Off the east coast of Florida, avid anglers make their way across the gulfstream in search of large pelagic fish such as Yellowfin Tuna and Mahi-Mahi as well as White and Blue Marlin. Otherside, or Oside (a term originated by Captain Ed Dwyer who runs an annual fishing tournament in its 25th year called "Otherside Invitational"), is how anglers refer to crossing the gulfstream to go and chase these highly sought after gamefish. However a bigger then life Otherside has been developed by Yuga Labs and my hopes are that one day we can create a metaverse fishing area that lives on this Yuga lab creation where gamers can learn about the real life Otherside that many of us East coast anglers have learned to love. Here is a little more about Yuga Labs and how quickly they have gone from a simple NFT collection of Bored Apes to worth billions and billions of dollars.
The popular non-fungible token (NFT) collection, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), is seen everywhere from comic books to burger restaurants. And now, it's branching out into the virtual world with the launch of Otherside, a metaverse platform developed by Yuga Labs, the developers of BAYC.
Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 ape-themed NFTs with unique traits and characteristics, and it has grown into one of the most recognizable and valued NFT profile picture (PFP) collections in the crypto space since its launch in April of 2021. The collection is valued in the billions of dollars, with the floor price at around $114,000 as of August 2022, according to CoinGecko.
Yuga Labs has created a spin-off collection, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, worth $427 million, and owns the rights to other projects, including Cryptopunks, a series of avatars in an 8-bit-style worth $970 million.
To leverage its brands, Yuga Labs has created Otherside, a metaverse platform that revolves around digital communities and ownership opportunities afforded by blockchain technology, with digital plots of land and a native currency, ApeCoin. The Otherside platform differs from video game experiences in that its structure won't be linear, and players will be able to explore immersive virtual worlds freely and of their own accord.
Otherside has been built in collaboration with metaverse technology company Improbable and Animoca Brands, a development company specializing in Web3 technology for entertainment and video games, which owns The Sandbox, another metaverse platform. More than 10,000 players will be able to interact with each other simultaneously in Otherside, using M² (MSquared), a network developed specifically for large-scale metaverse projects by Improbable. The technology will also facilitate a natural voice chat that can enable thousands of players to chat at once, according to Otherside's website. The M² platform also has game streaming functionality built into it, meaning that users won't need high-end computers to join Otherside from web browsers.
