NFT
Four months after hiring former Actvision President and COO Daniel Alegre as new CEO, Bored Ape Yacht Club and Otherside creator Yuga Labs bring in more gaming industry leaders to take the lead unicorn startup.
Yuga announced today that it has hired Mike Seavers, who previously worked at League of Legends developer Riot Games and Fortnite creator Epic gamesas the new Chief Technology Officer.
Yuga Labs’ current CTO, Kerem Atalay, will take on an advisory role, according to one announcementonce Seavers starts with the company on May 22.
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“There have been rare moments in my career where I felt like a new technology was causing a real paradigm shift for the world,” Seavers said in a statement. “I recognise that Web3 is one of those moments, and I am absolutely thrilled to be joining Yuga Labs in ushering in a new Internet era that positively impacts the world.
Seavers is a longtime veteran of the gaming industry. At Riot he worked for seven years on the engineering and technical side, ending up as Chief Technology Officer while supporting popular games like League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, and Valorant. He was then the CEO of game tech startup AppOnboard, which raised $20 million in Series C funding for the Buildbox game engine.
He then spent just under two years at Epic Games as EVP of Development, overseeing product development across Epic’s platforms and Fortnite’s engineering team.
“Mike has a proven track record of taking organizations to the next level, and he shares our vision of how important digital identity and community will be to the future of the Internet,” Alegre said in a statement. “We have an opportunity to be the Web3 platform at the forefront of community and social engagement, through media and entertainment, and Mike’s expertise will help us achieve that.”
Seavers’ new role is yet another sign that Yuga Labs is serious about its gaming push – and wants its upcoming Otherside other way around game despite a hit flagging enthusiasm about metaverse hype. Other side comes across as a social MMORPG, where players can undertake quests and immerse themselves in a 3D world.
As Yuga moves on to gaming, it’s worth noting that there are many of them NFT collections still make up a hefty percentage of the total NFT ecosystem by market cap.
Bored Ape Creator Yuga Labs Dominates NFT Sales With 35% Share
According to a recent DappRadar reportYuga’s NFT ecosystem – including the Bored monkeysMutant Apes, CryptoPunks, Meebits and Other deedsjust to name a few – made up nearly 35% of all NFT sales volumes from October 2022 through March 2023.
Image: DappRadar.
Yuga Labs’ Otherside game is the most successful “metaverse” NFT collection to date, with a total traded volume of approximately $322 million in the past six months alone and nearly $1.25 billion to date (per CryptoSlam) since last year’s decline. ApeCoin has also become the most popular gaming-related cryptocurrency, with a $1.48 billion Market capitalization.