The last couple of days have been filled with chatter about a new collection launched by Azuki: Azuki Elementals.
The collection came off the heels of Azuki’s Follow the Rabbit event in Las Vegas, which was well received by the community and broader space. The team rented out Hakkasan (one of the hottest night clubs on the Strip), customized it, and provided an open bar as a cherry on top.
That’s right folks, check your motherfucking wallets. For those of you that don’t understand why everyone’s screaming like they saw their favorite celebrity just appeared, it’s because Azuki put their name on the map with the “Check your wallets” catchphrase last year at NFT LA. They raised the bar of what physical x digital x experiential looked like, and did it again on an even bigger stage.
When Azuki made this announcement, they launched the Beanz collection and this time they announced Azuki Elementals, their third collection. 10,000 Elemental Beans were airdropped to Azuki holders and another 10,000 would be sold via Dutch auction, starting at 2 ETH (~$3,600).
The hype continued to rise as the June 27th mint date approached, and that’s when things started to go downhill. Without going into the details of what went wrong because 2,481 people covered it in thoughtboi threads, here’s a TLDR courtesy of Lamboland:
There were minting bugs, likely due to high traffic. Some holders that were qualified to mint (including myself) were unable to mint.
There were two 10-minute mint windows for holders, which is a very short time window.
Elementals art was very similar to the OG Azuki art, reducing the perceived value of the first collection.
Total collection supply increased from 30k to 50k (10k OG, 20k Beanz, 20k Elementals)
As the confusion around Elementals vs. OG art settled in, there was no clear indication as to why people should hold or purchase the original collection versus Elementals which was ~20% of the cost.
Tuesday (and some of Wednesday’s) NFT Twitter feed was filled with threads, memes, and opinions criticizing Azuki and poking fun at what transpired, resulting in the floor price dropping ~40% (from 15 ETH to 9 ETH today).
The day after the Elementals launch, the Azuki team addressed the issues on Twitter, and even shared that they were creating a new anime that is already under production.
Understandably, that wasn’t enough to stop the flow of questions and concerns from the community and broader space. Later this evening, there will be a Discord Stage event in the Azuki Discord to address what happened, and many people will be listening in to decide if they want to stay, enter, or leave the Garden that the team has built.
It’s easy to jump on the “AZUKI SUCKS” train and I don’t think anyone is blindly defending Azuki at this point. Also, I’m not a builder in the same way that these folks are, so it’s hard to pass judgment.
However, there are some interesting themes here when it comes to managing community expectations and revisiting the double-edged sword of community building.
Building a strong community, especially in web3, is like having a superpower. I’ve written about it several times when I was on a ‘community’ binge from a writing POV:
Many of the larger web3 consumer brands that still exist today are built off the backbone of a strong community. When things are good, they’re really good. When things are bad, they’re really bad. Why is that?
A community doesn’t just consist of holders
When we think about ‘community’, we often define that as the group of active participants or holders of a particular token. That’s accurate, but underestimates the broader (yet still tiny in the grand scheme of things) space that is NFTs, web3, and crypto. In the case of Azuki, the bad news quickly spread beyond the Azuki community.
The viral and honestly hilarious memes made it even easier to join the dogpile, adding fuel to the fire. Add on a bear market along with people jumping on the Twitter engagement train and you become the news story of the day.
Additionally, Azuki has held one of the top spots in the NFT space, with many regarding them as the #2 project in the space behind Yuga Labs. That position is now up for debate. You’re held to higher standards the higher up you are.
On the flip side, we can see this work in the favor of communities as well, with a great example being Pudgy Penguins’ recent toy launch. The active community members were aware of the launch weeks (maybe months?) in advance, and the news went up the foodchain, eventually going viral.
There’s no guaranteed answer to this, but as a project/company/brand matures there needs to be more thought put into communication, presentation, and execution. In order to do that, there needs to be stronger feedback loops.
Community Councils
Many projects have incorporated Community Councils of some sort as they’ve matured into brands and companies:
These councils are made up of active community members and represent the broader holder base as eyes and ears on the ground.
Holder-only meetings
Pudgy Penguins holds bi-weekly Inner Igloo meetings in their Discord for their holders. This space allows the team to share team updates in a more intimate manner. Trust is vital here because sometimes there is sensitive information shared.
Reducing surprise and delight moments
This one sucks, but as scrappy startups grow up, they need to integrate more processes, which removes the magic of surprise and delight moments.
As an example, BAYC went from this:
To this:
Not as fun, not as sexy. But this reduces the risk of a significantly bad outcome. This also doesn’t mean you can’t have surprise and delight moments, you just have to be more discerning about when, where, and how they happen.
I saw this meme on Instagram this morning. Watch it 😉
FUCKJERRY on Instagram: “Wow… @fuckjerry”
June 28, 2023
The scene starts off innocent. A classic American 4th of July celebration with family, friends, and some fireworks 🇺🇸
Unfortunately this firework malfunctioned, sending sparks all over the frontyard and driveway. Scary, but not the end of the world. Until…
One of the sparks hit the minivan, which had a LOT more fireworks in the open trunk. Chaos ensued.
Holy shit. Bringing it back to the topic of Azuki Elementals:
Adults setting up the fireworks: The Azuki Team
Family standing up and close to the fireworks: Active community
Family sitting on lawn chairs: Passive community
News stories and social media that went viral: The broader ecosystem
If things go well, it’s a happy family gathering and holiday celebration! If things go bad, they go really bad, and in this case viral as well.
As the story made its media rounds, the quote in the title sticks out.
I think it’s aggressive to say the Azuki team was complacent (there was a TON of effort that was put into the Vegas event, art, and reveal experience), but there may have been some boxes that should have been added to the launch checklist.
Lastly, the CEO of Memeland (and 9GAG) wrote a great long tweet about building in the web3. It highlights how building community in web3 is a whole different beast and I encourage you to read it in its entirety, especially if you’re a builder.
🫡 to the builders in the space, keep going.
See you next week!
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