📰 History of B.A.S.C.

“The weak fall, but the strong will remain and never go under.”

The Mint

On January 4th, Bored Ape Solana Club (BASC) launched a stealth mint held on launchmynft.com. A stealth mint meant that there was zero marketing or advertising dollars invested into the project. At first it was the Is This Real, can they be trusted? Look at this dopey minting site. People said “they are Bored Apes, everyone will want one!” and they weren't wrong. After almost a full 2 week mint process, FOMO kicked in as all 6001 NFT's were minted on the Solana blockchain for .69 SOL (roughly $80 at the time).

The BASC discord had grown from 0 to 7000+ in the 2 week process and was full of first time NFT investors who wanted a second opportunity at owning a Bored Ape. The mint was 100% completed on January 13th and the next question became if the project would actually get listed live on Magic Eden.

The Launch

After roughly 30 minutes, an announcement was made in the discord that the project was listed live on Magic Eden. The entire community erupted with excitement because there had been so much debate on if the project would actually get verified and approved. For a lot of people in the discord, this was their very first NFT project. The fear of getting rugged or never being listed was no longer a concern. Investors took the news to social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. As you could imagine, the 7000 members in the discord were ready to see BASC take off to the moon. Webster's Dictionary Defines community as a unified body of individuals, an interacting population of various kinds of individuals in a common location. That's exactly what Bored Ape Solana Club became; apes sharing life stories, meetings in real life, babies being born, engagements, and people developed real friendships in a short time.

The Drama

Within 24 hours of getting listed on the secondary marketplace Magic Eden, BASC quickly became an hit. The discord reached 10,000 members. People were buying apes for 20+ SOL, which meant early minters for the project we’re seeing a 20x return on their .69 SOL investment. 48 hours into the launch, apes were selling for 50+ SOL and the floor price had climbed to roughly 10 SOL.

After just 3 days of being listed live on Magic Eden, Bored Ape Solana Club held a 20 SOL floor price and was trending as the number 1 NFT collection on Solana. This is what OG BASC members consider the turning point for not just BASC… but for all Solana NFT’s. Magic Eden’s Twitter inbox was flooded with lots of hate messages from previously top ranked Solana NFT projects. In an attempt to settle the chaos in the ecosystem, Magic Eden organized a Twitter Space to meet with the leaders of BASC. There were hundreds of people from BASC in attendance as well as other Solana project leaders ready to voice their opinion. The only person missing was BoredDragon, which was the founder of BASC’s discord name (this was the first potential sign for the rug as he had claimed to have slept in for the largest Twitter Space to date in Solana history).

With his no show, members of the community were left out to dry and held their own answering question after question, allegations after allegations, and fighting nonstop FUD. The BASC community quickly realized they had an uphill battle and built a “us vs the world” mentality.

The Derivative Badge

With all the uproar BASC had caused the Solana community, Magic Eden felt the need to make a correction and adjustment to save their secondary marketplace. Magic Eden made the rash decision to remove Bored Ape Solana Club from their front page for 48 hours. After lots of internal debate, Magic Eden’s resolution was to invent the “derivative badge”. BASC was labeled the first derivative NFT project, claiming it as not an original artwork idea. This divided the community and uncertainty started to creep back in. The project was removed from the front page of Magic Eden and lost visibility and new investors wanting to join. In a saving attempt, BoredDragon staged a fake meeting with Magic Eden that never took place and told the community all was good.

The Slow Rug

Over the next 2 months BASC started its descend from a 20 SOL floor down to a .15 SOL floor. Within the first few weeks of the project launching, the founder BoredDragon, had picked out a few members within the community to support the leg work needed to build out the project. Community moderators and managers were desperate to see a return on their investments and were happy to work for free. The problems with BASC became evident when promises of utility were not being followed through on. The community was built on the idea of a monthly distribution and royalty payout based upon trading volume on Magic Eden. February 13th was distribution day for the first month. BoredDragon provided excuses and reasonings delay the payout.

The community split even further at this point and the discord started to become a war zone. Outlandish promises were being made by BoredDragon, such as a metadata update, artwork update, surprise airdrop, an all ape marketplace, removing the derivative badge, and a royalty payout. March 13th arrived as the due date for now the second monthly distribution. The entire community came back together with high hopes of getting their promises payout. The secondary trading volume for the project had reached roughly $6,000,000 at this point and equaled a payout of .7 SOL per BASC NFT. Excitement flooded the discord, only to be met with a surprise airdrop / stealth mint for another collection called Junior Ape Solana Club. Some people were excited to mint another collection for .69 SOL, some disappointed but had held on for this long and were willing to wait it out, while others sold their apes and left the project.

The Collapse

Due to the ultimate lack of progress, some of the larger investors still remaining decided to take things into their own hands. The OG’s of BASC opened up a brand new discord and started demanding the project owner to hand the security keys (this was the catalyst for the rug). BoredDragon stated he would be happy to do so but was missing in action when the scheduled time came. The OG’s in the new discord server followed some transactions on the blockchain and noticed the funds were no longer in the community wallet. When BoredDragon was asked why the funds were moved his response was, “to distribute out the royalties finally”. The OG’s started gathering as many community members into the new discord server as the rug was now inevitable.

On March 21st the final move from Bored Dragon when he listed his profile picture BASC NFT on Magic Eden to capture the last bit of funds he could. After listing, he went inside the new BASC discord and said, “this was always my dream”, then deleted the original discord (which now had reached 15k members) and the Twitter account before disappearing.

The Turning Point

The only thing left standing of the once great BASC empire was the 300 community members inside the new discord was created by two OGs ; Sygnal and BeTheBender, who brought in another trusted moderator in BASC discord Crypto Home Schooler to help bridge the gap for other community members. The three month slow rug was the largest in Solana NFT history to date. After expressing e-motions like fear, anxiety, depression, and frustration, the discord received some hope. Overnight Admin level access was granted to 3 other OG's ; DakDaze, Exxempt, & Kitsune, who claimed to have planned for the worst ahead of time and could potentially save BASC. DakDaze (CEO) was the visionary who pumped life back into the community during difficult times. Exxempt (Lead Developer) was the behind the scenes tech guru who worked hand and hand with DakDaze to restore the project. Kitsune (Artist) was the man who hand drew every BASC NFT and added a Solana touch to distinguish the artwork from the Ethereum BAYC collection. This trio of geniuses woke up ready to take on the challenge and restore balance to the entire community. This group tasked themselves with the impossible, helping someone who was helpless.

The DeRug Process

In order to stop secondary sales funds from going to the previous project owner, BoredDragon, the community had to come together to flag its own NFT collection on Magic Eden. The new leadership team had two options to present to the community on how to move forward. Option 1 was to outsource the work with another project on the Solana network. Option 2 was to do it ourselves. The admins felt confident that Option 2 would be less expensive and be completed in a shorter time period. The proposal from DakDaze, Exxempt, & Kitsune required the community to raise 100 SOL for a bare minimum cost to remint out the entire 6001 BASC NFT's and airdrop them back to holders. Within 12 hours the community came together and donated the 100 SOL that allowed the team to start the derug process.

Within just 5 days the admin team had successfully minted out the entire 6001 BASC NFT's and had started to airdrop them back to the holders based upon a previous snapshot. Over 5000 new NFT's were airdropped back to holders. While the community was celebrating their airdrops, on March 27th the collection relaunched and went live on Magic Eden. The flag was removed once the old creator id was swapped out and rugged NFT's were not able to be listed anymore. The collection did carry over its statistics like trading. For the next 2 weeks the admins had answered roughly 1000 tickets and manually airdropped over 500 BASC NFT's. The team even found ways to compensate those who had minted the Junior Ape Solana Club NFT project that was also rugged by the previous project owner BoredDragon.

The Rebirth

The next major delivery came on April 1st. The entire collection of 6001 BASC NFT's were originally copy and paste traits that the previous owner had claimed to have gotten permission from BAYC to use. Once the community figured this out, Kitsune revamped the entire BASC collection by hand drawing the entire collection trait by trait. With the help of the Head Developer Exxempt, all traits were combined into 900px & 300dpi quality update was applied and the new artwork was well received by the community!

The Sail to OpenSea

On the night of April 22nd, Bored Ape Solana Club was approved on OpenSea for launch! The project is now a verified collection on OpenSea. BASC ranks within the top 15 for trading volume on OpenSea for Solana NFT projects.

The Branding & Merch

The community wanted to show their support and love by doing Official BASC Merch. Community member "Millz" stepped in to rebrand and launch the 1st BASC collection.

The New Website

On May 17th, Bored Ape Solana Club released their updated website: https://www.bascdao.net/

The Care Package

The community was promised a royalty distribution in SOL by the previous owners. On June 10th the new project owners designed an internal system to reward 100 random apes with a 1 SOL airdrop for not being listed on Magic Eden or OpenSea.

The Jungle Is Awakening

With the foundation being rebuilt, the community is ready to lean into the future of Web3!