From the 31st of October 2022, it will be possible to stake Apecoin, the Bored Apes Yacht Club’s crypto, thanks to a partnership with Horizen Labs!
The crypto of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Apecoin, continues to evolve and grow its use cases. In August 2022, the fashion brand Gucci began accepting the token of the Web 3’s most famous NFT monkeys, thus helping to enhance their reputation. On the 22nd of September 2022, the blockchain company Horizen Labs, which had already been involved in developing the Apecoin token, announced a (still tentative) date for the release of the APE staking platform. We will see if the Horizen Labs team will be able to accomplish the goals of their roadmap by the 31st of October. Will this be a Halloween-style prank or sweet news for the Web3 world?
Bored Ape Yacht Club and Horizen Labs
The staking platform for the Apecoin token will be called ApeStake and is entirely being developed by Horizen Labs. But let’s go in order, what is Apecoin (APE)? APE is the official crypto of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the most popular NFT PFP collection ever! It is a governance token, i.e. it is used to give holders a say on decisions that affect the future of the BAYC ecosystem. APE is built on the Ethereum blockchain and was distributed to Yuga Labs’ NFT holders in March 2022. Besides being a governance token, Apecoin is also a utility token, and is used to purchase all products and services developed by Yuga Labs. The startup, which was founded at the same time as the first ever NFT collection, has evolved very quickly. It now deals with three different collections (BYAC, MAYC and Bored Ape Kennel Club) as well as a metaverse, Otherside, and the respective ‘lands’ of which it is composed.
On the other hand, Horizen Labs is a blockchain infrastructure focused on privacy and scalability. Their platform allows companies and developers to create decentralised applications on its network. Horizon Labs also offers the ability to use zero knowledge protocols to ensure fast, secure and cost-effective transactions with sidechains. The Horizen ecosystem and its ZEN cryptocurrency were launched in May 2017 under the name ZenCash. However, in 2018, ZenCash fell victim to a hack. This forced the team to relaunch the project under the new name Horizen. The Horizen Labs platform was chosen by the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) of the Bored Ape Yacht Club through a vote. The weight of the voters, as is usually the case in a DAO’s voting initiatives, was determined by the amount of Apecoin each of them possessed.
How will Apecoin and Yuga Labs’s NFTs staking work?
Thanks to some sneak peaks released by Horizen Labs, it is already possible to get a picture of how ApeStake works. Users will be able to choose between four different pools in which to deposit their APEs and block NFTs from the BAYC ecosystem in their possession.
In doing so, users can obtain rewards by staking their tokens. Each pool and each combination of amounts of Apecoin and NFTs will provide specific rewards and benefits. Let’s take a look at the four staking pools of ApeStake:
- Apecoin Pool – Within the first staking pool, people will be able to stake their APE tokens without necessarily owning an NFT from Yuga Labs’ collection. The total allocation of APE, to be divided among all those who will use the staking in proportionally to the blocked amount available for this pool, is 30 million APE;
- Bored Ape Pool – The pool dedicated to Bored Ape owners is the one with the most rewards. The Bored Ape Pool provides users with 47 million Apecoins that will be divided among those who block a maximum of 10,094 APE tokens during the first year for each BAYC owned;
- Mutant Pool – The Mutant Pool will allow users to block around 2,000 APE and their own MAYC to share the 19 million APE reward during the first year;
- Paired Pool – In the Paired Pool you can participate by pairing two NFTs created by Yuga Labs according to set combinations. For example, a BAKC (the Bored Apes’ collection of dogs) must be paired with an ape , so you will not be able to stake your APEs in the pool by blocking two dogs. The rewards in it will be about 4 million APE.
The other features of the platform developed by Horizen Labs have yet to be announced. In the video preview, you can see the Market Tools section. The way it works is still being kept a secret.
