Azuki’s “Elementals Mint Pannen” Underscores the Fragile Market for NFT

Azuki, the non-fungible token (NFT) brand, on Tuesday opened sales of its “Elementals” NFT collection, a 20,000-copy derivative of their hugely popular original Azuki collection. While owners anxiously awaited the re-release, it was announced with great fanfare.

Azuki announced plans for a metaverse, physical goods, interactive experiences, and a native token earlier this year. The gatherers waited with their bags and their breath for signs of progress. The project has already released a collaboration with fashion brand Ambush, as well as an impressive but impractical gold skateboard with NFT support. However, the last major expansion of the character universe was the BEANZ collection, which was released in March 2022. Azuki has also had to face some serious challenges in recent months. These included a hack of the Twitter account and the founder’s admission that previous projects had been abandoned. This shook Azuki’s faith.

Azuki still tops the NFT rankings despite the market deteriorating over the years. OpenSea data shows that the project’s trading volume has reached 588,674 Ethereum, or just under $1 billion. BEANZ also donated a large amount of money to Chiru Labs – Azuki’s parent company. OpenSea reports that the project has generated 166,373 Ethereum, or about $304 million in trading volume.

The team had to win a big game to keep their momentum going.

Azuki’s “Elementals” should strengthen the foundations of the project and push it forward. Despite best efforts, the mint was marred by technical issues, questionable mechanics, and allegedly copied artwork, which lowered the reserve price of both Azuki and BEANZ. The minimum price for Elementals NFTs on OpenSea was around 1.5 ETH ($2,700), falling below the initial coin price.

The recent Mint mishap has far-reaching implications for the NFT sector given Azuki’s dominance of the NFT industry and shows that even the blue chip NFT companies are struggling to grow despite a particularly difficult bear market.

In true Azuki style, Elementals caused quite a stir before imprinting even started.

Team Azuki hosted a token event called “Follow the Rabbit” in Las Vegas last Friday. They airdropped some of the Elemental NFTs, but it was not announced to the participants. The team announced the details of the coinage on Monday. They explained that the remaining Elemental NFTs will be sold in 10-minute rounds, first to Azuki NFT holders, then to BEANZ holders, and finally to the public. The auction should be conducted in the Dutch style. The price of NFTs started at 2 ETH. Then it would drop by 0.1 ETH or $200 every five minutes until all NFTs are sold.

Azuki members were keen to buy NFTs at 2 ETH each on Tuesday. All NFTs were sold out in just 15 minutes. This generated 20,000 ETH, which is worth around $38 million. Punk 9059 is the research director of PROOF. According to him, one holder has spent more than $1.5 million to purchase several hundred NFTs.

Although the Mint was initially a great success, some holders were not happy with the result. They took to Twitter and expressed their dissatisfaction.

Azuki’s pseudonymous co-founder Location TBA said that 7,600 of the 10,000 NFTs were minted by Azuki holders during the presale. This led to BEANZ holders fighting to get the remaining 2,400. Azuki holders have complained about technical issues preventing them from minting coins at all.

BenWasOnline, a Twitter user, said that although he had “prepared and loaded multiple browsers,” there were still technical issues preventing him from participating in the sale.

BenWasOnline wrote, “Congratulations on the sale, but you’ve disappointed many collectors.”

In response, Location TBA posted a Twitter thread apologizing for the disruption and some of the issues on the unexpectedly high traffic on the website was reversed.