The Azuki brand experienced a rapid sellout of its latest NFT (Non-Fungible Token) offering, ‘Elementals’, amassing an impressive $38 million within a mere 15 minutes of release.
However, in the following 24 hours, the floor prices of this collection slid by an unprecedented 44%.
Azuki, a prominent NFT brand, unveiled its latest expansion, the ‘Elementals’ collection, last week during an exclusive event in Las Vegas known as “Follow the Rabbit.”
The ‘Elementals’ NFTs, a series of 20,000 tokens inspired by the four Azuki elements – earth, fire, lightning, and water, were partially airdropped to Azuki holders, with the rest slated for public sale.
However, the sale did not proceed as planned. The initial presale was accessible to Azuki and BEANZ holders, who were given a 10-minute window to mint their tokens. This was followed by a subsequent 10-minute window for BEANZ holders.
The public sale was scheduled to commence at 9:20 a.m. PT. However, due to the speed at which the tokens were snapped up, the need for a public sale was eliminated altogether.
Azuki Elementals have sold out in the presale with the entire allocation going to the Azuki and BEANZ community. There will be no public sale.
Trading and reveal will open shortly. pic.twitter.com/CVk3kRIqU6
— Azuki (@Azuki) June 27, 2023
Notable individual buyers such as luggis.eth, christian2022.eth, and beanwhale.eth made substantial contributions to the sale. The wallet address holding the Elementals mint funds quickly swelled to 20,000 ETH, worth just over $38 million at the time.
Despite the financial success, the event was not devoid of controversy.
The new NFTs were criticized by market watchers and holders for their striking similarity to the original Azuki collection launched in February 2022.
Charlotte Fang, creator of the popular Milady NFT collection, expressed her disbelief, stating that Azuki sold a 20,000-piece collection for 2 ETH each, only for the art to be revealed as “basically identical” to the main collection.
This critique, coupled with the short minting window and reported technical issues, led to discontent among Azuki and BEANZ holders, many of whom were unable to obtain an Elemental NFT.
Chris Lepensky, data lead at DAO operations firm Utopia Labs, echoed these sentiments, stating that many holders were unable to mint due to “website errors and contract issues.” He referred to the experience as “a major L”.
Location tba, a co-founder of Azuki and its parent company, Chiru Labs, acknowledged the problems. In a post-event tweet, he admitted that the minting experience did not live up to the Azuki standard and stated,
“We underestimated the time needed for phase 1 and phase 2 of the presale for Azuki and BEANZ holders respectively… We should have extended the duration to more than 10 minutes to allow a sufficient buffer in the case of any issues (of which there were)”.
The fallout was immediate. The floor price of the Azuki Elementals collection plummeted from the original issue price of 2 ETH to 1.65 ETH, marking a drop of 31%.
Furthermore, the main Azuki collection also experienced a floor price slide of 44% in just 24 hours, as holders started offloading their holdings.