“I woke up at 4 a.m. and couldn’t see anything,” said @CryptoJune777. “I was in so much pain and my whole skin was burned. I had to go to the hospital.”
Yuga Labs, the blockchain company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project, says it is aware of the situation and is taking the reports seriously. “We are actively reaching out to those affected to better understand the cause,” Yuga Labs spokesperson Emily Kitts said in a statement to The edge. “While we do not release attendance figures for events, our current estimate, based on incoming visitors, estimates that the percentage of people affected is well less than 1 percent of those who work and attend our Saturday evening event.”
Similar symptoms, including sunburn and waking up with severe, burning eye pain, were reported in 2017 by partygoers attending a Hypebeast event at The Landmark commercial complex, also in Hong Kong, with the event’s DJ later discovering that lighting mainly used for disinfection purposes, installed on site. The Landmark location was not on the ApeFest event plan and the two incidents appear to be unrelated.