ApeCoin has been making headlines for the past couple of months due to the restructuring of its managerial level. 

This is done in Yuga Labs, the company behind ApeCoin, however, some think that the restructuring might deter the value of ApeCoin itself as a project. 

People thought of this because ApeCoin itself was created to govern the Ape ecosystem that Yuga Labs created, which is why the restructuring process might interfere with the purpose of ApeCoin. 

However, Yuga Labs has reassured the community that ApeCoin will always stay a core part of the governance process in the Ape Ecosystem. 

While this is huge news for the ApeCoin community, some investors outside the ecosystem might still not know what ApeCoin is and how holders can utilize it to govern the ecosystem. 

What is ApeCoin?

ApeCoin is a governance project that was introduced by Yuga Labs to govern the whole “Ape” Ecosystem that they have created. 

The project is mainly a DAO with its token called APE, which is used purely as a governance token for the ApeCoin DAO. 

The project was launched on the Ethereum Blockchain, where the token itself was created as an ERC20 Token with Ethereum Standards. 

It was created in March 2022, to innovate the Yuga Labs Ecosystem that was losing traction due to the bear market and the overall slow development. 

Yuga Labs itself reached its peak popularity in the 2021 Bull Market with the launch of its NFT Collection called the Bored Ape Yacht Club. 

The Bored Ape Yacht Club or BAYC NFT Collection became a huge hit as it became the first community-based NFT Collection, which means that to be a part of the community, investors have to have at least one of those NFTs. 

It became sort of the symbol for successful high-level investors and traders in the crypto space as the community reached a broad audience across the globe. 

The community was used for several easy-to-build relationships and businesses in the crypto world, including for crypto projects to easily build partnerships with each other. 

The move was copied throughout the crypto market, evidently starting a new trend of NFT NFT-based community. 

A lot of people started to recognise the BAYC NFT Collection due to the price of its NFT skyrocketing, with one of its NFTs reaching the highest price of more than $3 Million. 

The overall volume of the collection has reached more than 1.6 Million ETH which at the current price of $3,000 per ETH means around $4.8 Billion worth of volume. 

BAYC is not the only collection that Yuga Labs created, there are similar other ones, which are Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Kennels, Otherdeed for the Otherside Metaverse and NFT Project, and the collaboration with Meebits and CryptoPunks. 

Most of them are governed by the ApeCoin DAO, as the holders of those NFTs received an airdrop of the APE Token itself. 

The ApeCoin DAO have created some innovations, including the creation of AIP also known as the ApeCoin Improvement Proposal, as well as the NFT Marketplace seen above. 

Before the existence of the NFT Marketplace, holders need to trade their Yuga Labs NFT Collections on a secondary marketplace like OpenSea. 

However, with this new marketplace, holders can trade it directly on the ApeCoin marketplace, where the fees are compiled and distributed in the treasury of the ApeCoin DAO. 

How Does the ApeCoin DAO Work?

The decision to create a marketplace was based on a proposal that was created and agreed on in the ApeCoin DAO. 

The way that the DAO works is pretty basic and similar to most DAOs as there have not been any innovations in its infrastructure. 

Members of the DAO, which are the holders of the APE Token, govern the whole DAO as they are the ones who submit, vote, agree, and deny all the proposals that are published. 

The DAO itself was simply built using the Snapshot platform, which is a third-party application that is commonly used to create a DAO in the crypto space. 

To use it, holders of APE have to connect their wallet that contains the APE Token itself to the snapshot platform so that it can be detected and they can participate in the governance process. 

All of the process happens on the Ethereum Blockchain, which means that it is transparent and immutable. 

The great thing about this process is that the members do not have to pay a dime, as the governance process is free of charge with no fee incurred. 

All holders of APE can join the governance process, however, if they decide not to for some reason, they can delegate their APE to another high-level member of the community. 

By delegating the APE Token, they will essentially let other members of the DAO use their vote to agree or deny a proposal.

There are several entities that they can delegate their votes to, including some projects on the ApeCoin Ecosystem. 

The DAO itself also has a discussion page, where members can discuss proposals that are going to be submitted, were just submitted, or have been submitted and need to be tweaked. 

This page was created to ensure the active participation of the members so that the DAO is governed solely by the APE Token Holders. 

On this page, members can criticise, give suggestions, or even ask to change the whole proposal before the deadline is due. 

The proposals are submitted through the snapshot platform, where they will be automatically connected to this page.  

Those proposals govern the whole ApeCoin ecosystem, including how the DAO manages its treasury. 

The treasury data itself is published publicly on the ApeCoin official site, where all of the decisions are based on proposals that are submitted and voted on by the members of the DAO. 

Currently, there are no plans to innovate the DAO as it has been running smoothly for the last couple of months. 

However, with the restructuring of Yuga Labs, it might be possible that the DAO will be innovated into a multi-branch DAO, similar to what is currently trending in the crypto market. 

Token Economics 

All of these processes are governed through the APE Token, which was launched in March 2022, with the launch of its DAO. 

The overall supply of this token stands at 1 Billion APE with no plans to reduce or increase the supply of the token. 

From the token allocation, it can be seen that 62% of the token supply has been allocated towards the ecosystem fund, which includes 15% allocation for the airdrop towards NFT Holders and 47% towards the actual treasury fund to improve the ApeCoin Ecosystem. 

This includes potential partnership funding and new projects that want to join the ApeCoin Ecosystem to further innovate its other products. 

However, this means that 38% of the supply is being held by the “insiders” which includes the Founders, Yuga Labs itself, and the early contributors of the project. 

Since the launch happened somewhat a long time ago, the “insider” allocation does not seem to matter as the token is currently distributed among the public. 

Conclusion

It is no wonder that ApeCoin has been an inspiration to many NFT and Meme Projects, since it can be an example of how to bring a project back to life with new utilities, like a DAO. 

Sadly, the project is lacking development as there have not been many new products in its ecosystem that have been launched to the public. 

Although some are being developed, ApeCoin itself might need a new boost of products on its ecosystem to bring its glory days back, especially heading into the predicted bull market of 2025. 

However, looking at its DAO, it might be possible that they are cooking something up behind the scene as there are still many proposals to be implemented and reviewed by the DAO.