Kerem Atalay, also known by his pseudonym, Emperor Tomato Ketchup (taken from an indie pop band called Sterolab’s album), is one of the four co-founders and CTO of Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), a non-fungible token (NFT) collection. ^[1][2][3]

Education

Kerem graduated from the University of Maryland, studying Computer Science. ^[2][4]

Early Life

Kerem Atalay was raised by immigrant parents, both originating from Turkey. The two parents raised Kerem mostly in Washington D.C. and Kerem states that he had a “normal suburban upbringing”. ^[5]

Zeshan Ali and Kerem Atalay's story

Zeshan Ali and Kerem Atalay met when they were studying Computer Science for their undergraduate program at the University of Maryland. Kerem had gotten to know Greg Solano first, during his time in the University of Virginia and soon introduced Zeshan to him. When the two co-founders in charge of the creative side of the project, Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow, had begun envisioning the ‘Bored Ape Yacht Club’, Greg reached out to Zeshan and Kerem for help. Greg had actually asked them if they could help them with Javascript which they quickly agreed to but almost as quickly noticed that Javascript was not used at all for blockchains. The two then learned Solidity which they stated was “the easy part” and had struggled with linking the website, smart contracts, and cryptocurrency-oriented spaces together. Since then they have been the leading developers on the technical side of Yuga Labs and all the projects that were born from the company. ^[2]

The Doxxing

On February 4th 2022, Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow were doxxed by Buzzfeed where they were given less than 30 minutes to prepare for the interview. The two main developers of Yuga Labs had more time on their hands and decided they, "wanted to have a little bit more control over the narrative and make it more of a celebratory thing than it was for Greg and Wylie”. Kerem and Zeshan then doxxed themselves on February 9th 2022, just 5 days after Greg and Wylie. ^[2][7]

Kerem posted on Twitter a photo of himself and his bored ape saying: ^[6]

"Seems like the cat is out of the bag anyway, so... Hi, I'm Kerem web2 me vs. web3 me"