Crypto gaming startup Orange Cap Games (OCG) just snagged a big prize, the intellectual property for the Moonbirds NFT collection, plus Mythics and Oddities, from none other than Yuga Labs. The deal was announced on May 30, but OCG is keeping the price tag a mystery, leaving everyone guessing.

This move comes just over a year after Yuga Labs scooped up these collections when it acquired PROOF, the original creators, back in February 2024.

Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano is pretty clear on why they sold:

“Moonbirds deserve a team whose whole world is the birds, and there’s no one better than Orange Cap Games to help them reach their potential.”

Translation: Yuga’s got bigger fish to fry.

That fish is Yuga’s original heavy-hitters, the once sky-high Bored Ape Yacht Club, its spinoffs like Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and the metaverse beast in the making, Otherside. Moonbirds will still hatch on the Other Side, and any new goodies from the team will live on Ethereum or Yuga’s layer-2 network, ApeChain.

The Moonbirds are enjoying a bit of a comeback, too. Prices have more than tripled to 0.9 ETH since the news dropped. Still, don’t pop the champagne just yet — that’s way down from their peak of 38.5 ETH in April 2022, according to CoinGecko. Ouch.

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The floor price of Moonbirds has shot up from 0.295 ETH to 0.9 ETH since the acquisition. Source: CoinGecko. 

Yuga Labs Trims IP as NFT Market Shows Signs of Life

Yuga’s been on a bit of an IP diet lately, offloading big chunks of its NFT empire as the market’s taken a nosedive and trading volume hit snooze mode. Earlier in May, Yuga passed the torch for CryptoPunks’ IP to the nonprofit Infinite Node Foundation. No one’s spilling the beans on the deal price.

In February, The Meebit Company picked up Meebits from Yuga, though Yuga still holds a minority stake, sharing the spotlight with venture firm 1confirmation. And last year, Yuga said goodbye to the IPs of two games, HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara, to focus on its core collections.

Meanwhile, not all is doom and gloom in NFT land. On May 30, Disney teamed up with Dapper Labs, the brains behind NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties, to roll out a new loyalty program where Disney+ subscribers get a digital pin every month. Talk about magical perks.

Looks like the NFT winter might be thawing out. Unique NFT buyers jumped 50% to 936,000 in May from the previous month, and volume rose 15% to $430 million, according to the latest data.

So while Yuga Labs trims down, others are gearing up, and Moonbirds just found a new nest with Orange Cap Games. Keep your eyes peeled!

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