Former Epic Games executive joins Yuga Labs as its new CTO

Yuga Labs, one of the leading players in the non-fungible token (NFT) industry in terms of market share, has appointed Mike Seavers as the new Chief Technology Officer. Seavers’ appointment comes when the blockchain gaming sector is performing quite well, having posted positive results for the first quarter of 2023.

Yuga Labs picks Mike Seavers as its new CTO

Yuga Labs is the studio behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs and the Otherside Metaverse project. The company has now picked one of the top players in the metaverse and NFT industries as part of its team.

Seavers comes with more than twenty years of experience in technology and product leadership. Before joining Yuga Labs, Seavers served as the Executive Vice President of Development at Epic Games, where he spearheaded the development of top gaming titles such as Fortnite and Epic Games Store.

Seavers has also previously served as the Chief Technology Officer at Riot Games, supporting top titles such as League of Legends, Legends of Ryneterra, and Valorant.

Given the extensive experience that Seavers has in the gaming industry, it shows that Yuga Labs is looking to capitalize on the popularity of the gaming industry. The market will likely respond to an increase in utility and playability for the digital assets supported by the company, with the objective being generating more significant interactions.

The Otherside metaverse project by Yuga Labs will be among the features that will improve the company’s overall strategy. Otherside is an MMORPG project based on the Bored Ape collection. This metaverse is slated to launch towards the end of the year.

While the metaverse industry has grown significantly, it is not immune to security risks and scrutiny. On April 12, the MetaPoint metaverse project was affected by a $1 million hack. The hacker behind this exploit misused one of the smart contracts on the platform to steal funds before laundering the stolen assets using the Tornado Cash crypto mixer.

On the other hand, gaming has remained one of the most popular industries in the blockchain sector, boasting of 44.37% share of unique active wallets. The blockchain gaming sector reported solid results for the first quarter, with the dominance increasing from 42.87% to 45.60% in the last quarter of 2022.

Yuga Labs is a top player in the NFT industry

Yuga Labs is one of the top players in the NFT space, with 16 collections that account for 34.6% of the entire NFT market. Over the last two quarters, the trade volumes have reached $2 billion.

Its most popular collection is BAYC, one of the most expensive collections in the market. The Otherside metaverse collection is also popular, with $322 million in trading volumes.

Last month, Yuga Labs expanded its reach in the NFT space after acquiring the IP for CryptoPunks. CryptoPunks is one of the oldest and most influential NFT collections.