With the "double killing" of funds and beliefs, how can Azuki restore the trust of the community?

Original Author: Nancy, PANews

From the time when the founder Rug project faced a crisis in its entrepreneurial history, it successfully walked out of the low tide, and the new work was fully paid for by Holder within more than ten minutes. The strong community consensus is the key reason why Azuki stands at the forefront of the bear market. But Azuki's diamond hands may not have expected that the birth of the new series Azuki Elementals did not usher in the imagined feast, but a "double killing" of funds and beliefs.

Is the faith of the Azuki holder still alive? How can Azuki restore community trust? Can the narrative of the small picture continue? PANews interviewed a number of Azuki holders. Some of them avoided talking because of their interests, some wanted to wait for the bullet to fly for a while, and some of them revealed their true thoughts. At the same time, even though Azuki officially held an AMA to share the latest response, it still failed to make the community pay.

Azuki announces multiple remedies and future plans

In the face of accusations from the community, the official Azuki tweet explained that the team has been trying to use the original Azuki column as the core of the operation of their universe, but this has not been clearly communicated to the community. Based on Azuki's status, Azuki holders will always enjoy the highest priority and over-allocation in future rewards, airdrops and experiences.

At the same time, the founder of Azuki ZAGABOND.ETH and two other joint creation steamboys and location tba held an AMA event on Discord at 9:00 on June 30. In an internal meeting, Azuki stated that Azuki's core focus is not only to provide products, but also to provide experiences. At the same time, the team has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the OG series, and stated that they are Azuki's first-level access authority and will be the center of Azuki's universe and future plans, followed by Elementals and Beanz, of which Elementals is an external Web3 community that provides access to the "garden" One way of having a second layer of access, the core goal is to build an appealingly large IP, hence the kids and animal characters. in addition. The fictional city of Hilumia is just a small part of Azuki's lore.

Regarding the casting of Elementals this time, Azuki said that it was inspired by NBA Top Shot and incorporated AI/social media elements, aiming to provide everyone with a live social experience, which brings a sense of immersion, but they admit that in this Failed at one point. At the same time, the team designed the airdrop with the intention of giving anyone a chance to earn rare NFTs, but they screwed up on assigning proper weights to the ranks, which overcomplicated their mechanics.

In addition, according to several community members, in this meeting, Azuki also proposed several remedial measures and future plans, such as launching a vote in the community to update the art (especially the background) of Eelementals, including changing the original solid color background of Elementals It is modified to a new floating background to make it more recognizable; "Collector" will be launched later, and the rights and interests given by this new system will be determined by the different series, NFT rarity, holding There are factors such as time and badges, and the behavior of the holder's sale will affect the points earned (even if they are repurchased); Azuki believes that IP/Web3 technology can subvert the animation industry, and they are working with excellent animators to build animation. It's a different kind of animation, there will be interactive experiences like using NPC interactions to mint tokens or collectibles, and the whole production process will be completely self-funded. The team and holders will have full control over and benefit from the animation, and the revenue will flow back to the Azuki project.

At the same time, Green beans will be used in animations, but they cannot be traded, and only OG Azuki holders can receive them; the Beanz series will also have its own roadmap, and the team will explore community content and make some short animations. Additionally, Zagabond revealed that they are exploring creating a way to tokenize Azuki culture.

In addition, when the holder asked Azuki how to rebuild community trust, ZAGABOND.ETH did not answer directly, but said, "I am very excited, the whole team is very excited, we are all very excited, and you should be too. "

However, many holders did not pay for Azuki's latest response. For example, KOL @JamesX said, "It can be heard that the team itself has no new ideas about the point system or the tokens that everyone has expected. All mentioned The logic of it is all badly played by other projects, and it is more like a pure painting."

Azuki holder @Alpies said, "Animation sharing is ridiculous. Is it possible to make money by doing animation now? They all rely on peripheral sales. The target audience? Or Holder. The change of the picture is done by the Tugou project. Well, I didn’t think about it for more than half a year, and now I want to change the map. Regarding the point system, Zagabond (the founder) said before that he would not do a Stake system.”

Surge in long-term holders selling, deep reasons behind community dissatisfaction

Although Azuki officially stated that the original goal of Elementals was to achieve community user growth, its various behaviors ran counter to its original intention. The same and rough content, technical mistakes and the suspected transfer of 20,000 ETH proceeds to the exchange for shipment are making Azuki lose the "popularity" of the community.

According to NFTGO data, during the launch of the Elemental series, the number of NFTs held for more than one year decreased by about 550, a drop of about 12.2%. According to Nansen data, a total of 132 Azuki Holders who had held for more than a year sold their NFTs, and the number of long-term holders who sold NFTs surged by 817%. Additionally, 89 long-term owners have sold Beanz NFTs, a 155% increase in long-term holders who sold Beanz NFTs.

Source: Nansen

For example, Azuki majors @Christine军主, @Alpies and @Konger.eth have publicly chosen to liquidate all Azuki NFT series they hold. Among them, Christine not only said that even though she experienced Azuki's ups and downs, but this time is different, she lost trust in the team's ability, and as the founder of Azuki's Chinese community, she also handed over the management of the Chinese group. Alpies said, "The image of the first generation of Azuki is unsurpassable even if it is placed now. The color matching is advanced and the design sense is very strong, but this time the opening of the image is a devastating blow to the loyal OG users. The color matching is bad and the color is not clean. As shown in the picture, there are many models and traits directly applied to the first generation, and even the rare medals on the collector's page can also be obtained by purchasing the second generation. Selling products that are completely out of stock can be called a naked fraud. Support all the way with real money It is impossible for Azuki users to accept it. In retrospect, this Vegas event was a game. The consensus was raised through the conference, and expectations were raised with beautiful promotional videos. The 10-minute casting window caused FOMO, and delivery and promotional videos have nothing to do with it The product, which focuses on not giving users time to think, successfully pocketed 20,000 ETH. This fragmented narrative rhythm, including the extremely poor second-generation delivery, makes me wonder if there is an internal problem in the team.”

"The community has always been Azuki's most powerful weapon. Even though there have been many fuds before, these community members actively maintain it as a solid force, so now these members are hard fans left after several trials, but this time It really hurt everyone's pockets. And this time, many community members participated in the casting of multiple Elementals, and there are a dozen or even dozens of them. Azuki's performance has a relatively large impact on the morale of the community. Big ones, once the faith starts to collapse, it will have a greater impact on the entire community." Ebunker founder Allen Ding, who is also a holder, told PANews.

As a loyal user of Azuki because of his painting style and production level, Allen Ding believes that the community’s dissatisfaction with Elementals and the Azuki team is not unreasonable. There are several main reasons: (1) From the Las Vegas conference to the rumors of currency issuance, When it comes to animation, the previous (market) expectations were too high, and there was a huge gap after the good news landed. It can be said that Azuki's latest animation can be called the most expensive animation, worth 38 million US dollars; (2) Elementals and Azuki are very similar, destroying the interests of holders. Elementals disrupted Azuki's original rarity system, which is a kind of harm to Azuki OG holders, especially rare species holders. After all, before this, each rarity element of Azuki has an obvious market price level, such as golden weapons, elements, spirits, etc., but now Elementals and Azuki cannot be distinguished, and many attributes of the new series are still relatively dazzling. , which makes Azuki's original rare attribute less rare, and Elementals are also cheaper. In this case, it is equivalent to Azuki's inflation in disguise, changing the original total amount of 10k to 30k; (3) Quality. The community is not very satisfied with the painting details and style of Elementals. The general evaluation is that it is not as good as Azuki, such as shadow processing, Traits (features and attributes) using Azuki off-the-shelf and even two identical pictures. In the eyes of many members, the style of the new series is not as advanced as before, such as a change of artist, or Azuki's inventory, AI mass production, etc.

In addition, Allen also believes that the release method of Azuki Elementals has also caused greater harm to the community. The sale was all sold out before the public auction. Although it reflected the strength of the community, the drop below the foundry price of Kaitu also directly and accurately hurt all loyal community members. These users' firm support resulted in serious losses.

However, Allen is still optimistic about Azuki, "Compared to other NFT projects in the current market, I think Azuki is still at the T0 level. Everyone makes mistakes, not to mention that the Zagabond and Azuki teams are so young, it is normal to make mistakes. So I am willing to continue to give them opportunities. But it is not appropriate for the team to release Green Bean so eagerly, because in the short-term community morale is relatively low, and the market environment is not active enough, it is difficult for Green Bean to have a good price performance. Diversion of some of the money in the arena, further bleeding for Azuki and Eelementals."

But for the PFP NFT market, which already lacks confidence, the overturn of Azuki's new work is hitting the track again. But in Allen Ding's view, Web3 will definitely be able to generate a successful IP, and the influence of this IP can spread to the Web2 world, and the high probability is in the form of PFP. But this process is long, because it takes time to attract outstanding talents into the industry. The emergence of a good project depends on the right time, place and people. At present, the PFP projects in the field are more sickle products with a clear purpose of harvesting, without soul and ingenuity. "

In short, for NFT projects such as Azuki, only a sincere business plan can slowly restore the community trust that is on the verge of collapse in the future.