Bored Apes-creator Yuga Labs unloads Moonbirds as IP selloff continues

Yuga Labs, creator of the high-profile Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, has sold the Moonbirds intellectual property to the gaming company known as Orange Cap Games.

Moonbirds' official X account posted the announcement on Friday.

This is the second time this month Yuga Labs has sold what was once considered a prime NFT brand. Amid the ongoing NFT market meltdown, which has been unfolding for more than a year, Yuga Labs  sold the popular CryptoPunks intellectual property to a nonprofit endowment dedicated to conserving digital art earlier this month. Yuga Labs also sold the Meebits IP in February.

NFTs have, in general, more or less flatlined. In March, DappRadar said trading volumes for the most popular NFT collections have declined by 95%.

Yuga Labs shifts gears

Following a strategy of acquiring other top NFT brands, Yuga Labs has shifted its focus to the Bored Ape Yacht Club  and its Otherside metaverse project. "We're laser-focused on Apes, Otherside, and something special we've been cooking up," Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano posted to X on Friday.

Orange Cap Games appears to be a relatively new organization, given its modest social media presence.

"Our mission is to bring beloved IPs to life through carefully crafted experiences that introduce them to new fans and deepen the connection with existing communities," the company said in its announcement. "Today, we’re thrilled to share that OCG is acquiring Moonbirds, Mythics, & Oddities from Yuga Labs."

The company has also worked on a collectible card game "centered" around another popular name in the NFT space, Pudgy Penguins, the statement also said.

"[Orange Cap Games] created an incredible trading card game, with real physical distribution and a scalable digital platform ... and they've done it all without owning their own NFT IP,"  Yuga Labs' Solano also said Friday. "That changes today with their acquisition of the Moonbirds IP. Moonbirds deserve a team whose whole world is the birds, and there's no one better than Orange Cap Games to help them reach their potential."

The fledgling gaming company said in its statement that any "future on-chain components of the Moonbirds IP ... will exist either on a mainnet blockchain" or possibly Yuga Labs' Layer-2 ApeChain.