BuzzFeed under fire for revealing identity of BAYC NFT series founder

Will Web3's billionaires be able to avoid public scrutiny under the guise of anonymity? Without a clear answer, the community has lashed out at Buzzfeed for revealing the real identities of the two men behind the BAYC NFT collectible.

American Internet media and entertainment company Buzzfeed has announced two of the four founders of the BAYC NFT series, "Gordon Goner" and "Gargamel," who are Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow in real life.

Reporter Kate Notopoulos wrote a Feb. 4 article titled "We Discovered the Real Name of the Anonymous Founder of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)."

Notopoulos was able to discover the identities of the two men by searching the public records of Yuga Labs, the company behind the series. Yuga is incorporated in Delaware at an address associated with Greg Solano and other records point to Wylie Aronow.

The tech reporter argues that "in the traditional business world, there's a reason a CEO or founder of a company uses their real name rather than anonymity," adding that "the people behind BAYC are attracting investors and operating A potentially multi-billion dollar business."

"How can you hold them accountable if you don't know who they are?"

Executives of public companies must be mentioned in SEC disclosures and reports. For smaller private companies, banking regulations and know-your-customer laws require executives to use their real names in many cases.

"These laws are designed in part to prevent terrorists, criminals or sanctioned countries from doing business in the United States," Notopoulos wrote.

However, revealing Aronow and Solano's identities without consent drew fierce criticism from members of the Web3 community, who described the article as "human flesh" rather than proper journalism practice.

In a tweet on Feb. 5, crypto podcaster "Cobie" called the article "typical Buzzfeed spam," calling it "human flesh searches for clicks and ad revenue." Meanwhile, venture capitalist Mike Solana wrote, "There is absolutely no reason to attack these guys," adding that "they're just cartoon apes."

Messari founder Ryan Selkis was also apparently unhappy with the story, sharing a 2009 tweet from Notopoulos that used slurs.

As for Notopoulos, she seems relatively immune to this backlash. She posted a screenshot of a threat from someone to release her personal information, including "location, place of work, addresses of parents and siblings".

In response to the threat, she asked the person if they were a "tall, strong guy," and they replied, "No, I'm a degen." She replied: " Ah, that sucks. They have a heavy dresser and need someone to help them move to the garage."

On February 4 (the same day the article was published), Yuga Labs was in financing talks with A16z, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms, which valued it at $5 billion.

Solano and Aronow are not the first big names in the cryptocurrency space to be publicly exposed this year. On Jan. 27, Cointelegraph revealed the real identity of the co-founder of DeFi protocol “Wonderland,” “@0xSifu,” who was also the co-founder of the now-defunct Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX.