Bored Ape Yacht Club’s ‘Otherside’ metaverse drops this weekend. Read this before you go all ApeCoin | ZDNet

People on Twitter have been going ape over the past week on speculation that Yuga Labs, creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), is launching its metaverse, the Otherside, at the end of the month. Well, it’s official: The Otherside is scheduled to drop at noon on Saturday, April 30.

To get in on this much-anticipated metaverse and mint Otherside NFTs requires purchasing ApeCoin ($APE), the governance and utility token for the entire Ape ecosystem, and the legal tender in this new, exclusive metaverse. While crypto markets have been in the red over the past week, the price of $APE has been going green in anticipation of BAYC’s metaverse (as the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the otherside). Consider the market performance of the top 25 coins over the past week:

As of late Thursday, the price of $APE has been up 150% since April 18, when rumors first spread on social media that owners of NFTs from BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) collections could get virtual land on the Otherside. But for those eager to stake a claim in this new metaverse, there’s more to it than just buying ApeCoins… a lot more.

Also: The metaverse is coming, but so are all these security problems

What you need to know before you go $APE

Launched in April 2021, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most popular — and arguably highly coveted — NFT collections available, consisting of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs; unique digital collectibles that reside on the Ethereum blockchain. For example, a single Bored Ape has a floor price of 145.68 Ethereum coins, or ETH (roughly $427,000).

Over the past year, the craze (or hype) of Bored Ape has intensified throughout the NFT community as celebrities such as Colin Kaepernick, Shaquille O’ Neal and Snoop Dogg, and companies including Adidas, Google and Samsung, have added a quality of exclusivity akin to a swanky LA night club. And speaking of clubs, ownership of a Bored Ape doubles as a membership card to the Bored Ape Yacht Club and gives you access to “members-only benefits”, many of which are undisclosed but include access to a private discord server, NFT collectibles that are airdropped and exclusive games. Community strength, celebrity endorsement and exclusive utility are the three pillars that have made BAYC one of the strongest crypto cliques in the ether. The only thing missing is its own metaverse…until now.

“Investing in Ape Coin could be a diamond in the rough,” says Steven Warren, contributing writer and ZDNet‘s Crypto Coach, who’s also an avid collector of NFTs. “But keep in mind that it’s a speculative asset – with wild price fluctuations — and you should invest only with money that you can afford to lose.”

Recently, there’s been a large breakout of FOMO throughout the crypto universe among those eager to break on through to the Otherside, mainly from people who missed the April 1 deadline to be cleared under Know Your Customer guidelines. KYC, as it’s known is a standard validation process in the crypto community used to verify the identity of a customer, their risk and financial profiles. It verifies that you are who you say you are. If you’re one of those whose case of FOMO is driving you bananas, take a break and know that unless you pre-registered before April 1 and have been cleared under KYC, there’s no way to participate in this weekend’s NFT mint.

What’s more, there are several rules and guidelines Ape coin holders must keep in mind for opening day. According to Othersides’s official Twitter page @OthersideMeta:

• You must be KYCed. “Only those who are KYC-approved can mint in the auction,” as stated in the official Twitter thread.
• In addition to APE, you’ll need some Ethereum coins (ETH) “for gas” (the cost the network charges for processing a transaction). “You’ll want both in the wallet you used for the KYC.”
• The mint this Saturday will be in the form of a Dutch auction, which means the price of $APE will drop over time. The starting price of the auction will be announced later this week.
• BAYC and MAYC holders will be able to claim an NFT for 21 days after the auction. “You don’t need to be KYC-approved to claim, but you do need to be KYC-approved to mint in the auction.”
• Whatever amount of ApeCoin is earned from this auction will be locked up for one year. “That means no voting with it in the ApeCoin DAO either.”
• “On Saturday morning, you’ll be able to pre-approve your KYCed wallet on https://otherside.xyz. This will allow the smart contract to use your ApeCoin to mint during the auction. BAYC and MAYC holders don’t need to approve their wallets to claim — only to mint during the auction.”
• You don’t have to pre-approve early — you can approve your wallet after the launch at noon eastern time, “but doing it a few hours earlier will save you time and gas fees.”

The excitement and anticipation of minting NFTs in this new metaverse is bound to be a magnet for hackers and thieves. To prevent the risk of being hacked, Otherside’s official Twitter page wants you to keep these safety tips in mind:

• Announcements will be on the following official Twitter accounts only: @OthersideMeta, @boredapeyc, @yugalabs and @animocabrands, as well as on discord at http://discord.gg/bayc and http://discord.gg/the-otherside.
• “Nothing will be announced or cross-posted anywhere else. NO ONE involved in Otherside will be posting on Instagram.” There will be no contests or giveaways and no surprise/early drops. “Everything will happen on 4/30, and only on http://otherside.xyz,” according to the Twitter page.
• “Don’t reply to or click on anything from any other accounts, tags, DMs, or emails. Animoca, Otherside, BAYC, Yuga Labs, founders, and mods will not tag nor DM you first. Never share or type your seed phrase.”
• “Again, only trust information posted here first. More info coming soon. Check back here on 4/30 for details.”

How to purchase ApeCoin

You may not be able to buy $APE for peanuts — the price is $27.44 a coin as of April 28 — but you can still buy it (you just can’t use it to mint NFTs in this weekend’s Dutch auction unless you’re KYC-cleared). “No problem,” says Warren, “you can still buy into the Ape metaverse on the secondary market.”

For those who are interested in buying $APE, you can do it in five steps. To illustrate, we’ll use Crypto Coach Warren’s following example, in which he purchased ApeCoin using the Coinbase app on his mobile phone. Upon logging in the Coinbase App:

1. Tap “Buy”
2. Type “ApeCoin”
3. Enter the amount you’d like to purchase ($25, or 1.25 APE)
4. Tap “Preview Buy”
5. Tap “Buy Now”

Once you’ve got your coins in your account, you have the option to either store them in a hot wallet (in this example, online in a Coinbase wallet) or move it to a cold wallet (a separate, physical storage device that’s offline where online hackers can’t get to it).

Because $APE is an ERC-20 coin — a technical standard that enables interoperability between Ethereum-based coins — it’s possible to transfer it to another Ethereum address for storage. In Warren’s example, he’s able to take his $APE and transfer it to his cold wallet and store the funds. To do so, simply type “send” and enter the amount to send. Warren says to make sure to add a bit more for gas fees.

The $APE has been stored successfully in the hardware wallet. This is how the transaction looks from a tax perspective:

Gas fees do eat into a portion of the purchase; that is why it’s important to send a larger amount, or wait until gas fees are cheaper when moving funds from Coinbase to your hardware wallet, Warren notes.