Azuki NFT is a PFP project with 10,000 NFTs with anime influences. Its rise to fame has been marked by unmatched hype, extensive backstory, and unexpected controversy.
Azuki first appeared on the NFT scene in January 2022, and she rapidly won over the hearts of many NFT fans as a potential new frontrunner of the market, which at the time was PFP-centric. With a high mint price and a complicated plan, the still-emerging product immediately gained a feeling of exclusivity because to the many influencers who dubbed it a hot item.
— Azuki (@Azuki) July 6, 2022
The project’s founders stated early on that their goal was to build and own the biggest decentralized metaverse brand with the help of its holder community. Azuki became one of the fastest-growing NFT projects ever after months of steady growth, but the collection hit a wall when its inventor was connected to a number of failed and sometimes contentious NFT initiatives.
Azuki appears to have been unaffected by the founder issue, as the project immediately gathered momentum and even managed to establish itself in the midst of the collapsing crypto and NFT markets. What’s the key to it? Let’s take a spin on the NFT project Azuki’s rollercoaster to find out.
What is the Azuki NFT project?
Azuki’s fundamental components consist of 10,000 generative avatar NFTs that were released on January 12, 2022. Each token in the Azuki collection is the outcome of a randomized selection of characteristics, much like other PFP NFT projects. Azuki’s distinctive aesthetic, which incorporates anime-inspired artwork, has been compared to a cross between the 3D action role-playing game The World Ends with You and the fashion sense of the venerable skateboarding publication Thrasher.
Azuki was initially supposed to be released through a Dutch Auction, a type of NFT drop in which a sale begins at a certain price and gradually decreases to the final sale price. The Azuki mint price started at 1 ETH and was programmed to decrease by 0.05 ETH every 20 minutes until it reached 0.15 ETH. Azuki, however, never achieved 0.15. In fact, it didn’t even get to the first price cut because the collection sold out all of its stock at the 1 ETH mint price in under three minutes.
In order to provide some context, Azuki sold 8,700 NFTs during their open sale. price of $3,400 per ETH at the moment. This indicates that on the day of the sale, the creators made an initial profit of almost 8,700 ETH, valued at over $29 million. Azuki NFT were created at a price of 0.5 ETH each, and a day after the private whitelist auction started, bringing in an additional $2 million for the company.
Who created Azuki?
Chiru Labs, a team of artists and engineers located in Los Angeles with experience in gaming, technology, and cryptocurrency, produced Azuki. The gang is led by former major tech entrepreneur Zagabond and comprises of the aliases 2pm.flow, location tba, and HoshiBoy. With a long list of industries to be launched under the umbrella Azuki brand, the goal of Azuki is to be more than just a straightforward PFP initiative.
As was already said, the NFT ecosystem has demonstrated that success breeds success. According to anecdotal evidence, once a project like Azuki becomes well-known, its worth will probably remain stable, if not increase, so long as the publicity it has generated continues. This unwritten NFT industry regulation appeared to have worked out great for Azuki, as Chiru has now made many more millions thanks to the implementation of a five percent royalty fee for each resold Azuki NFT.
The timing of Azuki’s debut may have contributed to its success. A few anime-themed projects were beginning to ascend the NFT market ranks towards the beginning of 2022. Only a few months before to Azuki, 0N1 Force, for example, had completely taken over the NFT market. However, it seemed to have taken on too much, since it lost appeal and left a void in the PFP market.
Azuki’s future?
The Azuki Beanz collection, Azuki’s biggest expansion to date, was released in April 2022. Holders of the original Azuki NFTs received these NFTs for free by airdrop, with the claim that they serve as a sort of sidekick to the Azuki NFT adventure. Much like Bored Apes did with mutant Apes and Doodles did with Space Doodles, Azuki capitalized on the need to grow the brand without diluting the original 10,000-supply collection with Beanz.
Beanz helped lower the entry barrier into the Azuki NFT ecosystem with a collection of almost 20,000 NFTs, offering future utility to Azuki collectors as the brand’s narrative evolves. Additionally, Beanz holders get access to a holders-only Discord channel on the Azuki server and will be qualified for next Azuki merchandise drops.
Beanz will probably play a significant role in the Azuki ecology, much as the “red bean” — unquestionably a tribute to the “red pill” from the Matrix films — has remained a mainstay of the Azuki community. And as the ecosystem grows, it’s obvious that Azuki wants to establish a strong brand both on and off-chain.
Azuki wants to build its own distinct metaverse on-chain. Interactive multimedia activities, games, competitions for the community, and possibly even cartoons and comics will exist within this metaverse. However, Chiru seems to think that the “bridge between” the metaverse and real-life activation is the most crucial project.
We first got a glimpse of what this bridge might look like from Azuki’s large-scale satellite event at the 2022 NFT.NYC conference. Featuring vibrant and dimly lit scenery reminiscent of Japanese culture, the Azuki event called on members of The Garden to help bring the activation to life. Complete with art installations, live music, food stands, a tattoo shop, physical versions of Beanz NFTs, and more, “Enter the Alley,” as it was called, was indicative of the all-encompassing brand Azuki is aspiring to be.
Azuki doesn’t appear to be far behind as businesses like Yuga Labs and Doodles continue to lay the foundation for what a Web3 brand would resemble in the real world. Azuki and the Chiru team will probably invest money over the coming years to help bridge the gap between its existence as a PFP NFT community and full consumer brand as they are one of the most well-liked and successful businesses in the NFT market.
We hope that you enjoyed this article on Azuki NFT: Everything you need to know. If you did, we are sure that you will also enjoy our other articles, such as LG Art Lab brings NFTs to your smart TV, or MTV VMAs: Snoop Dogg & Eminem Bored Ape NFT performance in the metaverse.
