WHAT IS A REAL APE? For OpenSea. the internet's most popular NFT marketplace, answering that question is pretty much a no-win proposition. Last year, Bored Apes-cartoon images of apathetic primates in varied states of dress, linked to unique cryptocurrency tokens-skyrock eted in popularity. Now the cheapest cost $309,000. and OpenSea is crawling with imitations, rip-offs, and arch satires of the whole phenomenon (itself full of veiled imitations and rip-offs). Late last year, two accounts on Open-Sea. called Phunky Apes Yacht Club (PAYC) and PHAYC, respectively, started hawking mirror image versions of the original Bored Apes minting primates that faced left instead of right. Both claimed to be thought-ful parodies of the coveted simians and not straight up copypastas like the hordes of other apes clogging the platform. In Decem-ber, OpenSea banned the flipped-ape projects, perhaps hoping to appease the many digital art creators who complain that Open-Sea has failed to do much of anything to curb plagiarism and bad behavior. But that move aroused the ire of crypto true believers, who see any sign of centralized content moderation as a hated relic of Web 2.0 consolidation.
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