Yuga Labs acquires Tokenproof tech team for NFT R&D

Yuga Labs, the blockchain company behind the popular ape-themed non-fungible tokens (NFT) collection, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and ApeCoin, has acquired the tech team of Tokenproof, a Web3 tokenization service.

On Dec. 3, Tokenproof founder and CEO Fonz O announced that Yuga Labs acquired Tokenproof’s technology and onboarded some of its team members in the process.

According to Fonz O, Tokenproof built an infrastructure to verify NFT ownership in the real world and has collaborated with Yuga Labs several times since 2022 to further this vision.

Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano also noted his company’s long-standing partnership with Tokenproof. He said:

“Together with Tokenproof, we tackled a bunch of thorny problems, so that your monkey jpeg could safely and efficiently get you into a festival across the world.”

As part of the acquisition, Tokenproof’s tech team will join Yuga Labs’ research and development division, The Workshop. Yuga’s R&D division was launched in August 2024 amid massive layoffs and company restructuring, which involved prioritizing the execution of Otherside, a gamified and interoperable metaverse project.

Solano said that Yuga Labs’ current innovations aim to make cryptocurrency tokens and NFTs “more accessible and more fun.”

Community members supported the strategic acquisition, with many devs highlighting Tokenproof’s role in enabling real utilities on the ape-themed NFTs.

Check out Cointelegraph’s guide to learn more about how to get started using NFTs.

Related: Nike-owned NFT wearables RTFKT to sunset in January

In November, the sales volume of NFTs went up over $562 million, recording a six-month high trade.

According to CryptoSlam data, monthly sales volume for NFTs exceeded the $500 million mark in May. However, in 2024, March recorded the highest monthly sales volume of $1.6 billion.

The uncertain NFT market conditions led crypto exchange Kraken to wind down its NFT marketplace within a year of its launch.

“We’ve made the decision to close our NFT marketplace so we can shift more resources into new products and services, including unannounced initiatives in development,”  a Kraken spokesperson told Cointelegraph on Nov. 26.

Amid the marketplace shutdown, Kraken will help users move their NFT collections to Kraken Wallet or a self-custodial wallet of their choice.

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