NiftyNoon: Azuki's Secret Weapon

The bear market has only made Azuki's community stronger (March 1, 2023)

Nifty Thought

• Throughout the bear market, the Azuki community has only gotten stronger. Chiru Labs has cultivated one of the strongest communities in the NFT space and is arguably the only credible contender to Yuga Labs in the profile picture space today. With recent grail Azuki sales going for as much as 200 ETH, it is clear that Azuki has captured a portion of the high end NFT market that is only matched by CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club. The secret to Azuki’s success is simple: community management. While this may sound intuitive initially, Chiru Labs has followed a few core tenants that has enabled it to cultivate a durable and loyal community.

• First, Chiru Labs seldom makes promises or announcements far in advance. For the most part, they generally announce products and features as they are ready to be shipped. This gives Chiru an edge in that it enables them to silently pivot when necessary without fear of community backlash. It also manages community expectations. When someone is expecting nothing, even a small thing can be a delightful surprise.

• Chiru Labs also operates under a clear north star. Azuki is a decentralized brand that is a celebration of Asian culture. Strip an Azuki product of its logos and anyone familiar with the space will still be able to identify it as an Azuki product.

• Finally, Azuki has never lost sight of delivering for its holders. When Azuki dropped Beanz, its 20K supply collection, it did so as a full airdrop to holders. Every Azuki received 2 Beanz. This was completely counter to other projects at the time such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, World of Women, and VeeFriends that all airdropped half of the supply to the holders and sold the remaining half to the public in expensive mints. Azuki could have easily done the same to earn at least 30 million US dollars. Instead, they returned all of the value back to their loyal community.

Project News

• Zagabond reiterates his core belief in allowing Azuki to be community run unlike other comparable projects that have taken VC and corporate funding:

  ZAGABOND.ETH @ZAGABOND

  Azuki’s core team is a small group of builders who deeply love the brand. We’ve taken no VC funding and have no external corporate backing. We’re simply backed by the strongest community who is proud to represent the Garden. That’s special.

• Visa and Mastercard pause launch of crypto products until market conditions and regulation improves:

  Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru

  JUST IN: Visa & Mastercard pause launch of #crypto products until market conditions and regulation improves.

• Pacman, the founder of Blur, shares his thoughts on the consolidation of Blur volume between a handful of market makers:

  Pacman | Blur.io @PacmanBlur

  1/5 The vast majority of volume in traditional markets and token markets come from a handful of market makers (literally less than 10). Trading activity from MMs looks very different than trading activity from collectors. I'm seeing a lot of confusion on my timeline about this.

• Forbes investigation suggests Binance’s actions echo the actions of FTX prior to its collapse:

  Forbes @Forbes

  In its latest backroom maneuver, Binance transferred $1.8 billion in stablecoin collateral to hedge funds, including Alameda and Cumberland/DRW, leaving its other investors exposed. trib.al/EMKRnaS

  

Community News

• A rare spirit Azuki sells for 200 ETH:

  AZUKI Sales Bot @azuki_sales

  AZUKI #1582 sold for 200.0 ETH (327,200$) on X2Y2 🔗looksrare.org/collections/0x… 0x60bb9fe41fd5f60281c623ea6c90a11886a90cba7165597a58cc4ca712d60689

  

• The community-run PunksClub recaps their tour around Europe in 2023:

  PunksClub @punksclub_io

  SUMMARY OF CRYPTOPUNKS EUROPEAN TOUR 2023 + a surprise from @Ledger at the end! What started as a crazy and weird idea turned out to be one of the coolest experiences we have ever had, which united not only the @cryptopunksnfts community but also the whole web3 scene. /17 🧵⬇️

  

• Community discusses the ETH losses from NFT blur farmers:

  NFTstatistics.eth @punk9059

  Top Blur airdrop-farmers all have negative trading returns since Season 2 began. Despite this, it's probably worth it as Blur plans to give out 800+ ETH per day in $BLUR in Season 2. We discuss this and more on today's daily: youtube.com/watch?v=WRa8Xz…

  

Quick Stats:

• OpenSea ETH Daily Volume: 7,684 ETH (▲ 7.50%)

• Blur ETH Daily Volume: 33,766 ETH (▲ 2.43%)

• BTC: $23,784.02 (▲ 1.74%)

• ETH: $1,656.05 (▲ 1.77%)

• Solana: $22.70 (▲ 2.03%)

• Polygon: $1.26 (▲ 2.88%)

NFT Daily Winners:

• 🥃 Proof Collective: 19.00 ETH (▲ 15.15%)

• 🐧 Pudgy Penguins: 5.87 ETH (▲ 5.0%)

• 🦧 Bored Ape Yacht Club: 72.96 ETH (▲ 4.69%)

• 🦉 Moonbirds: 6.58 ETH (▲ 4.44%)

• 🧟 Mutant Ape Yacht Club: 15.22 ETH (▲ 0.76%)

• ⛩️ Azuki: 14.93 ETH (▲ 0.54%)

• 🧬 Clone X: 4.76 ETH (▲ 0.18%)

• 🚬 CryptoPunks: 63.95 ETH (► 0.00%)

• 🏳️‍🌈 Chromie Squiggles: 12.80 ETH (► 0.00%)

NFT Daily Losers:

• 🌈 Doodles: 5.46 ETH (▼ 0.64%)

• 🐈‍⬛ VeeFriends: 4.95 ETH (▼ 1.39%)

• 🧝🏼‍♀️ DigiDaigaku: 8.73 ETH (▼ 4.84%)

Notes:

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