- Azuki is the sixth best-selling collection by trading volume on OpenSea at the time of publication
- Azuki Founder Reassured Twitter Spaces Audience of Full Commitment to Growing Azuki
An anime-inspired NFT avatar collection, Azuki, had been serving fierce competition among industry-leading collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Clone X since the project launched in January.
Digital collectibles, whose prices are collapsing, are now at the forefront of the latest NFT (non-fungible token) controversy.
Azuki’s founder, known as Zagabond, blogged about his story before launching Azuki, revealing that he was behind three NFT collections – CryptoPhunks, Tendies and CryptoZunks – which were abandoned by their founders.
In response, many Twitter users called the projects rug-pulling or scams that were never meant to be built.
A user, @sxtvik, tweeted, “thank you for letting everyone know you’re a serial carpet artist, everyone really trusts you!” Another user, @pana067, tweeted that any future Azuki buyer “needs Jesus”.
Others, however, defended Zagabond, like @Loopifyyy, who said CryptoPhunks and CryptoZunks weren’t scams.
“If someone promises you something and then keeps that promise, even if it’s just an NFT, they are no longer responsible for working on it,” the user said. tweeted.
The Azuki founder addressed these concerns during a Twitter Spaces session moderated by NFT influencer Andrew Wang, explaining that these projects weren’t rug pulls, but rather “there was no product market suitable for the end of the day”.
The founder added that any disappointment was a matter of “misaligned expectations” between creators and consumers.
He claimed that as a builder he was trained to experiment and iterate or pivot as soon as something fails or is deemed unsustainable, long-term, rather than wasting time. He admitted that he could have approached one of these projects better.
“It seems consumers still expect the team and developers to continue working on the project in perpetuity,” Zagabond said. “And as a creative, are you indebted to these community members and this project forever?”
As a result, the price of an Azuki has fluctuated wildly on OpenSea, and its floor price has fallen from 21 ether (ETH) since the news broke to 9 ETH at press time. However, volumes and trades have increased by 998% in the past 24 hours as savvy traders attempt to take advantage of sharp price swings.
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Ornella Hernández
blockages
Journalist
Ornella is a Miami-based multimedia journalist who covers NFTs, the Metaverse, and DeFi. Prior to joining Blockworks, she worked for Cointelegraph and also worked for TV channels such as CNBC and Telemundo. She started investing in Ethereum after hearing about it from her father and hasn’t looked back since. She speaks English, Spanish, French and Italian.