So, what happened?

The person found a vault with five Bored Ape NFTs that hadn't been used to claim the airdrop.

A vault tokenizes an NFT or a group of NFTs. You put a bunch of NFTs in a vault and make a token. This token can then be staked for rewards or sold (representing part of the value of the collection of NFTs). Anyone with enough tokens can exchange them for NFTs.

This vault uses the NFTX protocol. In total, it contained five Bored Apes: #7594, #8214, #9915, #8167, and #4755. Nobody had claimed the airdrop because the NFTs were locked up in the vault and not controlled by anyone.

The person wanted to unlock the NFTs to claim the airdrop but didn't want to buy them outright s o they used a flash loan, a common tool for large DeFi hacks. Flash loans are a low-cost way to borrow large amounts of crypto that are repaid in the same transaction and block (meaning that the funds are never at risk of not being repaid).

With a flash loan of under $300,000 they bought a Bored Ape on NFT marketplace OpenSea. A large amount of the vault's token was then purchased, allowing them to redeem the five NFTs. The NFTs were used to claim the airdrop, before being returned, the tokens sold back, and the loan repaid.

During this process, they claimed 60,564 ApeCoin airdrops. They then sold them on Uniswap for 399 ETH ($1.1 million). Then they returned the Bored Ape NFT used as collateral to the same NFTX vault.

Attack or arbitrage?

However, security firm BlockSecTeam disagreed with many social media commentators. A flaw in the airdrop-claiming mechanism was exploited, it said.

According to BlockSecTeam's analysis, the user took advantage of a "vulnerability" in the airdrop.

"We suspect a hack due to a flaw in the airdrop mechanism. The attacker exploited this vulnerability to profit from the airdrop claim" said BlockSecTeam.

For example, the airdrop could have taken into account how long a person owned the NFT before claiming the reward.

Because Yuga Labs didn't take a snapshot, anyone could buy the NFT in real time and claim it. This is probably why BAYC sales exploded so soon after the airdrop announcement.

As a tech-savvy person (and software engineer) or just a casual technology user, I'm sure you've had this same question countless times: How do I make money online? and how do I make money with my PC/Mac?
You're in luck! Today, I will list the top 5 easiest ways to make money online. Maybe a top ten in the future? Top 5 tips for 2022.

1. Using the gig economy

There are many websites on the internet that allow you to earn extra money using skills and equipment that you already own.
I'm referring to the gig economy. It's a great way to earn a steady passive income from the comfort of your own home. For some sites, premium subscriptions are available to increase sales and access features like bidding on more proposals.
Some of these are:

• Freelancer
• Upwork
• Fiverr (⭐ my personal favorite)
• TaskRabbit

2. Mineprize

MINEPRIZE is a great way to make money online. What's more, You need not do anything! You earn money by lending your idle CPU power to MINEPRIZE.
To register with MINEPRIZE, all you need is an email address and a password. Let MINEPRIZE use your resources, and watch the money roll in! You can earn up to $100 per month by letting your computer calculate. That's insane.

3. Writing

“O Romeo, Romeo, why art thou Romeo?” Okay, I admit that not all writing is Shakespearean. To be a copywriter, you'll need to be fluent in English. Thankfully, we don't have to use typewriters anymore.

Writing is a skill that can earn you a lot of money (claps for the rhyme).
Here are a few ways you can make money typing on your fancy keyboard:
Self-publish a book
Write scripts for video creators
Write for social media
Book-checking
Content marketing help
What a list within a list!

4. Coding

Yes, kids. You've probably coded before if you understand 
You've probably coded before if you understand 

Computational thinking (or coding) is one of the most lucrative ways to earn extra money, or even as a main source of income.
Of course, there are hardcode coders (like me) who write everything line by line, binary di — okay, that last part is a bit exaggerated.
But you can also make money by writing websites or apps or creating low code or no code platforms.
But you can also make money by writing websites or apps or creating low code or no code platforms.
Some low-code platforms
Sheet : spreadsheets to apps :
Loading... We'll install your new app... No-Code Your team can create apps and automate tasks. Agile…
www.appsheet.com

Low-code platform | Business app creator - Zoho Creator
Work is going digital, and businesses of all sizes must adapt quickly. Zoho Creator is a...
www.zoho.com

Sell your data with TrueSource. NO CODE NEEDED
Upload data, configure your product, and earn in minutes.
www.truesource.io

Cool, huh?

5. Created Content

If we use the internet correctly, we can gain unfathomable wealth and extra money. But this one is a bit more difficult. Unlike some of the other items on this list, it takes a lot of time up front.
I'm referring to sites like YouTube and Medium. It's a great way to earn money both passively and actively. With the likes of Jake- and Logan Paul, PewDiePie (a.k.a. Felix Kjellberg) and others, it's never too late to become a millionaire on YouTube. YouTubers are always rising to the top with great content.

6. NFTs and Cryptocurrency

It is now possible to amass large sums of money by buying and selling digital assets on NFTs and cryptocurrency exchanges. Binance's Initial Game Offer rewards early investors who produce the best results.
One awesome game sold a piece of its plot for US$7.2 million! It's Axie Infinity. It's free and available on Google Play and Apple Store.

7. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a form of advertising where businesses pay others (like bloggers) to promote their goods and services. Here's an example. I write a blog (like this one) and post an affiliate link to an item I recommend buying — say, a camera — and if you buy the camera, I get a commission!
These programs pay well:

• Elementor
• AWeber
• Sendinblue
• ConvertKit\sLeadpages
• GetResponse
• SEMRush\sFiverr
• Pabbly

8. Start a blog

Now, if you're a writer or just really passionate about something or a niche, blogging could potentially monetize that passion!
Create a blog about anything you can think of. It's okay to start right here on Medium, as I did.

9. Dropshipping

And I mean that in the best possible way — drop shopping is ridiculously easy to set up, but difficult to maintain for some.
Luckily, Shopify has made setting up an online store a breeze. Drop-shipping from Alibaba and DHGate is quite common. You've got a winner if you can find a local distributor willing to let you drop ship their product!

10. Set up an Online Course

If you have a skill and can articulate it, online education is for you.
Skillshare, Pluralsight, and Coursera have all made inroads in recent years, upskilling people with courses that YOU can create and earn from.

That's it for today! Please share if you liked this post. If not, well —