Founder of Azuki responds to disaster for the first time: Overestimated oneself, underestimated the community, will not sell the company.

The disaster sales issue of Azuki has not been resolved yet, and the price fluctuations of all series are still severe. In the early morning of June 30th, Christian, the major holder of the Azuki series and also the founder of NDV Fund and ManesLAB, had a long conversation with Zaga, the founder of Azuki, in a phone conference. The major holder, who had intended to offer $40 million to acquire Azuki, shared the content of the conversation with BlockBeats. In summary, the Azuki team underestimated the emotions of the community and overestimated their own abilities. They do not want to do fundraising and will not sell the company.

BlockBeats: Azuki founder probably talked a lot during the conference call, and what everyone is most concerned about is actually two points: why such a catastrophic mistake happened, and what is the solution. Let's first look at why it happened. Did Zaga say why the picture is almost the same as the OG version and why the high price of 2ETH is set?

Christian: Last night, during a call with Zaga, the founder of Azuki, we discussed the cause of this incident and the current status of the team. There are several reasons that led to the consequences of this disaster. Firstly, the sale price was too high. Initially, the Azuki team believed that the price was reasonable, based on their understanding of the price, sentiment, and market performance of OG Azuki at that time. However, they did not realize that a price of 2 ETH is difficult to bear in the current macro market.

The second issue is that the 10-minute sale time given to holders during the auction was too short, resulting in many holders not being able to mint. Zaga honestly admitted this mistake, saying that there were some discussions and disagreements within the team at the time, but they ultimately decided to proceed with this interval time. He did not give specific reasons, but I guess they thought that Azuki's holders would not mint all the tokens, so including the price, he said that it was expected to enter the public sale and lower the price through the Dutch auction method, but he did not expect such a strong response, and the tokens were sold out instantly.

To sum up, I believe that the main reason for this crisis is that Azuki underestimated the community's expectations while overestimating the quality of their product. Personally, I think that there are some commendable aspects to the production of the Elementals series, with some of the graphics being of good quality. However, the most criticized aspect is undoubtedly the similarity to OG's graphics, which has caused harm to the community's interests. This is something that the team did not consider before, and they have acknowledged that they will differentiate the series through a series of means in the future to better meet everyone's expectations and positioning for different series.

BlockBeats: Do the feasible solution teams have any ideas in this meeting? I saw some news that there may be a plan to change the image to make Elementals different from OG.

Christian: The current plan for changing the graphics may be the team's final decision. In yesterday's discussion, Zaga emphasized that the focus should be on highlighting the core of OG Azuki, and he also mentioned that OG Azuki is definitely the most core series in the community and belongs to the top identity symbol.

He believes that the Azuki series represents a very cool member attribute, and in the future, more rights may be provided to OG Azuki. The team's solution may be to make some adjustments in terms of recognition, and to prioritize Azuki in terms of points and other benefits to appease OG Holder's emotions.

BlockBeats: You said on Twitter that the acquisition price of $40 million is too cheap. Does Zaga have any opinion on this price, or do you personally believe that Azuki's value is far higher than $40 million?

Christian: Yesterday I also clarified that the price of 40 million US dollars is definitely not achievable. After communicating yesterday, Zaga has no intention of selling the brand, and this incident is not a deliberate act of rug or fundraising. The reason is as mentioned above, they overestimated their ability and the quality of their delivery. I said on Twitter that 40 million US dollars is too cheap, not that Zaga has set a higher price, but that he has no intention of selling the company at all. Because I have many core contributors in the Red Bean Chinese community around me, everyone's emotions are very low now, and many have begun to change their attitudes. I presented this situation to Zaga, and he also apologized during the communication, acknowledging the contributions made by core builders such as Junzhu to the brand, and also mentioned that he will pay more attention to the Asian and Chinese markets and communities in the future. This year, offline activities will continue to be held in Asia. I hope this can give the community some confidence.

BlockBeats: Are there any key points from this conference that you would like to share with everyone?

Christian: We also talked about the development direction of Beanz. As the largest Beanz holder, I honestly expressed my disappointment with the progress of Beanz so far. Zaga said that in their plan, Beanz and Azuki are separate and the two routes are relatively independent. Beanz will focus on cooperation with Line this year, as well as the incubation of some physical dolls and peripherals similar to penguins, which are already in production and operation, but details were not revealed earlier.

He also has high hopes for Beanz and even thinks that in terms of IP, the potential for this character may be greater than Azuki. He said that compared to Azuki, which focuses on being a unique and rare symbol of identity, the Beanz character is cute enough and easier to approach, making it suitable for large-scale promotion as a cartoon to reach groups such as children, which is also their goal and expectation. He also mentioned that Beanz will play a relatively important role in Azuki's worldview in the future.

Finally, he emphasized that Azuki's future is not limited to the Web2 mode of IP operation. He has different ideas on how to combine IP with the concept and technology of Web3, hoping to subvert the traditional IP operation mode. The production of animation is also underway.

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