Deriving from the esoteric, ever-expanding NFT universe of Bored Ape Yacht Club, ApeCoin is an Ethereum-based token designed to facilitate its ecosystem’s growth. The APE Foundation is the steward of ApeCoin, claiming not to be an overseer, but the base layer on which ApeCoin holders in its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) can build. Given the token only dropped in 2022, the rise of APE into the upper echelons of crypto has been rapid — helped significantly by the sustained popularity of Bored Apes.