The market alley buzzes with energy. A hub for street food lovers, window shoppers, and early birds picking up breakfast fruits. Yet, the Azuki beings have a unique mission. They appear here, collecting red beans which serve as the key to unlocking a gateway into another realm.
And so unfolds the adventure for Azuki NFT holders, as they venture into the metaverse of The Garden. A digital utopia, The Garden melds art and technology, blurring the line between the tangible and the virtual. Amidst this lies Hilumia, a vibrant city pulsating with the expanding Azuki community.
The alley serves as the entrance to The Garden metaverse. Source — www.azuki.com
What is the Azuki NFT Collection?
The Azuki NFT Collection comprises 10,000 rebellious avatars styled in anime that depict the user's identity within The Garden metaverse. Azuki is considered a blue-chip NFT, ranking within the top five collections on OpenSea with a total trading volume of 519,604 ETH.
These non-fungible tokens first surfaced at the beginning of 2022. The launch price at a Dutch auction was set at 1 ETH, but ultimately it fell to 0.15 ETH at the close of the auction. Nevertheless, the price experienced a swift ascension in the OpenSea secondary market. The lowest price for an Azuki NFT is 13.9 ETH press time.
Azuki NFTs. Source — www.azuki.com
What perks do Azuki NFT holders get?
The community is the bedrock of the NFT collection's worth. Therefore, the community benefits from a range of privileges that are consistently being expanded.
Particularly, owners of these non-fungible tokens can receive airdrops, acquire bespoke clothing with their avatars' images, as well as attend theme-based offline events.
For example, the previous year saw the Azuki Garden Party and the NFT.NYC conference which featured participation from one of the project's founders.
On April 1, 2022, Azuki NFT holders were treated to a series of intriguing airdrops. Initially, the community was on high alert, but eventually, they realized they had been given free NFT beans from the fresh Beanz collection, which befriended their earlier bought avatars.
Beans from the NFT Beanz Collection. Source — www.azuki.com
Additionally, the community has a forum called Red Bean Soup, where members interact, share updates, and voice their thoughts on various happenings within the cryptocurrency and NFT sphere.
Every so often, grants are given out to creative enthusiasts of the project, enabling them to implement their ideas in the metaverse. At this stage, the Azuki founding team is contemplating the possibility of creating RPG games in The Garden, along with investigating the potential for establishing a DAO and the BEAN token.
Who is behind the Azuki NFT Collection?
The Azuki brand was conceived by Chiru Labs, a Los Angeles-based Web3 company that is leading the way in the marketing strategy of storytelling.
The team behind the company includes managers, developers, and designers who go by the following pseudonyms:
- Zagabond serves as the face of the Azuki collection and made his identity public at the Azuki NFT.NYC event.
- 2PM Flow previously worked at Google and Y-Combinator.
- LOCATION TBA is a former software engineer at Facebook, who's now responsible for Azuki's metaverse.
- HOSHIBOY is the head of the design department.
- STEAMBOY.
Besides the Azuki and Beanz NFT collections, the studio also introduced the PBT and ERC721A token standards.
The PBT (Physical Backed Token) standard facilitates the development of tokens underpinned by the value of physical goods. This standard builds upon the ERC721 standard that was introduced on the Ethereum network. Essentially, PBT is a decentralized way to verify the authenticity of real-world items.
ERC721A is an advanced version of the previous standard, which enables the creation of multiple tokens for the price of one.
Despite the Azuki collection being the brainchild of a small group of NFT enthusiasts, its future hinges on the level of interest and involvement from the worldwide community.
