Ξnxxjj ᵍᵐ

I want to address some of the feedback the company and I have been receiving from many of you recently. I respect the relevant, pointed feedback as I know it comes from a place of wanting to see improvements in our Yuga communities. First, I will start with sharing some advice that I was given by one of Yuga’s founders when I started 6 months ago - he said to me “it will take you 6 months on the job to truly understand this space and the importance of social communication”. While I am not naive enough to think that 6 months in I now totally get it all, I am very aware of the importance of taking and acting on constructive feedback – and how incredibly important all of your voices are to the health of our brands. Since day one, I have made it a point to attend as many meet-ups as I possibly can, so that I can get to know you, immerse myself, and try my best to understand the tapestry of POVs that make up this eclectic Yuga family. I have attended many IRL events for BAYC, CryptoPunks, Meebits and 10KTF in New York, Austin, Dallas, Miami, Seoul, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo (twice!). I am usually among the first to arrive and one of the last to leave, as I really enjoy getting to know all of you, and the unique opportunity to receive authentic, unfiltered feedback. I take it all in and it has been invaluable. Thanks to some of those connections, a few big initiatives have developed, including our Made by Apes program to support the builders in BAYC, the focus on elevating the CryptoPunks art form to collectors both inside and outside of web3, and the increased investment in partnerships to get Otherside on a faster delivery track. Let me take you back 6 months now and here is what I saw on day 1 of being CEO at Yuga: Clearly the teams had built unique connections within our communities and had a deep dedication to innovation, quirkiness and passion in everything they were doing. That, and the shared values I have with the founders, is what drew me to the company. I also immediately realized that Yuga Labs, as young and thinly staffed as it was, would have a very hard time executing on all of the initiatives it had taken on. It was time to take a close look at our priorities and make sure that we were putting our weight behind the things that really mattered. So that’s what I have been doing. As you all are now keenly aware, this has led to a restructuring and a refocusing. As I mentioned in my note to the Yuga team a week and a half ago, after spending time diving deep into everything we are doing and everything we value, it came down to three core priorities: - Support our existing communities; - Focus on our Otherside execution; - Leverage partnerships to ensure a seamless execution of our big bets. As difficult as it has been, that restructuring is complete and we now begin the task of refining the focus with our new team configurations. To provide even more clarity on where we have been and where we are going, here is what I have witnessed – in broad strokes – upon joining Yuga, and what we have been working on since: BAYC: Apes strong AND global. Club: We know that supporting unique IRL events and getting us all together is critical. This is why we have not only supported a number of events globally in the last 10 months in partnership with the BAYC Council – along with our official MAYC 2nd anniversary party in Miami – we have also emphasized our global presence since we have so many holders around the world. This was one of the key reasons for hosting ApeFest in Hong Kong this year – and while the planning has been a very heavy lift for the team, I can assure you the event is going to be epic in a way only BAYC can pull off. I am lucky to be surrounded by such passionate colleagues like PPMan, IDB, Jeff N., Spicy, Shpend and so many others who are stewards inside the company for the club. Made By Apes: BAYC is not only tight and connected, it is also globally entrepreneurial. What has amazed me in every city I travel to is the level of engagement and personal involvement many of you have in building what I refer to as “community-based IP creation”. Building unique businesses around the Ape IP is not only exciting, it is very smart. It is the reason why we have leaned in heavily to support these efforts with our Made by Apes initiative. We want our holders to successfully leverage the IP licenses and we will continue to support and amplify them. That is why we will be highlighting a large number of the MBA businesses at ApeFest in a couple weeks. Partnerships: We have a long list of partners who want to engage with BAYC. We have been very selective in our engagements as we want to present unique and well executed partnerships to you, such as our multi-year engagement with Gucci and our recently announced BAPE® collaboration. There are a few more in the pipeline that will be announced soon. CryptoPunks: The relationship between Punks and Yuga when I joined was, I have to say, strained. What we continually heard was that Yuga didn’t care – while at the same time there was a strong desire to be left alone. While this may have seemed contradictory to some, I feel like I understood what the community was telling us pretty clearly. As a result, we expanded our engagement with top-tier museums to elevate the already strong stature of CryptoPunks, to broaden the art collector appeal for the brand. We doubled-down… tripled-down even… on community support. The recent meet-ups around the world have brought the Punks together and our Legacy Project is a nod from Yuga to the incredible story behind the artistry. We will continue to be respectful of that legacy while bringing new art engagement opportunities to the Punks. Meebits: Meebits has been a difficult situation. From a business perspective, the brand has not flourished. Yet from a community and creative perspective, it has broad yet quirky appeal, and its members are a passionate group. So I believe the answer is to evolve Meebits into a dynamic and interactive ownership experience by moving them to Otherside. Otherside is a very important bet for Yuga and when our creative team brought the concept for Meetropolis up to my leadership team, making it a tentpole experience for Otherside felt like a slam dunk. We recently showcased the evolution of this plan in Berlin and we are putting our best creative and engineering talent and partners on the task. The changes in the organization are all geared towards making Meebits more interactive and engaging. And of course, we will continue to support Meebs online and IRL. The buzz from Berlin is a clear indication that the community likes to come together. 10KTF: In my mind, 10KTF deserved a more substantial role in the world of Yuga – the Thursday events have been important to the community, but we needed to find an even deeper engagement opportunity. With its strong partner focus, it became increasingly clear that Otherside is the right platform to grow the engagement and uniqueness of 10KTF. Eric Reid will also be diving in with the community soon to showcase some of his near-term priorities for the brand. Otherside: I joined a few weeks after the Second Trip. To put things into perspective, Otherside was announced mid-2022. There was an 8-month long lag between the First and Second Trips, and while we had some good engagement moments in the Second Trip, we could have done better. For example, we didn’t have enough capacity to let all of our community members from around the world participate concurrently and the evolution between the First and Second Trips was also not where it needed to be. It was clear that we needed to make changes – and quickly – in order to live up to the expectations of what Otherside can and should be. Building an immersive metaverse platform is hard – both technically and creatively. You have undoubtedly noticed a constant drumbeat of announcements recently – from the partnerships with Hadean and Big Rhino, to the acquisition of Roar Studios – which are all aligned towards accelerating the evolution of Otherside, so it can be the digital connection and experience platform for our Yuga family of communities and beyond. As many have now witnessed from the Los Angeles and Berlin events, we are accelerating the development and building out unique and differentiated digital experiences that are supported with strong and scalable tech. Gaming: I am keenly aware that while Dookey Dash was a fun game and experience, we have fallen well short of expectations with Forge. The lessons that we are actively learning are that we need to rely on seasoned gaming partners to help build our experiences. I have said many times that I don’t want Yuga to be a gaming company per se. Yet I do want to enable gaming and other digital experiences that our current and potential holders will find rewarding and fun, and can help expose broader audiences to our brands. It has also become clear that many of you don’t necessarily want to hear about gaming at all, while others want much more information. We hear you, and that was the impetus for launching the gaming channel. The ongoing feedback is critically important and we will continue to take it to heart as we develop new games and gamified experiences. Ordinals: Earlier this year we released our first collection on the Bitcoin blockchain with TwelveFold. We have evolved engagement with our weekly puzzles where we are testing new tech with a goal to eventually release these solutions to further advance the work being done with Bitcoin. We are also finding ways to deliver the physical product to our collectors. It has been a whirlwind last few months for me – and also extraordinarily rewarding to get to know so many of you. I know I cannot do this without your continued support. I am really looking forward to seeing many of you at ApeFest in a few weeks. I also know the winds blow in different directions at times and while there is no doubt that the industry backdrop is challenging in the immediate term, I am focused on building and delivering for the long term. We are committed to standing strong. Our mission is clear – to build culture on the blockchain – and with your support nothing will deter us from continuing to deliver on this mission. Thank You, Daniel Alegre