The idea behind Azuki is to mix NFT culture with anime-style illustrations, with a global community working together behind the scenes. which is unprecedented. Azuki defines itself as a “decentralized brand for the metaverse.” The main product of this brand is a collection of 10K anime-style avatars in NFT form. The collection is also called Azuki and was one of the biggest success stories of the NFT space at the time of its inception…
… until admissions and revelations by one of the project’s creators completely cast a shadow over Azuki.
Let’s review the history of the project, its features and the revelations that completely changed it.
Azuki’s Origin Story
This project is present from January 12th, 2022. The team behind Azuki is Chiru Labstheir slogan is “Born in Los Angeles. Building for the Metaverse.” Most members use pseudonyms and keep their identities a secret. Some use their real names, such as Azuki’s co-creator and illustrator Arnold Tsango from Toronto, Canada. He is well known for his participation in “Overwatch”, which Wikipedia describes as a “2016 team-based multiplayer first-person shooter game” developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment.
The community behind it is an important part of the project. Feather Azuki’s website, they use slogans such as “a new kind of brand we build together” and “a brand for the metaverse”. by the community. Ownership of one of the 10K Azuki NFTs gives the user access to The Garden. A virtual space Azuki promises “starts with exclusive streetwear collabs, NXT drops, live events and more that will be revealed over time.”
Azuki is a digital brand. A “decentralized brand of the future.”
At first, it looked like the NFT collection would take them to an instant classic status. The initial success made his name recognizable and sent the collection’s lowest price into double digits. At one point, it reached a maximum of 22 ETH. Nowadays, floor price at open sea There is 7.4 ETH, what happened? Whatever the reason, the Azuki Collection gets around. It has raised a total of 260.2K ETH in transactions so far.
We need a little… controversy
The turning point for Azuki was all things Twitter space. Crypto Influencers on May 10th Andrew Wang Interviewed Zagabond, one of the founders of Azuki, who thus revealed that he was part of some NFT projects that did not end well. It almost looked like they were pulling up a rug, and people went out accordingly. The floor price of the collection started falling and it is yet to be recovered.
It was a mystery at first, but according to for cryptoslateThe projects Zagabond was involved in were:
- Cryptofunks, the original cryptopunk copycat collection. The first collection to receive a DMCA takedown from Larva Labs. Because of that, CryptoPhunks was delisted from OpenSea and Zagabond gave the project to all holders in July, 2021.
- Tendies, a project that failed to capture the imagination of the NFT culture and was shut down in the middle of the mining process.
- CryptoJunks, a collection that defines itself As “the first punk to be generated on-chain with random features”. Each punk is guaranteed to be unique from any punk.” Apparently, this failed due to Ethereum’s expensive gas fees.
According to CryptoSlate, “Like the first two projects, this failure was also a lesson. Zagabond said that these three projects taught him that “you can’t get away by blindly following the NFT meta.” They claim that All the lessons from these projects are now being applied to make Azuki a success. None of this helped and the minimum value of the collection went down.
The question here is, did these projects pull the rug without bad intentions or were simple failures?
ETH price chart for 09/08/2022 on Bitfinex | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
Azuki, Made for the Metaverse
The definition of the metaverse in Azuki’s site is controversial, to say the least.
“The Metaverse today is where we currently spend most of our time: Discord + Twitter. How can we extend this experience to Azuki members? How do we deliver the brand to the places that get the most attention today More importantly, where will the Metaverse be a year+ from now?”
Is ordinary social media part of the metaverse? How come Azuki doesn’t know where the Metaverse will be a year from now? Other blue-chip NFT collections are already building their own version, putting their own chips on the table. Is it too late Azuki? Or is Chiru Labs quietly evolving? According to the company, they are exploring the possibility of developing a game. “Few teams have the experience and background to make a really great game with massive market appeal and scalability. Even though the core team has the experience, it’s still a huge effort.”
The Azuki Collection is down but not out. The team seems to have shaken off the stink from the Zagabond disclosures, but did so in the midst of a bear market in which the entire NFT market is down. Azuki stopped bleeding. The question is, can they reclaim the glory of the past and move beyond it?
Featured Image: Azuki banner from their site | Charts by TradingView