Yuga Labs: Smooth sail for NFT collections, but ApeCoin could face the heat

Popular NFT collections of the ecosystem recorded a jump in trading volume and sales. Native token ApeCoin found favors with whales but network traffic tapered down.

Yuga Labs’ blue-chip NFTs posted solid growth over the past week in most of its key performance indicators.

According to data from OpenSea, the popular collection Bored Ape Yacht Club’s (BAYC) trading volume surged 150% over the last seven days and the number of sales grew in a similar fashion.

Source: OpenSea

On the other hand, the trading volume for Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) almost doubled over the past week, with a considerable rise in its floor price as well. The increase in floor price indicated that MAYC remained high on the list of NFT traders and collectors.

Source: OpenSea

Yuga Labs accused of IP theft

Surprisingly, the growth in the aforementioned areas came amidst a raging controversy where Yuga Labs allegedly used an unlicensed design for the logo of its Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) NFT collection.

Yuga Labs’ co-founder reacted to the allegations and stated that the BAKC logo will be changed. At the time of writing, the controversial wolf skull was dropped from the logo on OpenSea’s portal.

Saw the claims today about the BAKC logo. This was news to us and we're still investigating the situation. Have reached out to the freelancer we hired for that design and Easy Drawing Guides. We’ll be changing the logo and updating it on our site / ask marketplaces to change as… https://t.co/OwtflDXehz

— Garga.eth (Greg Solano) (@CryptoGarga) February 18, 2023

The ecosystem’s NFT token ApeCoin [APE] managed to shrug off the negativity from this episode too as it became one of the most used smart contracts among the top Ethereum [ETH] whales, as per a tweet by WhaleStats.

JUST IN: $APE @apecoin one of the MOST USED smart contracts among top 500 #ETH whales in the last 24hrs????

We've also got $NMR, $UNI, $SHIB, $MATIC & $LDO on the list ????

Whale leaderboard: https://t.co/tgYTpOm5ws#APE #whalestats #babywhale #BBW pic.twitter.com/U3QhL8SJQD

— WhaleStats (tracking crypto whales) (@WhaleStats) February 19, 2023

Token unlocks could derail ApeCoin

Despite the interest shown by whales, APE’s supply on exchanges increased, per data from Santiment. A rise in this metric served as a bearish signal for the token’s price.

The on-chain data didn’t evoke much enthusiasm as well. The daily active addresses dropped sharply over the last 10 days. The token also failed to entice new users as implied by the falling network growth graph.

Source: Santiment

A combination of these factors could have dampened the spirits of investors which was reflected in the falling weighted sentiment for the coin. But what could be behind this below-par performance?

Recently, Apecoin released some coins in the market as part of its token unlock plan.

The increase in circulating supply caused the price to fall by as much as 8%.

With another unlock due to happen in a month’s time, holders were jittery about a further fall in the coin’s value.

At the time of writing, APE exchanged hands at $5.71, a rise of 1.71% over the previous day, as per CoinMarketCap.

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