Michael Figge was running around ApeFest asking people whether they had picked up their Mudwater boxes. They had. “Yep, it’s right here,” they told him, before moving on to the next conversation. Yuga Labs had spent months preparing its first trading card game for the event, and the people holding it were too busy catching up with one another to check Twitter.

For Figge, that was a useful reminder of what he was building toward. Since becoming Yuga’s CEO in April, he had made in-person gatherings a priority for the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Now the company had printed 2.4 million physical cards for a system that borrowed from token launches, with a fixed supply, a public allocation and rewards for collectors who kept their packs sealed onchain.

Mudwater, developed with Orange Cap Games, gives BAYC a new way to expand its characters and stories. It also gives holders something to do together: open packs, chase rare cards and play a game designed to fit into a couple of minutes. Figge sees those activities feeding the same relationships that draw people across the world for ApeFest.

The launch arrived about six months into a job conducted under constant public scrutiny. Figge had been traveling to meet holders, working on projects he could not yet announce and weighing demands for immediate action against products that take months or years to make. Mudwater gave him a concrete example of what sustained work could produce, along with a fresh set of questions about fees, distribution and why a Yuga product was launching on Solana.

Now Media co-founder and CEO Matt Medved sat down with Figge on the Now Media stream on Oct. 27 to discuss the thinking behind Mudwater, the relationship between physical and digital collecting, his first six months as CEO and what comes next for Otherside, the BAYC anime and the club itself.

Why BAYC Bet Big on Trading Cards with @mfigge
Now Media (@nowmedia) October 27, 2026

Matt Medved: ApeFest has been to New York, Hong Kong, Lisbon and Las Vegas. What made Beeple Studios in Charleston the right setting this year?

Figge: Earlier this year, before I was CEO, I was at a Beeple Studios event with Shepard Fairey. There were a couple thousand people there, and it was so easy to see that there’s nowhere else in the world that does what Beeple Studios does.

I became CEO in April. If you want to do an ApeFest, it usually needs about nine months of runway. Getting it done by October gave us six. Beeple and I go way back, since 2009 or 2010, and the Beeple Studios team was a dream to work with. Every week we had a call and were dialing in the details together.

Internally, we talked about it as ApeFest Beeple Studios. You don’t say, “Let’s go to Indio.” You say, “Let’s go to Coachella.” You had robotic BAYCs walking around, dog BAYCs walking around. You’re not going to get that artistic experience anywhere else at that level of polish, especially on that timeline.

Everybody who came out really wanted to come out. What surprised me was how many new members and first-timers there were. Some had picked up their ape in the last two years, and this was their first ApeFest. These are all tokens that need meaning, and this is a great way to imbue meaning into them.

Figge and Beeple signing Mudwater cards at the ApeFest pop-up

This time, you were asking people to travel specifically for ApeFest. What does that change about the experience?

I think it takes those connections and makes them a lot deeper. A couple of weeks ago I was at Token2049. It’s a great conference, but the objective is different. It’s a lot more networking and fresh introductions. In my experience, you get to know people lightly, and then you have to bring that offline later.

At ApeFest, you’re paintballing with people. You’re doing activities together that deepen those bonds. Apes being able to bring plus-ones is a great thing, because one IRL event is better than a year of Discord. It’s better than a year of Twitter.

When you pull up alongside NFT NYC or ComplexCon, you get a bigger mix of people who could come into the club. I think that’s a good idea for the future, too. This year, the focus was the experience we could bring together at a high level.

“One IRL event is better than a year of Discord.”
FIGGE

What made trading cards the right next move for BAYC, and how long had Mudwater been in the works?

We’d been contemplating it for most of the year, but execution happened really fast. There’s preparing the art and printing the cards, but shuffling also takes a lot of time. Picture shuffling a deck of cards. Now picture shuffling 2.4 million. It’s a logistical beast.

It’s the year of the collectible. I’d see people looking for the next NFT play, and meanwhile I’d look at Collector Crypt and think, “They’re actually doing NFTs, and they’re crushing.” Outside crypto, you have Pokémon, One Piece, Lorcana and Riftbound. In crypto, you have Azuki and Vibes.

BAYC wasn’t the first PFP either. It put a lot of ideas together in an interesting way: your token is a membership to a club, you have IP rights, there’s a royalty that can sustain a company developing the project, and the art was fun. We tried to apply that same thinking to a TCG.

We went to Fanatics Fest and Nationals in Chicago, trying to be good students of the medium. One theory was that people who do TCGs don’t like crypto, so you should create as much distance as possible. That’s true to some degree, but I thought we might be over-indexing in that direction and missing the strengths that got us here.

What if we thought about a TCG almost like a token drop? What if there were 10,000 boxes? Holding a sealed box is a really nice feeling. I thought it would be cool to give that feeling to somebody who came to ApeFest. The magic trick would be whether we could give them a collectible that could greatly offset what they spent to get there.

A black and gold Mudwater: Swamp Origins booster pack — Mudwater: Swamp Origins. Image: Now Media.

You’ve described the initial distribution like a token allocation. Walk us through that thinking.

We printed 2.4 million cards. It was about sizing this for where we thought we could win today. Initially, I thought it would be cool to airdrop a box to all the Bored Apes and Mutants. But mathematically, that would put about 30,000 boxes into circulation.

I’d also been talking to holders about the idea that one ape equals one ape. There’s an egalitarian membership where everybody gets access to an opportunity, but there was an appetite for some things to be weighted differently, like the ApeCoin drop.

We got stuck until we realized these boxes are like Russian dolls. There are 24 packs inside each box, so we could solve the problem by going more granular. Every Bored Ape would get 10 packs, and every Mutant would get two.

With traditional cards, you don’t necessarily know the total supply or the number of rares. Imagine a token with unlimited supply where you don’t know how it’s allocated. I’d rather say, “Here’s the plan. Here’s the pie chart. You can see the rarities and distribution.” There are no extra prints of this edition getting made, no cases randomly floating around. Everything is deliberately put out there.

BAYC’s Mudwater pack allocation

Some people expected Mudwater to launch on ApeChain. Why choose Solana?

When we did our research, all the big players in tokenized TCGs were already on Solana. Even vendors were asking, “Can you pay us in USDC on Solana?” They had it from a consumer products perspective.

We wanted new entrants and new eyeballs on our products, and we also wanted to drive attention to ApeChain. One thing that had become popular was reflections: trading volume generates a fee, and that fee is used to buy another asset that gets distributed to holders.

We thought that was an interesting distribution mechanism for ApeCoin. We applied a 2.5% reflection to the collection. If you’re holding packs, boxes or cases, that fee on trades is used to buy wrapped ApeCoin on Solana, which is distributed proportionally to how much of the collection you hold.

Last cycle, there was a marketplace fee and a creator fee. The collector’s participation was mainly the price going up and down. Integrating a reflection brings the collector on board with you. There’s a 2.5% creator royalty and a 2.5% reflection, so we’re 50-50 with our holders on this. I think that keeps us more aligned.

Figge on Solana and ApeCoin reflections

How does that fit with your broader thinking about ApeChain and products across different chains?

Look at Fomo. It’s proven that people want chain abstraction. They want to put in the contract address and buy the thing. They don’t want to care about bridging.

We apply that to Otherside, too. If you have stuff on Solana, you should be able to see it in Otherside. ApeChain is our core settlement layer, and we’re building Otherside on ApeChain. That’s important because we can control a lot of things on it. But why not bring all that other stuff together? I think being inclusive of other chains on our base layer grows our network the most.

Explain what actually happens when somebody opens a digital Mudwater pack. There’s a physical pack behind it?

We printed 2.4 million cards and packaged them 10 cards to a pack, so there are 240,000 physical packs. We gave away boxes at ApeFest to the apes who went and their plus-ones. There was also a limited number available at the pop-up the next day. The rest of the inventory is in a vault.

We have people in that vault opening packs and tokenizing them. We’ll open something like 1,000 packs in a queue, and everything is filmed. All those packs are cataloged. When somebody opens a pack online, the system randomly picks one from that queue, and that’s their stack of cards.

It’s a lot of effort to have somebody physically opening packs, tokenizing them and running that system. But it’s actually happening somewhere. If Mudwater were digital-only, I don’t think it would hit the same way. There’s value in the fact that somewhere, 2.4 million cards were printed and packaged.

And the plan is to let people combine their packs and redeem physical boxes or cases?

You can take 24 packs and put them into a box. That feature is coming very soon. Ten boxes can become a case NFT. Each time you go up that ladder, there’s a premium in a collector’s mind: I have the sealed pack, now the sealed box, now the sealed case.

You can turn in the token and have the physical item mailed to you, or leave it in the vault. The tokenized packs, boxes and cases participate in the reflections. If somebody redeems a box and is sitting on it at home, we can’t keep track of that, so it won’t participate. The reflection gives people another reason to keep it onchain.

A Mudwater: Swamp Origins box containing 24 booster packs — A Mudwater booster box holds 24 packs. Credit: Bored Ape Yacht Club.

One question people had was why they needed to pay $8 to open a pack they already owned. What does that fee cover?

When you break down the labor of somebody opening it, tokenizing it and storing it, it comes out to about that. If Yuga has to absorb all of it, it becomes less sustainable. It’s not really a profit center for us. There’s a cost to doing it this way.

People who don’t want to pay that can wait until physical redemption, get their packs or boxes and open them themselves. I think that was a misconception that took a second to sort out. We’ve had around 10,000 packs opened digitally, so people have played with the system enough to understand it.

What surprised you about the response to the launch?

We timed everything backward from ApeFest. The funny thing was that everybody there was too busy talking to each other. I was running around asking, “Did you get your Mudwater box?” They’d say, “Yep, it’s right here,” and move on to the next topic. They hadn’t checked Twitter.

You get one wave of reaction from people trying to audit what’s happening from the outside. Then people come home from ApeFest and start connecting the dots. We’ve seen people connect with different parts: the art, rarity table, ApeCoin reflections, physical-to-digital connection and gameplay.

I think the physical supercharges the social. We thought the MSRP would be about $150 a box, so it’s cool to see them trading at multiples of that. But we focus on collecting, story and social experiences, because those are things we can add value to. The market will go up and down. Community and gameplay are where we can make a difference.

“I think the physical supercharges the social.”
FIGGE

You grew up collecting Pokémon cards. How do you think about the difference between collectors opening packs and people actually playing Mudwater?

When I was a kid, I collected Pokémon cards, but I almost never played the card game. There are two games here. Game one is collecting packs, opening them and seeing whether you hit. A lot of people connect with that. Getting people into the actual gameplay requires a pretty extensive effort on the ground. Luckily, IRL has been a huge focus for us this year.

We also thought realistically about competing with Magic: The Gathering or Pokémon, where people might spend 15 or 20 minutes really thinking through a game. Mudwater is closer to something like War: a simple, two-minute game. At card shows, we saw people who liked to play simple things between those bigger games. We could come alongside them and be something people talk about between games.

BAYC previews Mudwater’s eight one-of-one cracked-ice cards

Where did the game’s design come from, and do you see tournaments becoming part of it?

I was talking with Garga about Final Fantasy VIII, which has a game called Triple Triad. It has a similar three-by-three layout. We added features with Orange Cap Games, including the Rock, to make the game more varied and fair.

The community is already organizing matches regionally and online. I have a big background in esports, and I’d love to jump straight into making a spectacle out of it. But you need a big player base and verifiable outside demand before you formalize it into a broadcast.

Even the orientation of the playmat, with the skull facing the spectator, was designed so you could film it for TikTok or another vertical format. We thought about that from the start.

Mudwater cards, a three-by-three playmat and black and white markers — Mudwater cards, playmat and markers. Credit: Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Who is Mudwater for at this stage? How far beyond BAYC do you want to take it?

For this edition, Swamp Origins, we’re leaning into crypto. We have so many requests from stores that want to be distributors that there isn’t enough supply to go around. I think that’s OK. We want to expand deliberately.

Part of what gives first editions longevity is doing things in the future that don’t dilute them, whether that means completely different art or something else. Future releases could reach a broader audience, with allocations for big-box stores or hobby stores. For now, we want to focus on our core community and bring that excitement back.

We’re also looking at bringing Mudwater into our Whatnot stream. The first time we did one with CoolKicks, we had 300 or 400 people show up. We want to revisit that and see whether we can grow it as a channel.

I also don’t think this needs to become tribal, with our product versus Azuki’s or Vibes. Everybody is running their own route. There’s room for a lot of people to win.

Figge on Mudwater’s community allocation and boxes reserved for local meetups

What’s the latest on Otherside, and how does Mudwater connect to it?

At ApeFest, we had two packed sessions where the Otherside team took people around and showed them what they could do and how it would start. We also did token-gated Discord previews. Our goal is to ship that first taste before the end of the year, and we’re planning the updates that come after it. It’s an incremental build and has been a huge undertaking in time and money.

In Final Fantasy VIII, you could walk up to somebody and play for their card. There was an ante: both sides put a card on the line, and the winner took the loser’s card. You were doing the main game, but you were also trying to collect cards by winning them.

In Otherside, you could walk up to real people and play Mudwater against them. Because the cards are NFTs, they could be held in escrow in a smart contract. When you win somebody’s vaulted card, you could redeem it and get it physically. What you do in the digital world affects what you can get in the physical world, and vice versa. That’s what we want to apply to Otherside.

Mudwater gameplay showing cards arranged on a three-by-three board in Otherside — Mudwater’s Otherside gameplay preview. Credit: Bored Ape Yacht Club.

You’re about six months into being CEO. What has surprised you most?

When you’re running a project, you have to put the community at the center of it. The community is the main character. I was surprised by how ready people were to activate around IRL. Seeing the community do 30 meetups in the first 45 days was huge.

Talking with holders who were translating things for the Chinese audience made me realize that our Chinese audience isn’t on Twitter. We hadn’t been able to focus on that opportunity. In the last four months, I’ve gone to Asia twice to help establish a presence on the ground. We have great local leadership, and we want to give them resources and keep that going.

We want to be more organized regionally, whether that’s Asia, North America or Europe. The network effect around NFTs is strong. I think organizing by geography is one way to build on it.

“The community is the main character.”
FIGGE

How do you balance building for the long term with the pressure to respond to everything happening publicly?

Twitter is almost like an email inbox that everybody can read. Somebody tags you and expects you to be on top of it, but you get hundreds of notifications a day. The equivalent would be something going wrong with your laptop and expecting Tim Cook to call you and fix it. It’s intensely hands-on.

What Mudwater proved in my mind is that, as noisy and negative as things can get, you have to stay focused on what you think will deliver long-term value for the community. When everybody’s yelling, you think, “Maybe I should do something right now.” Sometimes doing that means sacrificing a bigger play you could be working on.

The founders still here from 2021 and 2022 have my respect. Continuing to build is difficult. When I get feedback from another founder, I take it to heart, because they understand what goes into it.

I also think live and IRL are a countertrade to AI. So many digital things have become easy to make. There’s value in social, live and physical experiences. I think we’re only going to see the pace of digital things accelerate.

What role do Mutants play in the club today, and how do you balance their place alongside Bored Apes?

When I was in Shanghai, there were a couple hundred people in the room. Half were OGs, and the other half were college kids who had bought Mutants in the weeks leading up to our trip. Mutants are a great way into the club. A lot of people who get one work toward buying a Bored Ape later. It’s a membership ladder.

We have to balance the idea that one ape equals one ape with acknowledging people who have been here for five years and contributed. We try to develop an affinity around collecting and traits, and celebrate people whose collections mean something to them.

We also have to respect that the market values Bored Apes at a premium. That’s what we did with Mudwater: everybody received an allocation, with proportionally more going to Bored Apes. We put out a Mutant version of this hat for the anniversary, and we think Mutant capsules are cool. The Mega Mutants are some of the sickest art out there. We have to do this one step at a time.

You were involved in bringing Bored Apes and Mutant Apes into LACMA’s digital art collection. What did that take behind the scenes?

I was one of the founding members of the LACMA Digital Leaders group, spearheaded by Jehan Chu and Jeannie Vu. There’s a whole world beyond PFPs, and the bigger goal is recognition beyond our bubble. You have to work hand in hand with institutions to do that.

Digital Art Movement DAO had acquired apes with the goal of getting them into institutions. Then you need a bridge. Institutions communicate differently and work on a different timeline. You have to show up with mutual respect and participate in their organizations, acquisitions and rhythm.

It’s been about three years of work to put together this encyclopedic collection. There are more than 200 works, reaching from the 1960s to now. Bored Apes and Mutant Apes represent one important piece among a lot of important work. I’m glad we were able to get them into the collection.

The Mneme Foundation is a vehicle for that work with LACMA Digital Leaders. Hopefully, we can keep doing more, until you go into a museum and it’s all just art.

Yuga Labs on the LACMA digital art gifts

What can you say about the clubhouse, the anime and where Mudwater goes from here?

For a long time before Mudwater, people were asking why we weren’t launching projects. I couldn’t say, “I’m literally doing that right now,” because that would undermine the marketing plan. One reason Mudwater worked was that we talked about it when we were ready to talk about it. That’s also the challenge with the physical clubhouse.

The anime and clubhouse are two of the biggest things we’re building. They’re hard and time-consuming to get right. Entire companies work on a television show as their only project. For us, it’s one of several things.

As BAYC’s IP grows, Mudwater can grow alongside it. It’s a platform for collaborations, big releases and smaller releases in between. One of the goals is to have Mudwater intersect with things like the anime.

We also have 566 boxes set aside for community events. We’ll send boxes, or cases if there are enough people, to BAYC meetups around the world. We’re exchanging those boxes for memories and great pulls. That’s what we want to do.

Editor’s note: This interview was recorded Oct. 27, 2026, and has been edited for concision and clarity. Product features, fees and release plans are discussed as of that date.