Owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs — including celeb holders like Eminem, Steph Curry, Jimmy Fallon and Mark Cuban — are set to receive a brand new token called ApeCoin (APE) as yet another incentive for being part of the exclusive digital asset club.

The developer of the new token is the ApeCoin DAO and is notably separate from Yuga Labs.

Introducing ApeCoin ($APE), a token for culture, gaming, and commerce used to empower a decentralized community building at the forefront of web3.

Owners of BAYC NFTs will be able to claim approximately 10,000 ApeCoin each, but the 1 billion soon-to-be-released ApeCoin tokens will also be distributed amongst a series of different parties.

According to the ApeCoin DAO website, 62% of the total supply will be added to an ecosystem fund,14% will be given to “launch contributors,” 9.75% of tokens will be held by the creators of BAYC, Yuga Labs, 8% of the tokens will go directly to the founders of Yuga Labs, and the remaining 6.25% is to be donated to the Jane Goodall Foundation, a charity dedicated to preserving the habitats of chimpanzees.

While the token itself remains technically separate from Yuga Labs, the firm is set to fully adopt ApeCoin as the “primary token for all new products and services” that emerge from Yuga Labs. According to the Yuga Labs, this includes a yet to be released, play-to-earn blockchain game that the team at Yuga Labs plans to release later this year with game developer nWay.

ApeCoin will also be used in the upcoming play-to-earn game Benji Bananas, a game from Hong Kong-based blockchain gaming company Animoca Brands, that also owns nWay.

1/ @animocabrands has proposed AIPs 4 & 5, these are live on Discourse for viewing. AIP 4 covers a novel staking