Author: Nancy, PANews
The NFT winter continues, with a large number of projects making quiet exits. Yuga Labs has begun testing TCG (Trading Card Game) gameplay, attempting to explore new application scenarios for Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). However, judging from the market reaction, this new attempt has yet to make much of a splash.
Yuga Labs Tests TCG, Over 70% Airdropped to BAYC and MAYC Holders
On October 17, at ApeFest 2026 held at Beeple Studios in South Carolina, USA, Yuga Labs announced the launch of Mudwater, a new Solana-based trading card series combining physical and digital elements, and opened card pack claims to BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) holders.
According to the official introduction, Mudwater's first series is called Swamp Origins, featuring a total of 120 ape-themed card faces and four rarity tiers: Common, Foil, Numbered, and Cracked-Ice 1/1. Among them, the rarest Cracked-Ice 1/1 cards number only 8, each being a uniquely numbered one-of-one version.
Unlike traditional physical trading cards, Mudwater adopts a Phygital model, combining physical cards with digital assets. The physical cards are printed by Orange Cap Games on orange-core paper, and each card corresponds to a Solana NFT stored in a vault, with support for redemption between physical cards and digital assets.
Mudwater's total supply is 10,000 boxes, with 24 packs per box, totaling 240,000 packs and approximately 2.4 million cards. Of this, over 71.3% (7,134 boxes) will be distributed through community airdrops, and holders who participate in on-site ApeFest activities can receive an additional box. Of the remaining supply, 20% is for commercial reserves, 5.66% for community bootstrapping rewards, and another 3% allocated to partner communities including ApeChain.
For community distribution, Yuga Labs airdropped 6,551 ERC-6551 Totems to BAYC and MAYC holders as credentials for claiming card packs, with the claim window remaining open until January 19, 2027. Under the rules, Mudwater sets different card pack claim quotas for BAYC and MAYC holders, further reinforcing the tier difference between the two NFT series. Each BAYC can claim 10 packs, and each MAYC can claim 2 packs, with each pack containing 10 cards.
OpenSea data shows that since launch, the Mudwater Packs floor price has fallen from a peak of 5 SOL to about 0.3 SOL, with cumulative trading volume exceeding 912 SOL and fewer than 1,100 holding addresses. The Mudwater Cards floor price has fallen from a peak of 0.258 SOL to 0.09 SOL, with cumulative trading volume of about 178 SOL and approximately 510 holding addresses.
In addition to collectibility, Mudwater also introduces a card battle mechanism. Its Ante mode allows two players to each wager 3 cards in a match, and the winner can randomly take one of the opponent's wagered cards, with the taken card permanently belonging to the opponent. Currently, users can already experience this gameplay using demo cards in Otherside, and the official plan is to support on-chain real cards in matches in the future. In addition, there are plans to launch a card pack upgrade feature, allowing users to upgrade 24 packs into one box, or upgrade 10 boxes into a full case, but the specific launch time has not yet been announced.
On the economic incentive side, Mudwater has also designed a revenue distribution mechanism tied to the APE token. Each Mudwater transaction will generate a 2.5% reflection yield (Reflection), and the official plan is to use these funds to automatically buy APE tokens and then distribute them to Mudwater NFT holders according to their respective holding proportions. This means that the more active Mudwater trading is, the more APE distributions holders may receive.
However, judging from the market reaction, APE has not seen an obvious price boost from the related buyback news, though this is of course also affected by the overall weakness in the crypto market. It is worth noting that in May this year, Yuga Labs revealed that it would adjust the organizational structure related to ApeCoin, no longer treating it as a separate arrangement independent of brand development, and some core members would also be merged into Yuga Labs.
Floor Price Reaction Muted, Why Is the TCG Narrative Struggling to Win Market Acceptance?
Judging from secondary market performance, the current news of Yuga Labs entering TCG has had a relatively limited price boost for BAYC and MAYC.
NFT Price Floor data shows that over the past week, BAYC's trading volume rose about 172.6%, while transaction count rose 216.2%; MAYC's trading volume and transaction count rose about 78.6% and 96.6%, respectively. However, the increase in trading activity did not simultaneously drive floor prices higher. During the same period, BAYC's floor price rose only 0.9%, while MAYC's floor price actually fell about 4.9%.
The reason is that although TCG has a broad audience base, market attention and consumer demand are mainly concentrated on mature IPs that have accumulated over decades, such as Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and One Piece. Even though the on-chain TCG market has been expanding rapidly over the past two years, trading demand is also highly concentrated in leading IPs such as Pokémon. Taking Collector Crypt, the largest on-chain TCG platform, as an example, Blockworks data shows that as of October 17, tokenized collectibles related to Pokémon and One Piece accounted for as much as 79% of total collectible value (TCV).
By contrast, Mudwater, as a brand-new card series, lacks both long-term accumulated brand recognition and an established scaled player and collector base. From brand awareness and gameplay to the secondary market trading ecosystem, almost every link needs to be built from scratch, making it difficult in the short term to tap into the mature user base and market demand of traditional TCG. For most non-crypto-native card players, BAYC's fame may not necessarily translate into interest in Mudwater, and customer acquisition across circles faces no small barrier.
At the same time, Mudwater's current main distribution method is airdropping card packs to BAYC and MAYC holders, with core benefits still centered on the existing community. This approach helps activate existing users and increase community participation, but it may not effectively attract new users and external capital. For potential investors, if buying a costly BAYC solely to obtain card packs, they must weigh the actual secondary market value of the packs, as well as the costs and uncertainties involved in cross-chain operations, physical card redemption, and subsequent gameplay. In the absence of clear return expectations and sustained usage demand, card pack airdrops alone are unlikely to generate enough new buying pressure to drive BAYC or MAYC prices higher.
In addition, Yuga Labs' past initiatives around Otherside, games, and ApeChain have consistently failed to deliver on market expectations, which has to some extent weakened the community's confidence in its new narratives.
More importantly, the overall NFT market remains in a downturn, and speculative capital has long since withdrawn. Even a leading NFT project like BAYC finds it difficult to achieve a price reversal solely through brand influence or new product launches, and still needs sustained external capital inflows and real market demand for support.
Changes at ApeFest also reflect the market downturn.
As once one of the most iconic annual events in the NFT space, ApeFest 2022, with a top-tier celebrity lineup including Snoop Dogg and Eminem, pushed the exclusive party for BAYC holders onto the mainstream music and pop culture stage, becoming an iconic moment in the development of Web3.
However, four years later, ApeFest's momentum is far less impressive than before. The 2026 event has transformed into a small community gathering held at an artist's studio, and whether in terms of event scale, venue specifications, or guest lineup, it is difficult to compare with its former grandeur. From a star-studded industry event to a gathering returning to a niche community, the changes in ApeFest not only reflect the fading momentum of the BAYC brand but also serve as a microcosm of the NFT market moving from speculative frenzy to sustained cooling.
For Yuga Labs, Mudwater is both an attempt to expand BAYC's application scenarios and an exploration of extending NFTs toward practical application value. But at this stage, the new gameplay and token incentives are clearly insufficient to rebuild market confidence. Whether Mudwater can attract users outside the circle, build a stable player base, and form a sustainable business model in the future remains to be tested by time.Ultimately, what Yuga Labs truly needs to address may not be how to tell the next new story for BAYC, but how to convert brand influence into sustained user demand and genuine ecosystem value.