Inside the Bold Bet to Revive Moonbirds

Welcome back to the Now Newsletter. I’m Matt Medved, reporting live from NFC Summit Lisbon.

This is our third year as a media partner for NFC Summit, and it remains one of my favorite events on the calendar. Unlike larger European conferences that try to cover the entire blockchain spectrum, NFC keeps digital art at the center, with a distinctly art-forward focus that attracts top creators and collectors from around the world.

Last year’s highlight? Hosting Beeple’s live Everyday. It was pure chaos, the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a real-life comments section. At the center of the artwork stood a massive digital monolith which Beeple was inscribing in real time with whatever memecoin ticker symbols the crowd could throw at him. Degens clawed their way to the front, waving their phones and barking ticker symbols — $PEPE, $MOG, $WHO-KNOWS-WHAT — like it was a sacred ritual. Everyone wanted their shitcoin immortalized in pixels.

After a season of building, we’re back to mark a new chapter ✨

Join us at NYC’s @Pier59Studios on June 26 for a special showcase of digital art’s next frontier: immersive works that blur the line between viewer and environment

Presented with @Projekt_______

RSVP below ↓ pic.twitter.com/ooFzHIjyCD

— Now Media (@nowmedia) June 6, 2025

This year, I was interviewed on the main stage to introduce our forthcoming Now Media brand reset and announce our “Sculpting Time” exhibition debuting during NFT NYC. I also moderated conversations with Seedphrase, Mad Dog Jones, Andrea Chiampo, and a panel on the future of PFPs with OSF (Rekt), Sergio Silva (Meebits), Tyler Guyot (Good Vibes Club), and Vi Powils, the new CEO of World of Women.

It proved especially timely given the Moonbirds revival — just days earlier, Orange Cap Games announced its acquisition of the project from Yuga Labs. So we sat down with founder Spencer Gordon-Sand for an in-depth conversation on what comes next.

Let’s dive in.

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Can Moonbirds Make a Comeback?

This past week, Orange Cap Games announced its acquisition of Moonbirds, the NFT project originally launched by Kevin Rose’s Proof Collective. The move marked the latest in a string of strategic IP divestitures by Yuga Labs, which had acquired Moonbirds last year in an all-stock deal. With the Bored Ape creator narrowing its focus, Moonbirds has now found a new home under the leadership of Spencer Gordon-Sand.

Gordon-Sand is no stranger to the NFT ecosystem. Through his firm Spencer Ventures, he’s been one of the space’s most active participants — trading, investing, and providing liquidity across major projects. More recently, he co-founded Orange Cap Games, a crypto-native consumer brand that launched Vibes, a Pudgy Penguins trading card game that helped OCG generate over $1.5 million in revenue. Now, he’s setting his sights on reviving Moonbirds as a standalone IP — starting with what he calls a “hard reset.”

In this exclusive Q&A, Gordon-Sand joins me to break down how the deal came together, what a Moonbirds comeback looks like in a post-royalty world, and why NFTs still offer a more meaningful kind of fun than memecoins and metrics.

Matt Medved: How did this acquisition come together, and how long has it been in the works?

Spencer Gordon-Sand: I’ve known Garga for quite a while. Fun fact—he likes to play Magic: The Gathering. We connected a lot over that. One night, he was at my house ripping Pokémon packs and drinking whiskey until like 3 a.m. We’ve been discussing various things in the industry. When he stepped back into the role at Yuga, it became clear he wanted to refocus what Yuga was. You’ve seen him go on this long arc. At that time, it wasn’t like, “Yeah, give me Moonbirds.” It was more like, “What steps need to happen?” And one by one, he’s been knocking them out — starting with spinning out CryptoPunks, Meebits, everything. Moonbirds was the one left. It just had to happen.

It happened on the order of magnitude of months. These types of deals progress like: first you conceptually float it, talk about it — then it becomes more serious, and you loosely agree — then you dig into the messy details. Everything about Moonbirds was not clean — that’s not the word I’d use to describe the world Moonbirds were in when we grabbed them. There were all sorts of questions: Do we just take on Moonbirds? Are Mythics and Oddities coming along? What does acquiring Moonbirds even mean? Socials? Contracts? There’s a whole philosophical exploration of what this transition means, plus the practical and legal layers.

Yuga previously acquired Moonbirds in an all-stock deal from Proof. What can you tell us about the structure of this acquisition?

Right now, we’re not sharing the details of the acquisition beyond what we’ve released in our announcement. One point that’s worth touching on is L2 exclusivity. All it means is: if we’re going to do anything with Moonbirds on an L2, it has to be on ApeChain. That doesn’t mean we can’t do things on other L1s — Ethereum, Solana, even TON. It also doesn’t mean we’re doing something on ApeChain, we haven’t announced that. It’s just a practical matter that makes sense. Yuga has an L2. They wouldn’t want IP they spun out going to a competitor. That’s fair.

The project’s been through a lot. Kevin Rose is a polarizing figure. What role does its history play in its future?

It’s been very nonlinear. It’s been through a lot. Regardless of what you think of any of the players, it’s a storied franchise. You could see it as damaged goods — but I don’t believe that. The more it’s been through, the more the people who stuck around matter. It’s like a trial by fire. The fact there was still a community is incredible.

We’re approaching it like a blank slate. The history makes it culturally relevant. Cultural relevance often comes from controversial moments, ups and downs, rebirth. We were actually more excited to take it on because it’s been through so much. When we went into the Discord, people were like, “Oh my God, you’re here.” That was the bar. We tweeted from the account — people were shocked. But those who stuck around are now our biggest advocates.

There’s a lot the Proof team worked on that never shipped. Files and files of stuff. One hallmark of that team is that they worked on a lot — it just didn’t always ship. Mythics in particular are incredible. The art is top-tier. It’s clear someone put $100 million worth of time and effort into it. This is a hard reset — we’re not just executing the prior team’s roadmap.

But we inherited valuable assets: brand guides, unreleased art, visual directions. That’s rare. Most people starting a brand from scratch wouldn’t have this. So even though we’re starting fresh, we’ve got a big head start.

“You could see it as damaged goods — but I don’t believe that. The more it’s been through, the more the people who stuck around matter.”

SPENCER GORDON-SAND

What does success look like for Moonbirds?

First, is the community happy and engaged? Do they feel like we’re in a better place? Second, can we grow Moonbirds? That’s a broad goal—relevance in crypto, outside of crypto, and how the brand is best used. Right now, our team in Asia is exploring factory capabilities and product directions. Our art team is exploring what we can make. We’re also thinking about expanding Moonbirds’ reach. Historically, the brand only existed on Twitter. That needs to change. Crypto doesn’t just live on Twitter anymore. The world doesn’t live there either. We’re looking at Giphy, Instagram, TikTok—there’s low-hanging fruit to grow the brand globally and off Twitter.

How do you plan to build a sustainable business while creating value holders?

The good thing is Orange Cap Games already generates revenue. We launched in 2024 and dropped Vibes, the Pudgy Penguins trading card game, in December. Since then, we’ve done about $1.5 million in revenue from physical product sales. The number one rule in crypto? Survive. A lot of NFT projects just ran out of money. You need to keep the lights on. We have a team in Asia doing direct manufacturing. We don’t outsource. That gives us margin and flexibility. So we’ll do activations and product drops that keep us going. Now, how does that relate to holders? First, it lets us stay alive. Second, our goal is to generate both mindshare and revenue. If you spend everything on one, you lose the other. Ideally, your products do both. That’s what Pudgy did well — physical products that build brand and generate cash. That’s the intersection we’re aiming for.

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