cmack

AZK-01 preorder shipping update, details below.

The NFT community spent two years arguing about which collections actually survive a bear cycle. @Azuki just answered it. Loudly. $ 1M in presale revenue. Direct to player. No retail. No distributor. Just their own community buying. The team includes veterans from Pokémon, Blizzard and Riot. GTS Distribution already listing for June. $ 100K prize pool for season one competitive play. They didn't wait for the market to recover. They built something people wanted to buy regardless of the market. The collections that survive bear cycles aren't the ones with the best floor at the bottom. They're the ones building something real while everyone else is watching charts. Which collection do you think is doing that right now? ⛩️

May the 4th be with you

Props to Azuki for seeing the TCG trend coming a few years ago before it really took off… They are the first I remember announcing theirs out of all the “top” pfp projects and really making it a focus of their future plans.

hello @Azuki @AzukiTCG

Hit 100K posts. Wild number. Pretty sure 90% of all these twts are Azuki related lol. Good reminder to myself just how much I love this brand and community. Ikz mfrs ⛩️

Alignment in the IP at its earliest formative stages is alignment in identity and shared values. Is the Pokemon Company in a discord with you sharing their plans and building the IP alongside you? Is Bandai going to license the character that you own and put it in their card game? No. Those are real differentiators you don't get with established web2 IP and they're a function of getting in early on a world that's still being built. Azuki holders also see value in the art itself. The Azuki pfp collection is a blend of art and technology that has resulted in the most complex pfp collection in the world. The art stands on its own. You've been clear you're looking for financial alignment. That's fair, and there are projects experimenting on that front that may be a better fit. Some collectors value what Azuki offers at current prices, others don't. That's how a market gets made. What I can do is be clear about what Azuki is and where we're going.

Just look at these games happening in the Azuki TCG discord on a fine Wed evening. There are players who fell in love with the game first, discovered the holder community, and now rocking an Azuki Focused on making a great game and IP. Everything else will fall into place.

Some ppl think that Azuki isn't doing enough "web3" I think there’s a common misconception on what we're actually building. Azuki was built on the idea that the collectible characters belong to the holders. The NFTs are the 1st edition collectibles of this universe, the original characters of the Azuki IP. We care deeply about the art. It's why Azuki has consistently had sales well above floor for rare traits and aesthetics. Collectors are paying for what makes a specific character special. Today we're building the TCG to take those characters mainstream, followed by the official manga to turn the characters you own into a story millions will fall in love with. These characters started as PFPs. Today they’re used in trading cards played in tournaments. Soon they'll be in manga panels that people read on the train. They'll be loved by fans who've never owned an NFT. That IS web3. We're just doing it our way. The expectation is often that web3 means tokens are at the center of every product, fully onchain mechanics, experimentation at every layer, etc. That's a good fit for some projects. It's not what Azuki is. When we decided to build a TCG, there were holders adamant it should be digital and run on tokens. Despite gaming tokens mooning at the time, we chose otherwise. We knew that the facts were that 1. TCG players hate crypto. and 2. we have a goated team that has the ability to make a physical game that can compete with the best card games on the market. The right move was to build something players actually want and let the IP carry it. I'm glad that we stayed disciplined and made that call. That decision was specific to us given our team, our strengths, our constraints. Every team should lean into theirs. There is no single right way to do this. Going back to constraints for a sec bc it often gets overlooked... If your target audience hates crypto, why tf would you shove it in their face? Really think about that for a sec I've been very clear about what Azuki is and isn't. Read my pinned article. The NFTs are collectible characters and the original IP of the Azuki universe. The team is building a TCG and a manga from that IP. We work closely with the holders who've internalized this path, and that has been one of the most rewarding stretches of the journey. This path allows us to grow and proliferate the characters owned by holders with products that appeal to a mainstream audience. Some will disagree. I respect it. It doesn't change my mind. Azuki isn't built for everyone. It's built for the people who get it. If that's you, come join us. Azuki

The most innovative IP companies in the world exist in Web3. None of the incumbents are pushing the boundaries of innovation. This is how we win.

SOLD OUT collect.anime.xyz sells out again RESTOCK COMING 🔜 SOON

Here’s how it works:

Luca Netz bought from 14 NFT collections. The buys aren't the story. Every one came with a tweet about the team behind it. Not "undervalued." Not "bullish." Just here's who built this, and why they've earned respect. - MAYC. - Azuki. - Milady. - Chimpers. - Moonbirds. - Good Vibes Club. - VeeFriends. - Quirkies. - Bearish. - Onchain Heroes. - Rekt Guy. - HV-MTL. - Rogs. - XCOPY. Blue chips next to sub-0.1 ETH projects. Same energy for all of them. The only credential that seemed to matter: still here, still building. I hold Chimpers and Azuki. This didn't move my floor. But after years of watching those teams grind when nobody cared - Yeah, it hit different! What most people are missing: for half these projects, one co-sign from @LucaNetz does more than a hundred floor sweeps ever could. Debate the timing. The builders aren't.

In a world where taste matters, few have a greater finger on the pulse than @Azuki.

Reminder that Azuki is the best PFP in crypto and it’s not close

maybe the real combat trick was the friends we made along the way

Azuki was so ahead of the game with their Collector's Profile.

Said it earlier this year. Shipping it now. Azuki TCG now ships through GTS, the same distributor that stocks Pokemon, MTG, and Lorcana in card shops across America. The characters the Azuki community has owned are step by step becoming mainstream IP. TCG now, manga next. Ask your local shop owner to preorder Gates Awakened (AZK-01) today.

Happy National Anime Day! 💦