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Blue Chip NFTs 101 – Azuki, A New Kind Of Brand For The Future… And A Scandal

The idea behind Azuki is to mix NFT culture with anime-style drawings, with a global community working together behind the scenes. Which is phenomenal. Azuki defines itself as a “decentralized brand for the metaverse.” This brand’s main product is a collection of 10K anime-style avatars in NFT form. The collection is also called Azuki and at inception was one of the NFT space’s biggest success stories… 

… until admissions and revelations by one of the project’s creators cast a shadow on Azuki as a whole. 

Let’s review the project’s history, its characteristics, and the revelations that changed it all.

Azuki’s Origin Story

The project exists since January 12th, 2022. The team behind Azuki is Chiru Labs, their slogan is “Born in Los Angeles. Building for the metaverse.” Most of the members use pseudonyms and keep their identities private. A few use their real name, like Azuki’s co-creator and illustrator Arnold Tsang from Toronto, Canada. He’s well-know 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 a key part of the project. On Azuki’s website, they use slogans like “A new kind of brand that 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 place Azuki promises “starts with exclusive streetwear collabs, NFT drops, live events, and much more that will be revealed over time.”

Azuki is a digital brand. A “decentralized brand of the future.”

At first, it seemed like the NFT collection was going to propel them to instant classic status. The initial success made their name recognizable and sent the collection’s floor price to double digits. At one point, it reached a maximum of 22 ETH. Nowadays, the floor price at Opensea is 7.4 ETH, what happened? Whatever the reason, the Azuki collection gets around. It has moved a total volume of 260.2K ETH in transactions so far.

We Need A Little… Controversy

The turning point for Azuki was a Twitter Space, of all things. On May 10th, crypto influencer Andrew Wang interviewed  Zagabond, one of Azuki’s founders, who just like that revealed that he was part of a few NFT projects that didn’t end well. It almost sounded like they were a rug pull, and people freaked out accordingly. The collection’s floor price started falling and it hasn’t recovered yet. 

It was a mystery at first, but according to Cryptoslate, the projects Zagabond was involved with were:

  • CryptoPhunks, the original CryptoPunk copycat collection. The first collection to receive a DMCA takedown from Larva Labs. Because of that, the CryptoPhunks were delisted from OpenSea and Zagabond gave the project to all the holders in July, 2021.
  • Tendies, a project that failed to capture the NFT culture’s imagination and shut down in the middle of the minting process. 
  • CryptoZunks, a collection that defines itself as “the first Punks to be generated on-chain with randomized attributes. Each Zunk is guaranteed to be unique from any Punk.” Apparently, it failed because of Ethereum’s expensive gas fees.

According to Cryptoslate, “Like the first two projects, this failed one was also a lesson. Zagabond said these three projects taught him that “blindly following the NFT meta doesn’t get you far.” He claims that all the lessons from these projects are now being applied to make Azuki a success.” None of that helped and the collection’s floor price went downhill. 

The question here is, were these projects rug pulls or simple failures without bad intentions? 

ETH price chart for 09/08/2022 on Bitfinex | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
Azuki, Built For The Metaverse

The definition of 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 do we amplify this experience for Azuki members? How do we distribute the brand to places that have the most attention today? More importantly, where will the metaverse be one year+ from now?”

Is simple social media part of the metaverse? How does Azuki not know where the metaverse will be one year from now? Other blue-chip NFT collections are already building their version, laying their chips on the table. Is Azuki too late? Or are Chiru Labs just quietly developing? According to the company, they’re exploring the possibility of developing a game. “Few teams have the experience and background to build a genuinely great game with mass market appeal and scalability. Though the core team has the experience, it’s a huge endeavor nonetheless.”

The Azuki collection is down, but not out. The team seems to have shaken the stink that Zagabond’s revelations brought, but did so in the middle of a bear market in which the whole NFT market is down. Azuki stopped the bleeding. The question is, can they reclaim and even surpass past glories?

Featured Image: Azuki banner from their site | Charts by TradingView

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Blue Chip NFTs 101 – Let’s Travel To Space With The Doodles Collection

Veterans of the NFT big leagues, the Doodles let the CryptoPunks and Bored Apes take the spotlight and have been constantly working behind the scenes. Even though they’re not a worldwide brand like the other two, everybody’s seen the Doodles. They just don’t remember when or where they saw those little drawings. Don’t let that fool you, though. The collection’s total sales are  $496M, according to CryptoSlam. So far. 

The generative collection consists of 10,000 Doodles that “are made up of hundreds of exciting visual traits designed by Burnt Toast” AKA Scott Martin. The other two members of the team are Evan Keast and Jordan Castro, who in 2017 were part of the company that rocked the world with CryptoKitties. The first NFT project to jam the Ethereum blockchain. This experienced team has been key to the project’s success and constant expansion.

The Doodles exude class through and through. Their smart contract is auditable, their roadmap is public, and anyone can easily find them on the project’s website. An example of great management by an experienced team is that the Doodles invented whitelisting for minting events. The team closed the Discord before minting and gave their first followers, the people who were there from the beginning, the chance to mint first. The community at large saw the move as a mistake, but they quickly realized how smart the system really was.

According to their website, “hand-drawn Doodles include skellys, cats, aliens, apes and mascots. The Doodles collection also includes dozens of rare heads, costumes, and colorways of the artist’s palette.” According to OpenSea, the current floor price for a Doodle is 9.7 ETH and the total volume sold by the whole collection is 133.3K ETH.

The Doodles As A Governance Token

The project doesn’t contemplate NFT staking and it avoids the temptation of creating a new token for their ecosystem. The Doodles utility focuses on access to off the hook real-life events. More on that later. In the virtual world, though, they offer their holders new experiences like the Space Doodles and the Dooplicator. 

In addition to that, each Doodle is a sort-of governance token. A Doodle gives you voting and participation rights in the sort-of DAO that governs the whole project. The Doodle holders decide what to focus on next and control de community treasury, known as the DoodleBank. They have the right to vote on proposals, on the team and hiring, and on what to do in live events. Recently, they decided to fund a 3D Doodles project.

The communication flows through the project’s Discord channel. As it happens with most current NFT projects, this tool is a crucial part of the puzzle. For example, the Doodles server recently created a scam alert channel to protect the community from fraud and to have them monitor the internet for fake Doodles and people misrepresenting their brand.

ETH price chart on Bitstamp | Source: ETH/USD on TradingView.com
What Are The Space Doodles?

As a special benefit to holders, at no cost to them, they can wrap their Doodles and transform them into Space Doodles. These new NFTs put the original Doodle into a Spaceship and in a space-like environment. If you don’t like it or miss your PFP, you can always switch back to Doodles. You might not want to, though. According to Open Sea, the Space Doodles’ floor price is 11.8 ETH. Liquidity is another story, the total volume sold by the whole collection is 1.6K ETH.

All art by Burnt Toast himself.

The company has also given the community free swag like the Dooplicator. At the time of writing, the floor price for these space backpacks is 2.79 ETH.

The Future Of This Blue Chip Collection

You’re only as good as your last hit, and for the Doodles that could be their real-life event in the South by Southwest festival. A warehouse painted with the collection’s characteristic pastel scheme, with screens everywhere, it was the talk of the town. They also distributed an NFT in association with paint manufacturers Behr and illustrated by Burnt Toast. Hopefully, it will be worth something one day. 

The point is, one of the objectives of Doodles as a company is to focus on live events and ultimately become an entertainment company. That’s great for holders that live in the US, it means that they’ll get access to a lot of events where the company will distribute secondary NFTs. It also means that Doodles will be constantly interacting with brands, artists, and other projects. That continuous activity will push the brand name out there. 

Another important benefit for holders is that Doodles plans to give them property rights. Eventually, people will be able to launch their own Doodle-related products for a small fee. Considering that Doodles is a top 10 NFT collection, we would say most of the marketing work is already done.

Read other Blue Chip NFTs 101 guides: Moonbirds, DeGods, Proof Collective, and CloneX.

Featured Image: Screenshot from the site | Charts by TradingView