Bored Ape Yacht Club members, who have full IP rights for the ape character they own, are pursuing licensing deals to put ape characters on cannabis packaging
When Richard Lee first brought his business proposal to Backpack Boyz, he could sense skepticism from the California-based cannabis company. Tweets: @harryalford3 , @jdotcolombo , and @alexcas_io Tweets: Harry Alford / @harryalford3 : “In the grand scheme of things, definitely, it's more valuable as an IP asset than as an NFT.” - @Jdotcolombo https://www.theverge.com/... Colombo / @jdotcolombo : Dope write up about my self and other BAYC holders bringing our apes to the cannabis industry. @painter_crypto @SmileFckrs !! The weed in that image is not a reflection of the absolute FIRE we all have in our packages. 😉 https://twitter.com/... Alex Castro / @alexcas_io : I got paid to make this image y'all https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This story is an early test of what BAYC's full commercial rights actually buy a holder. Richard Lee's pitch to California cannabis company Backpack Boyz met skepticism — the open question is whether an ape character moves product off a dispensary shelf, not just whether it trades well on a marketplace. Holder Harry Alford frames the thesis directly: the character is worth more as a licensed IP asset than as an NFT.
The timing matters because Yuga Labs' ecosystem was expanding on multiple fronts at once: the collection's creators had just been unmasked in a BuzzFeed investigation and later addressed it in an interview about BAYC's future, while separate coverage showed the same IP being optioned for a Coinbase movie trilogy and the launch of ApeCoin with a DAO behind it. Cannabis packaging is the first consumer-goods stress test of holder-level licensing.
First-order effects
- Backpack Boyz decides whether ape-branded packaging helps or hurts its retail credibility — the skepticism Lee encountered is the immediate obstacle, and other cannabis companies watching become the next pitch targets.
- Holders like Alford and Colombo gain a revenue stream independent of NFT price appreciation, converting their commercial-rights grant into actual licensing income for the first time.
Second-order effects
- Every successful packaging deal raises the perceived value of the whole collection's IP layer, which accrues to Yuga Labs through floor prices and ecosystem momentum around ApeCoin and media projects like the Coinbase films.
- Other NFT projects with per-holder commercial rights face pressure to match this template, turning licensing outreach from novelty into table stakes for collections competing on utility.
Third-order effects
- If cannabis branding proves out, NFTs consolidate into a new class of decentralized IP franchises where thousands of individual holders act as licensors — and where a holder's choice of industry (cannabis today, anything tomorrow) creates brand-risk exposure Yuga Labs doesn't directly control.
- Mainstream partners like Coinbase betting on BAYC media will have to reconcile that halo with holder-driven licensing into vice categories, forcing clearer IP governance norms across the NFT industry.
The trend: NFT collections are evolving from speculative collectibles into holder-licensed IP portfolios, with each new vertical — film, crypto, now cannabis — testing how far individual commercial rights extend.