Yuga Labs Launches ‘The Workshop’ to Develop ApeChain

The struggling NFT and crypto markets aren’t stopping Yuga Labs from continuing to build its brand. The studio behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club and owners of CryptoPunks recently announced the launch of “The Workshop,” a new incubation program to help drive the development of on-chain products.

The move is the first major initiative by CEO Greg Solano, who took over the NFT studio in February. The Workshop consists of 13 engineers and product experts who will be focused on launching high-impact products, with some of the goals being to boost the utility of the Apecoin token and develop the Apechain ecosystem.

Yuga Labs is set to launch ApeChain, a Layer 3 blockchain on Ethereum, in the near future. It will be powered by the Arbitrum blockchain and supported by Horizen Labs and Offchain.

The VP of Growth at Horizen Labs, Blockchainzilla, aka Spencer, commented that there is a lot of great stuff happening on Optimism, including Base, and that he wants “Apechain to be like that within the Arbitrum Orbit ecosystem.”

Time will tell if Yuga Labs can survive the tough NFT market. Its native token Apecoin is down over 50% on the year, and NFT sales — despite some promising weeks — have struggled to regain the momentum they once had. That said, Yuga Labs still holds some of the most iconic NFT collections in the space, and the launch of The Workshop and the projects that come out of it could help it regain some ground.

Yuga Labs Continues to Build Through Tough Times

Since Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow launched Yuga Labs back in 2021, the company has been on quite the run. From the early success of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (which hit a floor price high of 145 ETH in May 2022), to acquiring CryptoPunks and Meebits in the same year, Yuga Labs has established itself as arguable the top NFT studio in the game.

But as the NFT market has struggled the past couple of years, Yuga Labs has had to build and innovate to stay on top. Here are some recent headlines about the studio doing just that:

With the announcement of The Workshop and the upcoming launch of Apechain, Yuga Labs looks like it still has some exciting days ahead. Only time will tell if Apechain turns out be a success, but having a dedicated team of engineers, builders, and product developers coming together to work on new offerings certainly can’t hurt.