On January 12, 2022, Azuki NFTs stepped into the metaverse officially. 8,700 NFTs were released by a group of four people.
At a starting price of 3,400 USD, the anime-style characters were released. All the NFTs were sold out in the blink of an eye, which led to one of the fastest $29 million transactions in the sales history of NFT.
Well, that’s not all. A few more Azuki NFTs earned $2million after a few days. What next? Four weeks later, the NFTs left behind BAYC and CryptoPunks with a total sales of $300 million. With that, Azukis hit the huge mark in only 30 days.
What are Azuki NFTs?
Developed by the metaverse community, they are a collection of 10,000 anime-like skateboarder avatars. Each avatar has an exclusive set of weapons, traits and backgrounds that determine their rarity.
The NFTs are also available with 3D avatars and physical collectibles that are possible to be used on Decentraland and The Sandbox.
What differentiates Azuki from other NFTs?
The success of NFTs like CryptoPunks and BAYC inspired Azuki. Moreover, it was minted upon utilizing the ERC721A token standard and created by Chiru Labs. Users can mint a number of NFTs in one transaction; thus, both the gas fee and minting duration decrease.
There were three stages in Azuki’s initial sales model- Dutch auction, mintlist and a public sale.
In the Dutch auction, NFTs price was reduced after a certain time and continued until the price came to a minimum lower bound. For 1 ETH, the initial NFTs batch was sold. Every 20 minutes, the price dropped by 0.05 ETH until it reached 0.15 ETH as the lower bound.
In mintlist, Chiru Labs screened members belonging to their social media groups and selected the active members. The phase enabled minting to be completed in 48 hours. Compared to the Dutch auction, the minting price was nearly half of the lowest price.
Lastly, in the public sale, which started on January 15, NFTs that were remaining were sold for the lowest price in the Dutch auction.
How & where to purchase an Azuki?
The NFT can be purchased on OpenSea. To complete the transaction, ETH tokens are a must. Once the sufficient number of ETH have been purchased, the funds are transferred to a crypto wallet which is compatible with OpenSea.
The marketplace can be navigated through the wallet and bidding on an NFT can be done.
The Azuki NFT Utility
Owners receive membership access to ‘The Garden’ which is an exclusive metaverse, owing to which they get NFT drops, streetwear partnerships, live events and a number of experiences. Holders also get Azuki merchandise like the Twin Tigers Jacket.
The team announced two surprise airdrops during April Fool’s Day. Though the community thought it to be an April Fool’s prank, it was the Beanz collection, which are each Azuki’s trustee companions. Azuki holders received the NFT absolutely free.
The Beanz collection contains 20,000 NFTs and gives its holders access to the Discord channel in the Azuki server. Furthermore, these owners are eligible for merchandise drops in future.
What does the future look like?
Azuki has plans for its own metaverse consisting of games, multimedia experiences, comics, community incentives and animation. Though the bridge between real-life activation and the metaverse is the most valuable initiative.
— Azuki (@AzukiOfficial) July 6, 2022
Major Partnerships
Azuki has engaged in several collaborations to turn itself into a brand. South Korean alternative hip-hop group Epik High has partnered with Azuki to display Asian-American as well as Asian artists. As a part of their performance at Coachella 2022, the group featured Azuki NFTs.
RTFKT has partnered with Azuki for a streetwear collection. Next, Azuki will work with Ledger via its BEANZ collection.
Rug Pull Allegations
Azuki’s creator, Zagabond, published a blog wherein he discussed his three projects that came to an end. All these projects were left by the original founding teams.
Backlash made its way, which resulted in a drop of the Azuki price on OpenSea from 19 ETH to 10.2 ETH.
•Bull or bear, Azuki is building towards the future of web3. We’re in it for the long term.
— ZAGABOND.ETH (@ZAGABOND) May 9, 2022
•Builders need to experiment for web3 to challenge web2.
•Azuki is built on learnings from creating Phunks & other projects. This taught me to lead, not follow.https://t.co/Z2enFov8m9
FAQs
According to Rarity, the 7 day volume of Azuki NFTs is 919.59 ETH with a total volume of 256,492.67 ETH. The 7 day average price is 9.78 ETH and the total number of owners is 5090. The floor price is 9 ETH.
The initial mint price of Azuki NFT was 1 ETH, which was set to decrease by 0.05 ETH after every 20 minutes until it reached .015 ETH.
Considering their performance and success record along with promising future plans, the NFTs look promising.
