Today we will open a special session on NFT, because there are actually many valuable projects in NFT. We focused on BAYC before. In October, we said that the bull market for leading projects like BAYC will definitely not die, and it should be big. The probability will still be a head-leading state, and BAYC is currently at the lowest level of around 24E. With the rise of the market, it has also risen by 10%. However, because NFT lags behind the plunge, its starting price is higher. A little later than the market, so we go through this special session to see if we can find some projects with super potential.

By the way, I also want to learn how these top NFT projects operate, because I said that I would talk about 3,000 projects and publish a blockchain encyclopedia in the future, so the time span of 10 years is very long, and it is very troublesome to count, so I plan to use the NFT method. All members who join the community will be given this NFT for free. In the future, it will be a voucher for redemption, which will be very convenient. The current first issue is also a symbol of golden member, and it may appreciate very high in the future!

Let’s get back to the topic. What we are going to talk about today is Azuki, an NFT project of PFP, which was very popular in the last bull market. It has actually reached a low point of around 6E (floor price) and reached a high of 30E (floor price) in the bull market. Let’s take a look today at how it broke through the crowd of PFP projects in 2021.

Introduction

Azuki is a metaverse brand inspired by Asian culture and "skater rebellion" (i.e. streetwear culture). The brand was launched by ChiruLabs in Los Angeles. The core of Azuki is 10,000 images that are hand-painted in the style of Japanese anime. They have a variety of different character styles, including Japanese samurai, Zen, swordsman, and even guitarist.

Azuki's art style is mainly Japanese style. Almost all anime fans can find the shadow of their favorite characters in Azuki NFT, such as Motoko Kusanagi in "Ghost in the Shell" and Nezuko in "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba".

At the same time, it also incorporates the American rough outline, combining the two-dimensional route with the classic European and American style of the NFT market, and takes the world-class IP Street Fighter and Japanese Ninja in Europe and the United States as key elements and incorporates them into the character design.

In addition, Azuki is taken from Japanese, which means "red bean". The image of "this thing is the most lovesick" touches the depths of the heart, and also echoes the classic pun of the red and blue capsules of Matrix.

Distribution method

Azuki's issuance uses a Dutch auction and started at 10:00 am Pacific Time on January 12 (that is, the price will be reduced at intervals until it is sold out, at a rate of 0.05 ETH/20min until it reaches 0.15ETH). In addition, there is a whitelist for the sale. The starting price of the auction is 1Eth, and the price of the whitelist is 0.5Eth. At the beginning of the issuance, the auctioned NFT shares were "snapped up" in less than a few minutes. The Azuki series NFTs are sold in three stages, with a maximum of 5 minted per address.

The total issuance volume is 10,000 NFTs, with clear classification and clear quantity:

Legend: 235

Rare: 745

Classic: 180

Common: 8,840

team

Co-founder and leader Zagabond: He is leading Azuki. He was born in China and worked at Google. He co-founded several innovative NFTs that were all discarded by some and considered scams.

Co-founder and designer Hoshiboy: Participated in Y Combinator, one of the most well-known startup accelerators, twice.

artist

Arnold Tsang aka Steamboy: 39-year-old concept artist, former character art director for 60 million-player Overwatch. Worked at Blizzard Entertainment for 12 years

Andrew Hou aka NJOO: He has worked for Capcom and Marvel. More specifically, he worked as a colorist and freelance illustrator for Udon Studios. He also launched the web comic HJ-Story.

Operational ideas

In mid-March 2022, Azuki fragmented #Bobu, one of the IPs (generating $Bobu tokens, currently priced at 0.05ETH), and the fragment holders formed a DAO to decide the future development of Bobu.

The Beanz series was launched at the end of March. The original Azuki NFT holders received it for free through airdrops, and newcomers can purchase $Bean from the secondary market (current price 0.6Eth).

Bobu fragmentation and Beanz airdrops lower the threshold for new users to enter the Azuki ecosystem and also give back to original holders.

Azuki has also hypothesized several grand stories of the metaverse, and all characters can develop the plot in a predetermined and harmonious manner within the scope of the world view, and then continue to release new content. In this way, the activity and topicality of community members can be continuously maintained.

For example, in August 2022, Azuki’s official website added the “ The Alley ” page, which left many clues about the airdrop. The subsequent story - Rrigin - was later launched.

In September, "The Ruins" was developed, which is the second virtual world in the Azuki metaverse. The stone tablets in the interface are hung with badges of different totems. The badges will jump to the personal homepage of the Azuki holder, showing the badges obtained, the NFTs held, and the participation in NFT airdrops and other activities.

In January 2023, Azuki launched the virtual city "Hilumia" on the occasion of its first anniversary, with various interactive platforms.

Azuki's first three metaverse plans combine previously launched product lines and technology updates, starting a new narrative where all characters can find their suitable positions and wait for the plot to unfold.

Azuki is supposed to have plans for a fourth metaverse, but nothing has been clearly shown yet.

In order to let users hold the NFT in their hands, Azuki will also give users some peripherals (clothes, snowboards, collectibles, etc.), which is equivalent to a way for fans to give back.

1. Streetwear

Just like how BAYC/MAYC holders receive hoodies, t-shirts and hats as a way to show off their membership. Azuki is a brand inspired by the combination of streetwear and Asian culture that wanted to provide its community with unique “dope sh*t only” apparel.

The first airdropped item is this Sukajan Jacket, also known as the Souvenir Jacket, which is airdropped for free to owners of Azuki.

Of course, we have also collaborated with some trendy brands to launch customized versions of trendy brands, such as Neighborhood, Supreme, BAPE and Human Made, etc.

2. Skateboard

This is supposed to look like an Azuki skateboard, a style of streetwear associated with Asian culture, with a samurai helmet on it.

3. Collectibles

Some character-related figures, comic books, animation videos, etc. have been launched. Figures are very popular in Japan.

Of course, they will also launch offline activities to increase the stickiness of their fans.

The first event organized by Chiru Labs is the Azuki Garden Party on March 31, 2022. This event immerses us in the world of Azuki, with "dope sh*t only" as the rule of order for the dress code. An obligation of the streetwear culture.

At this party, the American rapper Wiz Khalifa appeared. Wiz Khalifa is an outstanding rapper whose songs have influenced a generation, such as "Say Yes", "Black and Yellow" or "See you again" from the soundtrack of "Fast and Furious 7".

Azuki's innovative ERC-721 A

Azuki developed a new standard called ERC-721A to optimize Ethereum’s gas fees. It can mint multiple NFTs at almost the same gas cost as minting one.

The standard is open source, which means every NFT project can implement it. More than 50 projects have already done so.

At the beginning, it was said that one person can mint up to 5 coins at the time of release. If you follow the ERC721 standard, you will have to pay for 5 copies. By using ERC721A, you can save a certain amount of GAS fees.

The above are all about its good points, so let's also talk about its negative news. There are currently 2 major

Malicious incidents

The first is that on May 10, 2022, the founder posted a message saying that he had done three projects before, all of which failed. He originally wanted to get a plaque for the founder's hard work, but was ridiculed by fans for abandoning his community. In the end, he also said that he would exchange all the income from the previous three projects and the private keys of the smart contracts to the original community, and the matter was finally settled to a certain extent.

The second event was the launch of the ELEMENTS project. At the time, the ELEMENTS project was intended to be a supplement to Azuki and increase the fan base. However, as soon as the event started, all the new works were snapped up by Azuki and Beanz holders, and ordinary people had no chance at all. What's more, after Azuki Elemental Beans was opened, everyone found that these new works were like "small pictures" copied and pasted from Azuki's original works. Because they are too similar, and you have to know that Azuki cost more than 10 ETH to buy at the time, while Elements only cost 2E, so many people said that Azuki looked ugly, and it was easy to copy the following and raised 20,000 ETH. At that time, the community was simply angry and disappointed.

Then let's look at its fan data:

1. Currently has 360,000 followers on Twitter.

2. 80,000 followers on Discord

Then let's take a look at its recent transactions:

In fact, we can see from DUNE that recent transactions are still relatively sluggish, and have shrunk significantly compared to the beginning of 2022.

Judging from the market size of each NFT transaction, Blur still accounts for the majority, nearly 50%, while Opensea accounts for 35%. The others only account for 15% in total.

In fact, we can roughly calculate its revenue through opensea. Currently, opensea shows that the total transaction volume is 680,000 ETH, and the royalty income is 5%, which is 34,000 ETH. We just saw that opense accounts for about 40% of the total market transaction volume, so the total royalty income of the entire network is about 85,000 ETH. If calculated according to the current value of ETH, it is about 1.3 billion US dollars. It was issued in January 22, which is about 2 years, so there is an income of 600 million US dollars/year (its ability to absorb money is really strong), which does not include its Azuki and ELEMENTS sales revenue.

Finally, let's summarize this project. Currently, Azuki ranks second only to BAYC's 2 series and Cryptopunk in the total transaction ranking of opensea, but from the perspective of blur and opensea's 30-day transaction, it ranks first, so it should be the project with the highest circulation turnover rate in the NFT sector. With the recovery of the market, top NFTs will not die, and Azuki's current floor price is only about 6 Eth. Its previous lowest floor price should be around September-October last year, with a minimum of 3.8 Eth. It has almost doubled. At present, this project should have no problem returning to 20 Eth in the next bull market. You can see its ability to make money. 600 million a year, 3 time and space story lines, and it should also develop in the direction of GAMEFI in the future. Moreover, NFT can be regarded as an income amplifier of Ethereum, because with the arrival of the bull market, Ethereum will also appreciate, so if Azuki itself appreciates 4 times, then count the appreciation of Ethereum 5 times, then you will get a product with 20 times the income, isn't it great?