By the end of 2021, NFTs had become extremely popular, and some collections achieved substantial valuations. However, now the base prices have hit rock bottom. It has become increasingly challenging for NFT ventures to stay afloat in the harsh bear market environment. Azuki, one of these projects, has suffered further losses due to its recent announcement.
Azuki Admitted its Mistake
The NFT project Azuki acknowledged the mistake it made during the launch of its Elementals collection. It has committed to taking necessary steps to regain the trust of its community. The launch, two days ago, faced backlash due to the sale of pieces similar to the previous collection.
In response to community criticism that the new Elementals NFTs were too similar to the original collection, causing harm, the team admitted they “missed the mark” and promised to improve their communication and implementation to regain trust.
Azuki accepted that the minting process for Elementals was rushed and confused the community about how different the new collection was from the original Azukis. In a Twitter statement, the NFT project mentioned, “We hear you, the minting process was rushed, PFPs look like Azukis”.
“We challenged ourselves to create four variations of almost every feature… while creating characters that feel consistent with Azuki roots, we are still offering something new. However, our ambitious targets led to a new collection that confused the community about tangible differences with the original Azuki collection.”
Azuki Lost Trust
Azuki tried to clarify that the original Azuki collection was the priority, but admitted it needs to improve communication and execution to rebuild the lost trust.
“The OG Azuki collection defines who we are and will always have the highest priority and allocation for all future rewards, airdrops, and experiences. Azuki’s vision is to build a decentralized brand. Achieving this requires perfect communication and implementation, both of which were lacking in the Elementals sale. We know we lost a piece of trust today, but nothing can motivate us more to correct things.”
Azuki’s co-founder 2PMFLOW.ETH referred to the situation as a technical glitch.
“This was a technical hiccup where metadata for a few tokens was processed incorrectly due to event logs from a data provider that became outdated because of Ethereum block reorganization. We are currently working to restore the correct images and metadata.”
Another co-founder, Location TBA, stated that the last collection did not meet Azuki’s standards.
Collection Prices Dropped
According to figures on the OpenSea NFT market, the base price of the Elementals collection dropped below the 2 ETH mint price to 1.79 ETH. The original Azuki collection dropped by 31% to 9.5 ETH. Cryptocurrency analysis provider Nansen wrote in its latest report;
“Both Azuki and BEANZ took a hit after the launch of Elementals, both dropping 40-50% over the last 7 days. We are seeing the highest daily trading volume for Azuki since May 5, 2022. Net sale from Azuki owners – 5,849 ETH purchase, 8,469 ETH sale. 137 buyers against 360 sellers.”
