Yuga Labs sells Moonbirds NFT collection to Orange Cap Games

Crypto gaming startup Orange Cap Games (OCG) has acquired the intellectual property of the Ethereum-based non-fungible token collection Moonbirds from Yuga Labs.

OCG said on May 30 that it bought the Moonbirds, Mythics and Oddities NFT collections from Yuga, but did not disclose details or pricing of the deal.

It comes a little over a year after Yuga acquired the three collections when it took over the company that created them, PROOF, in February.

“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,” Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano said.

He added that Yuga was “laser-focused” on its original collections, which includes the once high-priced Bored Ape Yacht Club and its various spinoffs, including the Mutant Ape Yacht Club as well as its long-in-development metaverse, Otherside.

As part of the deal, Moonbirds will still launch on Otherside and any new onchain assets created by the team will be hosted on Ethereum or Yuga’s layer-2 network, ApeChain.

Moonbirds have more than tripled in price to 0.9 ETH after news of the acquisition. However, the collection is still down nearly 98% from its all-time high of 38.5 ETH in April 2022, according to CoinGecko.

*The floor price of Moonbirds has shot up from 0.295 ETH to 0.9 ETH since the acquisition. Source:* *CoinGecko*.

Yuga Labs IP sell-off continues

Yuga has continued to offload its NFT collections and intellectual properties as the NFT market has taken a sharp dive and continues to see low trading volumes.

Earlier in May, Yuga sold the intellectual property rights of CryptoPunks, considered by many to be a pioneering NFT collection, to the nonprofit organization Infinite Node Foundation. The terms of the deals were not disclosed.

In February, The Meebit Company acquired Meebits from Yuga Labs; however, Yuga still has a minority stake, with venture firm 1confirmation also being part of the deal.

Last year, Yuga sold off the IPs of two of its games, HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara, in a move to refocus the organization’s core collections.

Meanwhile, on May 30, Disney announced that it had teamed up with Dapper Labs, creators of NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties, to launch its new loyalty program. Disney+ subscribers will receive a digital pin each month.

The downtrend for NFTs is seemingly coming to an end.

In May, unique NFT buyers increased by 50% to 936,000 from the previous month, whereas NFT volume increased to $430 million, an increase of 15% from April.

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