How the Black Market works

You hand an ape to the market and get $BAG back straight away. No listing, no waiting.

• Price: the Street Price minus one step (740 $BAG), minus a 10% fee.
• Each Offload lowers the Street Price by one step for the next seller.
• Your ape joins the back of The Inventory.
• You earn nothing afterwards. Offloading isn't bankrolling and pays no share of fees. It's a plain sale, and it shows on OpenSea as a sale in $BAG.

Two ways to buy:

• Next in line: you pay the Street Price plus a 10% fee and get the oldest ape in The Inventory. You don't choose which one.
• Snipe: pick any ape you want from The Inventory, and pay the Street Price plus a 15% fee.

Either way, each purchase raises the Street Price by one step (740 $BAG), and the buy shows on OpenSea as a sale in $BAG.

This is a deposit, not a sale. You become a bankroller, providing the market's liquidity.

• What you put in: apes plus $BAG at the market's current ratio. If the market holds 10 apes and 900,000 $BAG, each ape you bankroll needs 90,000 $BAG with it.
• What you get: a Market Share, a percentage of the whole market. It's locked for at least 2 days.
• Your apes join The Inventory. Anyone can Acquire them while you're in. You no longer own those apes; you own a slice of everything in the market.

• Your Cut of every trading fee. Every fee on an Offload, Acquire or Snipe is split 50/50: half goes to bankrollers, divided by Market Share; half is The House Cut, which goes to the house (the Ape City heist wallet).
• You can claim Your Cut any time. It isn't locked.
• Earning doesn't stop when “your” ape sells. You hold a share of the market, not a particular ape. When someone buys an ape, their $BAG lands in the market, so your share shifts from apes toward $BAG. You keep earning until you Cash Out.

What happens to the $BAG you put in

It sits in the market, and it's what pays sellers. Your position keeps changing shape:

• People acquiring: apes leave and $BAG comes in, so your share ends up with more $BAG and fewer apes.
• People offloading: $BAG leaves and apes come in, so your share ends up with more apes and less $BAG.

After the lock, you Cash Out and get your Market Share of whatever the market holds at that moment:

• your share of the $BAG, minus a 2% Cash Out fee that stays behind for the remaining bankrollers;
• your share of the apes, rounded down to whole apes and handed out oldest first (the leftover fraction stays in the market);
• plus any of Your Cut you haven't claimed yet.

You might get different apes, fewer apes, or no apes at all. Don't bankroll an ape you want back.

The market holds 10 apes and 900,000 $BAG. You bankroll 2 apes plus 180,000 $BAG, so you own about 17% of the market.

• Everyone acquires: all 12 apes get bought. You Cash Out with roughly 17% of a large pile of $BAG, plus your cut of every one of those fees, and no apes.
• Everyone offloads: holders dump apes into the market, so you Cash Out with more apes and less $BAG. If the floor is falling, those apes are worth less. That's the main risk of bankrolling.

The Bankroll tab on each market has live “what if?” examples worked from the market's actual numbers.

Other collections can launch their own Black Market on /markets. They work the same way, with a few differences:

• Their own settings. Each market's owner sets its Street Price, step and fees, and can pair it with $BAG or their own existing token. Check the market's page for its numbers.
• A 1% hosting fee on every Acquire, Snipe and Offload goes to apehood.wtf. It's paid by the trader on top of the market's own fee, so bankrollers' cut is untouched.
• Fractions are paid out. On Cash Out, your leftover fraction of an NFT is paid in tokens at the Street Price instead of staying in the market.
• Some Offloads aren't OpenSea sales. Collections on Limit Break's default transfer rules only let Seaport sell out of the market, so an Offload there goes straight into the market. It pays the same, but shows on OpenSea as a transfer. Acquires still show as sales.