Despite the decline in interest in NFTs and the Metaverse in 2022, the fashion house still sees them as opportunities to expand the audience and generate profits.
Gucci has entered into a multi-year partnership with Web3 developers Yuga Labs, according to Business of Fashion (BoF). The fashion brand will expand its presence in the Otherside metaverse from the authors of the leading NFT collections.
Yuga Labs was founded in 2021 and created the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection, which has become one of the most successful NFT projects. She later acquired the rights to the CryptoPunks, Meebits token series and the 10KTF digital marketplace. She also runs Otherside, a gaming metaverse based on the BAYC collection. Last March, Yuga Labs raised $450 million at a $4 billion valuation.
Continuing to explore the Metaverse, the House comes together with @yugalabs. Stay tuned as a new narrative takes shape, blurring the boundaries between the physical and digital. pic.twitter.com/v60mzcgqqY
The goal of the collaboration between Gucci and Yuga Labs was to increase interaction between the audiences of these companies by “exploring the intersection of the fashion and entertainment industries in the Metaverse.” Gucci’s activities in the virtual world of Otherside will begin at the end of March.
The fashion brand had already partnered with the 10KTF marketplace in 2022 for the Gucci Grail project, in which 10KTF’s “digital master” Wagmi-san created clothing and accessories used to personalize the NFT, designed by Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director at the time.
Despite the decline in interest in the NFT space in 2022, the company still sees it as a long-term opportunity to strengthen the community, encourage customer loyalty and generate profit, according to Robert Tryfus, CEO of Gucci Vault & Metaverse Ventures. He noted that Gucci will leverage content creators’ expertise in NFTs and the metaverse through various strategic partnerships.
Yuga Labs initially issued and traded their tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. In early 2023, after the launch of the Ordinals protocol, which made it possible to operate with NFTs on the Bitcoin network, the first NFT collection loaded onto the BTC blockchain was Bitcoin Punks, the original Cryptopunks on the Ethereum blockchain from Yuga Labs. The maximum sale price of NFTs from this collection reached 9.5 BTC (about $222,000).
In February, Yuga Labs announced the creation of a series of 300-item NFTs on the Bitcoin network called TwelveFold. During the auction, the developers collected almost $16.5 million from the sale of this collection.
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About YUGA LABS
Founded by four friends, the company began as a text message — “Let’s make a NFT”.
In April 2021, the company’s Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection debuted, with each NFT serving as a membership to the community. 10,000 Bored Apes were produced at the time for about $200 in homage to the early cryptocurrency adopters who aped in, struck it rich, but always seemed bored.
On May 1, 2021, early in the morning, the NFT collection was sold out, and a remarkable community soon developed.
The society quickly grew as 10,000 canine friends for the apes (Bored Ape Kennel Club) and 20,000 mutant apes (Mutant Ape Yacht Club) were produced, half of which were produced using a novel serum-based technology.
