Azuki Elementals: hyped NFT collection turns out to be a flop

The 20,000 collector's items sold out after only 15 minutes. They raised $38 million. But when the artworks were unveiled, the community reacted with outrage.

A new NFT-collection by Chiru Labs caused displeasure among investors. After the unveiling, the artworks already purchased bore such a strong resemblance to an earlier NFT series that some owners complained. The price soon dropped below the pre-sale value.

In the run-up, the launch of the Azuki Elementals collection was still eagerly awaited. 10,000 copies were given away to owners of "Azuki" and "Beanz" NFTs via airdrop. Another 10,000 copies were on sale in pre-orders for two ETH (about US$3,800).

Within just 15 minutes, all copies were sold out. Chiru Labs extracted thus raising US$38 million.

But after the release, complaints piled up in the social networks. Besides technical problems during the airdrop, which left some interested parties empty-handed, the Elementals' strong resemblance to the already established Azuki NFTs caused a stir.

Charlotte Fang, co-founder of the Milady Maker NFT project, described the artwork of Azuki Elementals as "basically identical" to that of the original collection.

Meanwhile, the floor price for one of the paintings on the NFT marketplace OpenSea is 1.65 ETH, which at the time of writing is equivalent to about 3,000 US dollars.

The prices of the original Azuki series also collapsed as a result. In the past week with approximately 25 percent.