Yuga Labs Aims for a Comeback with the Launch of ApeChain Layer 3

The chain has generated significant excitement within the Yuga Labs community. In just a few days, it has attracted over 100,000 users, while the value of the $APE token has nearly doubled.

Alexander Mardar

Oct 23, 2024 - 2 min read

Yuga Labs has announced the highly anticipated mainnet launch of its blockchain network, ApeChain, at the ApeFest conference in Lisbon on Sunday. This launch was a collaborative effort by Yuga Labs, Layer Zero, The Arbitrum Foundation, and several other partners. Initially, Yuga Labs considered various scaling solutions, including Polygon and zkSync, but ultimately settled on the Arbitrum Orbit Solution. Orbit enables the seamless creation of custom Layer 3 chains that settle on Arbitrum’s Layer 2 network.

ApeChain, much like Blast Layer 2, provides users with native yield on the cryptocurrency bridged to the network. Users can earn additional yield by bridging ETH, WETH, USDT, USDC, DAI, and ApeCoin to the chain.

Importantly, the launch of ApeChain has introduced a new utility for ApeCoin, which now serves as the native gas token for this chain. The market responded positively to the mainnet launch announcement, with the $APE token nearly doubling in value over the past few days.

After the launch, ApeChain has gained considerable traction, onboarding over 120,000 new users and processing approximately 500,000 transactions daily.

To encourage network usage, the chain has launched several notable trading, launchpad, and gaming dApps. One of the most popular is ApeExpress, a Pumpfun of ApeChain, where multiple meme coins have been launched. Another dApp that has attracted significant attention is Top Trader, which offers a trading simulation game with up to 1,000x leverage. Currently, the project hosts around 60 dApps on its chain, with many more planned for release in the coming months.

To further stimulate development activity, the team introduced the BANANA Bill program—a fund of over 100 million ApeCoin (approximately $147 million) set aside to support commercial agreements and user incentives. Yuga Labs is seeking partnerships with established Web3 companies, creative collectives, experienced development teams, and projects with proven track records that are ready to launch on ApeChain.

Whether these efforts will translate into significant long-term chain usage remains to be seen. The market is currently saturated with a multitude of Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks, while there is a noticeable scarcity of widely used dApps.

As is often the case, initial excitement can quickly fade if there is no real demand. This scenario seems to be playing out with Yuga Labs' flagship product, the Bored Apes Yacht Club NFTs. Although their prices saw a slight increase following the ApeChain announcement, they largely continue to trade near their all-time low of approximately 12 ETH per piece.