• APE has hit the highest since April.

• The much-awaited ApeChain went live Sunday, bringing native staking yield to APE holders.

ApeCoin (APE), the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)-affiliated ERC-20 cryptocurrency used for governance and transactions in the ApeCoin ecosystem, has doubled in value over the weekend, topping $1.5 for the first time since April, according to CoinDesk data.

The rally comes as the ApeCoin team, led by Yuga Labs, the company behind BAYC, debuted the highly anticipated blockchain network ApeChain Sunday. The ApeCoin DAO voted to build the same in January this year.

The new offering, a Layer 3 network developed on Arbitrum One, is fully compatible with the APE token and facilitates minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs), trading, and decentralized applications while enhancing user experience, pseudonymous analyst Elena said on X.

The ApeChain bridges also went live on Sunday, allowing users to transfer their tokens to ApeChain and automatically earn a staking yield on APE, ETH and stablecoins. Staking refers to locking assets in a blockchain network in return for rewards. It's analogous to investing in a fixed-income instrument.

The decision to bring native staking yield to APE likely galvanized investor interest in the token, according to Markus Thielen, head of 10x Research.

"ApeCoin has introduced an automatic yield mode, allowing users to passively earn returns by staking their APE tokens. This new feature reinvests rewards automatically, maximizing yield over time," Thielen said in a report to clients, explaining the catalysts for the price rally.

"The system is part of the broader ApeCoin ecosystem, which aims to enhance token utility by encouraging users to engage more actively with the token through games, staking pools, and other activities. The platform also plans to extend support to other yield-generating cryptocurrencies to attract a larger user base," Thielen added.

Another factor that may have helped the APE rally is LayerZero's launch on the ApeChain mainnet. LayerZero is an interoperability protocol that enables applications to move data across blockchains.

The APE token's integration with LayerZero's omnichain fungible token standard enables "seamless cross-chain transfers, enhancing utility across multiple blockchains while ensuring scalable and efficient transactions," LayerZero said.