The BAYC Announced How Users Can Change The BAKC Rising Sun Bandana To The Standard Flag

After some Bored Apes were offended one of the Bored Ape Kennel Club traits, the Bored Ape Yacht Club moved fast to make it right.

“The Rising Sun Flag is a Japanese flag that consists of a red disc and sixteen red rays emanating from the disc,” according to Wikipedia. “Like the Japanese national flag, the Rising Sun Flag symbolizes the sun. The flag was originally used by feudal warlords in Japan during the Edo period (1603–1868 CE).”

This flag was used as a neck trait on 202 BAKC dogs, according to Rarity Tools.

After the BAKC drop, some BAYC members brought up how the use of the Rising Sun flag on the dogs bandana was offensive.

“The flag was used by the Imperial Japanese military during Japan's actions during World War II, according to Wikipedia. “It is regarded as offensive by some in East Asia, particularly in South Korea (which was ruled by Japan) and China.”

After this was brought to the BAYC’s attention, the team quickly let people know why they used it and how they planned to fix the problem.

“This is a flag we knew from pop culture and knew was still being used in Japan today (one of our artist grabbed it after seeing it’s the present-day flag of the Japanese navy, and so we thought it was suited for our “ Yacht Club.) Our intention with using it was to honor the Shiba Inu’s origins.

However, Friday evening, we were quickly reached out to by some BAYC members who feel the flag is offensive. We had no idea there was any controversy at all surrounding the flag prior. The BAKC was meant to be a fun collection for club members and a massive charity event, and we’re immensely proud to have raised over 131 ETH ($275,000 at the time of writing) for no-kill animal shelters so far. You can imagine our dismay that a piece of art we were featuring had this unintended consequence. While our designs have always been envisioned to be a little irreverent, we’ve always strived to be an inclusive club, and never want to deeply offend anyone. We made this error out of ignorance, and while we can’t commit to not making mistakes in the future, we can promise to be open and receptive to feedback. In that light, we’ve spoken with several members that were hurt by the flag's usage, including several members from the Korean NFT community, and are looking to implement a solution proposed by someone we spoke with: We’re building a method by which anyone with a BAKC dog featuring a Rising Sun bandana can access an area of our site and, once they’ve been proven to own a token with the trait, submit it to have the trait changed to feature the standard Japanese flag. The process will be open for a month, at the end of which a new, final provenance will be generated and the collection will be closed for good.”

Today, the BAYC announced how users can change the Rising Sun bandana to the standard Japanese flag, if they'd like.

“The way this works is you'll visit the BAKC site at https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/kennel-club , and at the bottom, select "Connect to Metamask" under the "Request Amendment" header. If you're the owner of a Club Dog with the Rising Sun bandana, you can select the token here, and then sign the transaction in MetaMask to confirm you'd like the token amended. We set up the contract so we pay the gas on our end -- there's no fee for the user. Please note that this process is just so we can cryptographically verify it's the owner who is requesting the amendment. We're going to be batching the amendments, and plan to batch the first set of requests on Sunday evening EST. This whole process will be live for one month, at the end of which a new, final provenance will be generated and the collection will be closed for good."

If you need any help making this change, reach out to the BAYC on Twitter or Discord.