Thousands of people still holding onto the dream of NFTs traveled to Hong Kong this past weekend to party at ApeFest, a gathering for owners of the pricey Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. But what was supposed to be a good time away from the haters turned tragic after more than a dozen attendees reported vision injuries that landed them in the emergency room.
The injuries, which the company behind Bored Apes has acknowledged, appear to have not been sustained from looking at NFT art, but were likely from ultraviolet stage lighting.
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“Woke up in the middle of the night after Apefest with so much pain in my eyes that I had to go to the hospital,” wrote X user Crypto June, who posted videos from the event that depicted a Bored Ape-branded stage drenched in bright neon lighting. “I’ve seen several tweets about it Doctor told me it was due to the UV from stage lights. I go to festivals often but have never experienced this.”
“Anyone else’s eyes burning from last night?” another X user, who goes by mrbayc.eth, posted on Sunday. “Woke up at 3am with extreme pain and ended up in the ER. I saw a couple reports but just trying to figure out if there was a common thread.” The attendee later wrote that their eyes were feeling better, and posted a photo allegedly showing them flying back to Korea from the event.
ApeFest is the latest in a series of live events organized by Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Apes. The festival ran from November 3-5 in Hong Kong and was free to owners of Bored Ape NFTs. Additional tickets for non-holders could be purchased for $269. Despite recent declines in the NFT resale market, Bored Ape NFTs are still trading for roughly $50,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
In a statement to Motherboard, Yuga Labs confirmed it was following up on the reports and said that the company was in “direct communication” with 15 who had been affected. The company noted this represented “less than one percent” of the event’s 2,250 people at the Saturday event. .
“We are aware of the situation and are taking it seriously,” Yuga Labs spokesperson Emily Kitts told Motherboard in a statement. “We are actively reaching out to and are in touch with those affected. We’re also pursuing multiple investigative lines of inquiry to learn the root cause.”
If the reports are accurate, then the most likely culprit is an eye sunburn, also known as photokeratosis. Essentially, UV rays can injure the cornea. “Snow blindness” is a more common form of photokeratosis, which is largely prevented by wearing sunglasses, with the effects taking a few hours or days to wear off.
