Buzzfeed’s Bored Ape NFT dox: Danger to crypto or journalistic integrity?
From the very beginning, individuals making use of pseudonymous identities to protect their privacy has been an integral part of the crypto sector, however, with the market having matured a lot since the early days, the question of these practices still being morally sound has once again come to the forefront, especially in relation to projects that have achieved a certain amount of mainstream clout.
In this regard, American media and entertainment firm Buzzfeed recently outed the identities of two of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s (BAYC) four founders — i.e., “Gordon Goner” and “Gargamel” — as Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow.
To elaborate, journalist Kate Notopoulos recently authored an article titled We Found The Real Names Of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Pseudonymous Founders in which she uncovered the pair’s names by going through publicly available records associated with Yuga Labs, the company behind the collection. Yuga was incorporated in Delaware with an address associated with Solano, while other records point to Aronow.
On the same day as the reveal, Yuga Labs indicated that its NFT collection was in funding talks with one of Silicon Valley’s top VC firms, a16z, with the firm valuing the entire collection at a handsome $5 billion.
Following the “doxing” — an informal term referring to the publishing of private information about a particular individual on the internet — both Solano and Aronow took to Twitter to highlight the importance of individual privacy, especially within the context of Web3 vs. Web2.
According to Notopoulos, when a business as big as BAYC — i.e., one attracting billions of dollars annually — is operating on a global scale, it is imperative that the company’s founders or CEO use their real name and not a
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