Lil Baby Apes started out as a well-loved BAYC derivative project however they are under fire right now over racist NFT traits.
NFT thought leader and GM Capital Partner @beaniemaxi discouraged others from purchasing Lil Baby Apes because of the racist comments, which he specified in a tweet. Mincing no words, he tweeted what he disliked about the work. For example, one of the Baby Apes had orange jam on its head. This is sensitive because there’s an urban legend of how people took black people around golf courses so they could put jam on their heads to keep flies away from white golfers.
This is a huge blow to the project’s legitimacy because @beaniemaxi has over 130K Twitter followers. Plus, the NFT Community is quite tight, so news travels fast. Especially for news as juicy as this.
User @benmayorwhite called the racist traits “horrific” He tweeted, “This is one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen. Skinhead trait + German flag suspenders +monkey pride written on tee. Unforgivable and atrocious.”
Racism, not the end of Lil Baby Apes’ Nightmare, A Bigger Controversy
According to OpenSea, the project has pulled in over 3500 ETH or around $14 Million. From 0.07 Eth minting price, the floor price has climbed to 0.163 ETH, so it is still in the upswing.
However, A Medium writer Roh claimed that the 5,000 baby apes were stolen from the original creators. He started his analysis by sharing the smart contracts of the two projects:
- Original Lil Baby Ape Club: https://etherscan.io/address/0x918f677b3ab4b9290ca96a95430fd228b2d84817
- Copycat Lil Baby Ape Club (the sold-out collection that is moving volumes): https://etherscan.io/address/0xb48eb7b72ff5a4b5ef044ea9e706c990bb33884d
His opening argument was the contract publication date. One (the original) was published on November 08, 2021, while the other (the copycat) was published on November 12, 2021. In addition, the only transaction on the original smart contract is the original deployment.
He ended his blog by reaffirming his support for the original derivatives project. He said, “whether we rescue the babies and bring them back to the original parents is up to the community to decide—I know where my support lies.”
We’ll follow this story closely, so make sure to check back with us!
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