What is Azuki NFT?

Azuki is a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFT) designed by Chiru Labs, a startup launched by artists and technologists in Los Angeles. Each of them is a digital avatar that gives the membership holder access to an online club called The Garden.

Azuki’s art style made it an instant success. Within four months of launch, it was already ranked among the top NFT collections in terms of sales volume, along with pillars such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. However, Azuki has also raised some red flags, including the founder’s track record of abandoned projects. Here’s everything you need to know about this collection.

What makes Azuki unique?

Azuki NFTs are all unique, hand-drawn digital avatars. They come in a variety of character styles, including samurai and skateboarders. NFT owners can use their Azukis as their digital identities in the meta verse.

There are many digital avatar collections out there. The reason why Azukis in particular took off is the designs. They are drawn in an anime style that you will recognize right away if you grew up watching Dragon Ball Z, the many Gundam series or other animated programs from Japan.

By buying an Azuki NFT you also get access to The Garden. According to the Azuki website, this will include exclusive streetwear collapses, NFT drops, live events and more. One of the first benefits offered to Azuki NFT holders was an airdrop of two free NFTs on April 1, 2022. The NFTs started as images of a box. After NFT holders updated metadata, the images became images of piles of dirt. The pictures changed again in May to become part of the company’s new NFT collection, BENZ.

Azuki followed the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s approach by granting NFT owners a non-exclusive right to commercial use for their specific Azuki; For example, you can put your Azuki on items you sell through an online store.

Where Azuki came from

Four anonymous creators based in Los Angeles founded Chiru Labs, the startup behind the Azuki NFT collection. They released Azuki on January 12, 2022. The founder was Zagabond, and its three main members were:

• location tba
• 14.00.flyt
• HoshiBoy

The artist Arnold Tsang was awarded the credit as co-creator, but there is not much information available about the other creators or their background. However, Zagabond revealed in a blog post that he founded three other NFT projects before Azuki: CryptoPhunks, Tendies and Zunks. This admission led to a number of setbacks when people pointed out that Zagabond had started and abandoned three projects in less than a year.

How Azuki works

The Azuki NFT collection consists of 10,000 avatars. There are a total of 13 property categories and 469 properties that determine the appearance of each Azuki. Some traits are rarer than others, and azukis with rarer traits are generally more valuable.

For example, there are four different types of Azuki: Human, Blue, Red and Spirit. More than 9,000 Azukis are humans, so that type tends to cost less. There are only 97 liquors, less than 1% of the total collection, so they have much higher prices.

Azuki NFTs are embossed on Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) blockchain. They are bought and sold with ETH on NFT marketplaces and stored in NFT wallets.

Partnership

Azuki has several notable connections that help it build its brand. Epik High, a South Korean alternative hip-hop group, collaborated with Azuki on a desire to showcase Asian and Asian-American artists. The group showed Azuki NFTs as part of their performance at Coachella 2022.

RTFKT, the company that launched Clone X NFTs, has announced a streetwear partnership with Azuki. Through its BENZ collection, Azuki will also work with Ledger, a wallet manufacturer.

Unique risks

It did not take long for Azuki to attract controversy, especially the news that a founder had abandoned previous projects and allegations of insider trading.

The fact that Azuki founder Zagabond launched and then left three NFT projects in just months is definitely a problem. The founder designed the projects as learning experiences that helped make Azuki what it is today. The people who invested in the failed experiments probably do not have the same warm, vague feeling about them.

The day after the blog post, Zagabond apologized on Twitter. That did not stop the price of Azuki NFTs from plunging more than 50%, even though it picked up again.

The NFT market is full of claims about insider trading. Several major projects, including Azuki, have been accused of it by members of the NFT community. One such case was before the unveiling of the Azuki BEANZ NFTs when a buyer sold four standard BEANZ NFTs and bought several rare ones. Azuki co-founder location.tba denied that insider trading took place, but stated that more security would be added before future collection reveals.

Is Azuki a good investment?

You should avoid investing in Azuki NFTs because their value is too volatile and speculative. Like other NFT projects, they are really useless, and the only purpose they serve is as digital collectibles.

The argument for buying an Azuki NFT is that the collection can grow in popularity and that it will give you exclusive benefits. For example, the Azuki team may make another airdrop that gives you one or more free NFTs from a new collection.

There are both possibilities, but they are far from certain. Azuki can become more popular – or people can move on to the next collection with cool designs. You can score free NFTs from an airdrop, but just because the Azuki team has launched a successful collection does not mean that the subsequent ones will be a hit.

You roll the dice as a buyer, and luck is not a good investment strategy. To get an idea of ​​how risky Azuki NFTs are, take a look at the sales history of some of them and see how much people spend on buying and selling NFTs from this collection. You will see some sellers coming out ahead and others selling at a huge loss.

How to buy Azuki NFTs

If you like the style of the Azuki NFT collection and want to buy one, you can find it in several major NFT marketplaces. Options include:

To buy NFTs from the collection, you need a blockchain wallet and Ethereum. Since Ethereum is one of the largest cryptocurrencies, it is available for purchase on most top crypto exchanges. After purchasing it, transfer it to your blockchain wallet and connect it to the selected NFT marketplace.

While the Azuki brand quickly became popular with NFT collectors, it is also the only group that should consider buying. These hyped collections do not provide good long-term investments. It is impossible to predict which specific NFTs will be winners, and the allegations of insider trading among large collections are a worrying issue that will probably not be resolved in the first place.