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- Yuga Labs officially sold Moonbirds NFT IP to Orange Cap Games, shifting focus to core projects like Bored Ape and Otherside.
- This is Yuga Labs’ third major IP sale in 2025, following Meebits and CryptoPunks divestments.
Yuga Labs, widely known as the owner of Bored Ape Yacht Club, has officially sold the intellectual property (IP) rights of the Moonbirds NFT collection to a blockchain gaming startup called Orange Cap Games. The announcement was made in late May, and immediately made many market participants wonder: where exactly is Yuga Labs going next?
Moonbirds is not the only asset included in the transaction. Two other collections, Mythics and Oddities, are also included in the package handed over to Orange Cap. Although the details of the value are being kept secret, the future plan is quite clear.
Orange Cap will develop the Moonbirds universe through an approach they call “a blend of physical and digital experiences.” There are even plans for new Moonbirds-related assets to be minted on the main Ethereum network or ApeChain, a layer-2 that is still tied to Yuga Labs.
⚡️LATEST: Yuga Labs sells Moonbirds NFT IP to gaming startup Orange Cap Games. pic.twitter.com/Z0foXWrDVd
— Crypto Daily (@CryptoDailyoff) June 2, 2025
Yuga Labs Is Cleaning House, One NFT at a Time
This is not the first time Yuga Labs has made such a maneuver. Last February, as reported by CNF, they sold the Meebits IP to a company called Meebit Company (MeebCo). MeebCo will rebuild the Meebits community, introduce new products, and present an incentive program called Bits. The goal is not just to revive its NFTs, but to keep them relevant in the rapidly changing crypto space.
Then on May 13, 2025, it was the turn of the iconic CryptoPunks collection to be released. Yuga sold it to the Infinite Node Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on preserving digital art.
They have the ambition to display all 10,000 CryptoPunks in a permanent exhibition space in Palo Alto, as well as bring this collection to various art galleries around the world. So if you think CryptoPunks will be rare buried items, it could be the opposite—they will be displayed in museums, not in digital wallets.
Before the sale of several NFT IPs, a few months earlier, on March 4, 2025, the SEC officially closed its investigation into Yuga Labs without legal action. This concerns the allegation that NFTs such as Bored Ape can be considered securities.
The closure of this case is quite a relief for the entire NFT community because it can remove the fog of regulatory uncertainty that has been looming.
On the other hand, Moonbirds itself immediately showed a market response after the acquisition announcement. Its NFT floor price jumped from 0.295 ETH to 0.9 ETH. Although still far from its golden age which had touched 38.5 ETH in April 2022, this movement shows that the market has not completely lost interest.
What does all this mean? It could be that Yuga Labs is indeed rearranging their “collection cabinet,” leaving only the most core ones.
