Investigation reveals the identities of two main founders of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection: Greg Solano, aka “Gargamel”, and Wylie Aronow

The buzzy NFT collection has raked in millions and the eager support of dozens of celebrities.

BuzzFeed News 2022-02-05 Katie Notopoulos

Context & Ripple Effects

Bored Ape Yacht Club had already grown from an NFT sale into a collector community with substantial trading activity, as an earlier profile of its collector community and trading growth documented. Naming Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow removes the founders’ public pseudonymity at a point when the project’s value rested heavily on community participation and creator reputation.

First-order effects

Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow become the publicly identifiable people associated with Bored Ape Yacht Club, ending the separation between their aliases and their personal identities.
BAYC holders and celebrity backers now have named founders to evaluate rather than anonymous project personas.

Second-order effects

The identification prompted the Web3 backlash covered in the community response to the founders being named, making founder privacy a live point of contention for NFT communities.
Solano and Aronow’s later public discussion of the doxxing and Yuga Labs shifts founder identity from an investigative disclosure into an issue the company must address directly.

Third-order effects

The episode points to a lasting tension in NFT projects between pseudonymous creator culture and holders’ demand for identifiable people behind high-value communities.
As NFT projects develop companies, tokens, and governance structures, founder anonymity becomes harder to sustain without becoming a reputational liability.

The trend: Web3 is moving from pseudonymous, community-led projects toward greater scrutiny of the people responsible for valuable digital brands.

Discussion

@katienotopoulos Katie Notopoulos on x
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is the biggest NFT group (the ones Paris Hilton and Gwyneth Paltrow own). Reported the company is raising money at a $5B valuation. But the founders are all pseudonymous. Which is, confusing. My story: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@buzzfeednews @buzzfeednews on x
The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are collectively worth billions, but their founders were unknown. We found them, along with plenty of questions around Web3, anonymity and accountability. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@anthony Anthony DeRosa on x
BuzzFeed News can now reveal the identities of Bored Apes' two main founders: Greg Solano, a 32-year-old writer and editor, and Wylie Aronow, a 35-year-old originally from Florida https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@carnage4life @carnage4life on x
What's happening with Bored Ape Yacht Club is akin to a cultural phenomenon or a fashion brand. You can't extrapolate general NFT trends from it any more than you can predict the apparel industry from what happens with Gucci & Balenciaga. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@joshconstine Josh Constine on x
I wonder how the government will feel if increasingly rich and powerful figures remain entirely anonymous https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@joemccann @joemccann on x
A dangerous example of Russelian Conjugation: Normies “doxx” but journalists “investigate”. ⁦@katienotopoulos⁩ should be held accountable for such reckless behavior, err, “reporting”. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@danbarker Dan Barker on x
The 2 guys who run this project, who up until now were pseudononymous (other than partnering with Guy Oseary, who famously manages Madonna & U2), were just named by BuzzFeed. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@ahcastor Amy Castor on x
Buzzfeed figured out the two main founders of BAYC — Greg Solano, a 32-year-old writer and editor, and Wylie Aronow, a 35-year-old originally from Florida. They don't have any dark pasts, as far as anyone knows https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@jowyang @jowyang on x
Bored Apes are a digital lifestyle brand, rumors flying the valuation could be $5B. The current “floor” (lowest) price valuation of the NFTs are $2.6B (I just looked), and many apes are worth far more than floor price. Is $5B valuation reasonable? https://www.coindesk.com/...
@muradahmed Murad Ahmed on x
Yuga Labs, the NFTs start-up behind Bored Ape Yacht Club collectibles is discussing a financing with Andreessen Horowitz that would value it at between $4bn and $5bn. Helluva scoop in @FT by @MilesKruppa @CristinaCriddle & @tim https://www.ft.com/...

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