A few moments ago, Wylie Aronow, one of the co-founders of Yuga Labs, announced that he would be taking a leave of absence from the company due to health reasons. In a tweet, Aronow (better known by his pseudonym Gordon Goner) stated that his doctor had diagnosed him with congestive heart failure. “The symptoms started last year out of the blue and I stopped looking for help (like an idiot) so I could keep working. But after the test, my doctor called me and asked me to radically change my life, ”he wrote.
To take care of his health, Aronow said that he would leave his post in Yuga. “I’m going to be taking a leave of absence to focus on my health for a while,” he wrote. However, Aronow clarified that his leave of absence would not be complete. He will stay in a more limited capacity as a board member and strategic adviser, but he did not offer details about what these roles would entail or how active he would be in them.
“Our incredibly talented friend and co-founder has the full support of the entire Yuga family as he embarks on his journey back to health,” said the the company said in a tweet. nft has now reached out to Yuga Labs for more details about Aronow’s continued work at the company, but representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his tweet, Aronow further clarified his decision to leave. He explained that he lost most of his twenties to chronic illness and overexerted himself during his time at Yuga Labs. “He worked 12-hour days, almost every day. I should have taken the advice of everyone around me and sought balance. My goals now are to get the best medical treatment I can and get well,” he said.
Ultimately, Yuga Labs, and by extension, Aronow, rose to prominence in early 2021. On April 23 of that year, Aronow launched the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT Collection with co-founders Greg Solano ( Gargamel), Zeshan (Sass) and Kerem (Ketchup). The project was a great success. While the NFTs in the collection initially had a fair distribution price of 0.08 ETH per ape (about $190 at the time), the NFTs quickly began selling for over $100,000 on secondary markets.
Things came to a head in March 2022 when the team announced the completion of a $450 million funding round, which put Yuga Labs at a $4 billion valuation. The round was led by Silicon Valley investor Andreessen Horowitz (known in the NFT space as a16z).
Since the funding close, the Yuga Labs team has been hard at work… to put it mildly. They released Dookey Dash, an interactive coining and gaming experience, in January 2023. And they’ve been making regular updates to Otherside, a metaverse project that stands as the biggest expansion to the Bored Ape NFT universe we’ve ever seen. The Otherside project is ultimately an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) connected to the BAYC ecosystem.
The team notes that the game will combine MMORPG mechanics and Web3-enabled virtual worlds. Specifically, players own land in the world, NFTs can transform into playable characters, and more than 10,000 people will be able to play together simultaneously.
Given the size and scale of this work, it is not surprising that Aronow’s health suffered as a result. Previous research by RB, a global consumer health company, found that about 67 percent of start-up leaders attribute personal health problems to their work lives. Nearly 50 percent of those who responded said they worked more than 50 hours per week, and one in four (28 percent) said they worked more than 60 hours.
This was a breaking story and was updated.
