Azuki
An NFT collection bridging the gap between the digital and physical worlds
👋 Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Syllabus – a newsletter from Invisible College that will help you navigate the complex world of web3.
To get this newsletter delivered to your inbox, subscribe here:
Before we begin, an upfront disclaimer - nothing here is financial advice. We’re just diving into projects that we find interesting in the hope that you’ll enjoy learning about them.
With that, let’s dive in.
Azuki is a project with a simple yet profound vision - to create the largest decentralized brand for the metaverse.
A quick scan of their website gives the sense that this is more than just your average NFT project. There’s a noticeable focus on bridging the gap between the digital and physical worlds through exclusive streetwear collabs, NFT drops, and live events. There’s an exploratory vision of building 3D townships in the Metaverse, and even plans for physical collectibles. Only time will tell if their vision becomes a reality.
Other than their visually stunning website, there are a few aspects about their approach that are worth noting:
The Azuki contract enabled minting multiple NFTs for essentially the same cost as minting a single NFT. This is due to an innovation by the project’s developers, details of which are available here.
They've chosen to have a mindmap instead of a typical roadmap to give them the flexibility to listen to the community, experiment, and pivot wherever needed.
Their mint process was the first of its kind in the NFT space. It combined three phases:
A Dutch Auction Phase: Approximately 8800 Azukis were available for mint at a starting price of 1 ETH. The price was supposed to drop by 0.05 ETH every 20 minutes until hitting 0.15 ETH.
A Mintlist Phase: Everyone on the mintlist had 48 hours to mint a single Azuki at half the price that the last Azuki sold for during the dutch auction.Â
A Public Phase: The public was to have an opportunity to mint the remaining Azukis that were not sold during the mintlist sale, at the price of the last Azuki sold during the dutch auction (Phase 1).
Their mint launched on 12th January (last week), and 8800 Azukis sold for 1ETH each within 4 minutes. You read that right– 8800 ETH in 4 minutes. That’s $30 million worth of NFTs sold in 240 seconds. There wasn’t even the need for a single price drop during the dutch auction.
On day 2, the mintlist phase saw people picking up their Azukis for 0.5 ETH each. There were just 20 Azukis left for Phase 3. To avoid gas wars, the team decided to cancel Phase 3, and reserve the remaining Azukis for the community.
As is obvious, the Azukis are off to a flying start.
Overall, the project has incredible polish and takes an approach that is refreshingly different from other NFT projects in the ecosystem. To learn more, we’d suggest checking out the Azuki website and digging into their Discord, Twitter, and OpenSea accounts.
Other projects we’re checking out
Wonderland - a DeFi 2.0 project on the Avalanche blockchain with unreal yield rates.Â
Links DAO - a community of golf enthusiasts coming together to reimagine the country club.
Crypto Raiders - an NFT-based dungeon crawler game on the Polygon blockchain.
Invisible College Recommended Reads
Wtf is web3? | 11-minute read
A thoughtfully written piece that explores the raison d’etre of web3 as well as some of the best arguments of web3’s critics.
The Dao of DAOs | 30-minute read
If you’re looking for an introductory piece on DAOs, Packy McCormick’s canonical post is a great place to start.
NFTs 101 | 110-minute read
This is a long read, and in web3 years, it’s fairly old (it was written in October 2021!). However, it will help flip a switch in your brain - taking you from an NFT skeptic to an NFT optimist.
Community Updates
👽 Decentraliens Mint Guide
We just released a guide with the details for the upcoming mint of our Decentraliens NFT collection. If you’re interested in participating, make sure to check it out!
💰 Funding your wallet with Solana
New to the Solana ecosystem? Our community member Paul Searle produced a video walkthrough to help you set up a Phantom wallet and fund it with Solana.
🎟 Upcoming Events
DeFi Chat: CVR/CVX Primer – Tues (1/18) @ 2 pm PT (Discord)
NFT Chat: Evaluating NFT Projects – Weds (1/19) @ 1 pm PT (Discord)
Invisible College Town Hall – Weds (1/19) @ 4 pm PT (Discord)
Web3 and the Creator Economy w/ Rex Woodbury – Thurs (1/20) @ 1 pm PT (Twitter Spaces)
Invisible College, is a learning DAO that helps web3-curious builders and creators explore and launch projects. If you’d like to learn more about our community and get smarter about web3, check out our Discord server.
So excited to be involved with this project and learning more. Grateful. Thanks!