Azuki founder takes ANIM on air for ‘billion global fans’: Zagabond, NFT creator

Zagabond cut his teeth in DeFi before acquiring NFTs, creating some of the top-tier NFT projects and anime-based brands in Azuki.

First, in January 2022, the founder and the project went through their trials and tribulations but came through on the other side. This week they launched a “culture coin” called ANIME, which aims to create a community-owned network.

“And the way I look at anime coin is that it's a cultural coin that represents the anime industry, so the industry becomes a digital economy where a billion global fans can shape and own the future of anime,” he said. More on ANIME later.

The first batch Azuki is currently sitting at a floor price of 10.5 ETH with an amount of 810,000 ETH in three years. The Azuki ecosystem is also home to Beanz, Elementals, and Elemental Beans. Minutes after Zagabond's “check your wallet” ad that became part of NFT folklore at NFT LA in 2022, Beanz first landed in the air on Azuki carriers.

Zagabond He heard about Bitcoin around 2014, but his real introduction to crypto was around 2017 through Ethereum, which eventually made him a founding member of 0x.

“I had a friend, Linda Shay, who was an early employee at Coinbase, and her husband, Will Warren, were working on this new protocol 0x. At that time, the term DeFi hadn't been coined. Will says, ‘It's a decentralized exchange protocol where you facilitate peer-to-peer exchanges on an open protocol or open blockchain.' It was called Ethereum,” says Zagabond.

“That's when I started diving deeper into Ethereum technology and realized that this is like Bitcoin but on steroids. It's like a supercomputer, and peer-to-peer exchange felt very powerful. I dove into it and ended up being a founding member of 0x, and that's how I got started in crypto.

What attracted Zagabond to NFTs?

In the year In 2018, Zagabond got its hands on CryptoKitties NFT at the first ETH Global Hackathon – but didn't take them seriously at the time.

“One group had these Pokémon cards with pictures of CryptoKitties on them. They say ‘scan this QR code; You can paint this cat on the blockchain,” Zagabond says.

I laughed at it because I was there to talk about DeFi, you know, the future of finance and serious stuff, but they were giving out these Gen 0 CryptoKitties. That was my first NFT.

When NBA TopShot started picking up steam in late 2020, that's when Azuki's founder started leaning into the concept of NFTs and pondering the possibilities.

“Finally, when the NFTs came out in late 2020 with NBA TopShot, that was the first project I was on, like, ‘Wait, wait, these are NFTs. These are signs, but they hide that away from the end user,' and I remember looking at the NBA TopShot site, and they didn't mention NFTs or crypto anywhere on the site.

But these are the times when you can gather; It uses an IP that everybody knows, which is the NBA, and there are hundreds of millions of fans around the world who love the NBA, and the product was awesome. This concept of owning a truly rare digital trading card was fascinating to me.

Zagabond can see an opportunity to mix with NFTs with traditionally interesting and related themes to crypto and make the industry mainstream.

“I thought, ‘This is a huge opportunity, and this is what's going to happen to the next million people.'

Azuki's birthday

Azuki started around July 2021 when Zagabond began cooking up his vision for a decentralized brand focusing on the anime genre that showcased his passion for culture, fashion and branding. On January 13, 2022, the first batch of Azuki was produced.

Subsequent collections followed: OG Collection with Beanz (March 2022), Azuki Elementals (June 2023) and Azuki Elemental Beans (June 2023) to complement the wider Azuki ecosystem.

“I spent four years at 0x. I'm not a big numbers person. I like the power of definition, but I don't think it's my calling. I think NFTs were really the perfect combination of all my interests, so that's when I left and started working on NFTs full time,” says Zagabond.

“Azuki's vision is to create an open anime universe, and we will do this by first creating a decentralized brand with the community. We have three main clusters to be part of the ecosystem,” he says.

“It's very similar to the Bored Monkey model, where there are Bored Monkeys, Mutant Monkeys and then Dogos. I think the only difference here is that Beanz is a standalone IP, and that's something we're going to continue to spend money on growing that IP.

While Azuki wasn't the first project to base its art and brand around anime, it quickly became a leader in the project's early days with good art, art, and physical March drops and events.

Part of the inspiration for the collection was Zagabond looking at most of the projects during 2021 NFT Mania and the lack of quality animation and projects that grew into Asian representation.

“Being Asian-American myself, being born in China and loving anime as an art form and growing up on it, I thought, ‘Why is it so inclusive of web3 culture but represented by anime as a medium?' So, that idea became very interesting to me, and I remember telling myself that whatever I do, I just want it to be right for me. That's how the idea came about.

Launch of cultural coin

ANIME's launch craze has led to attention being drawn to many Azuki collections, with a large portion of the self-described cultural coin going to owners. While the token will be released by the Anime.xyz Foundation and Azuki, Zagabond has high hopes that it will help transform the anime industry into a community-owned network.

Set to launch today (January 23, 2025), Zagabond talks about the parallels he sees in older internet users connecting with a new generation embracing TICKER to form a community around the #hashtag.

“At a high level, what we're seeing right now with tokens and what Web3 and crypto are enabling is what I think feels like the last generation of social media, the hashtags we have. It allowed people to share culture and people said, ‘Hey, this is trending. I want to share it with you.' “What's happening in crypto right now is not just about sharing culture, because now we can be part of the culture together with a ticker instead of a hashtag,” Zagabond said.

“When you take this concept and think about the anime industry, which has one of the strongest fanbases in the world with over one billion fans, simulating this fandom and promoting this culture will help turn the anime industry into a community-owned network.”

ANIME was released on January 13th, and when the comments combine the Azuki community split (37.5%) and Community Farming (13%) split with the rest of the community, it seems that more than 50% support Tokinomics for the community. Tokens are fully unlocked upon boot.

“It's particularly well received with the community because 37.5% of the total supply goes to the Azuki community, and you know, these containers have been with us through thick and thin – they deserve to be rewarded. The 37.5% allocation is what we call the community development allocation, which is also for the community. In addition, 50.5% of the total supply goes to the community, and that is very powerful I think.

Asked to define a culture coin, Zagabond points out that memecoins are more ephemeral than culture coins and points to both PEPE and MOG as other examples.

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“I would say that culture coins are the evolution of memecoins from my point of view. I think memecoins are just coins that represent attention, and most memes are like content. When content comes out, people watch it and then people forget it, so most memories are fleeting. But the ones that really last a long time and stay in the culture, those are what I would describe as cultural coins,” Zagabond said.

“I believe Pepe is one. It is ingrained in internet culture, especially in crypto culture. Those memories are used everywhere. I would say the other developer is Mog. The reason for this is because of the cautious behavior of the coin. The cat emoji is being used as a verb, and they've made it popular. Others try to imitate it, but they are the originators of this. There's a really strong community behind it, and it's part of crypto culture now.”

Quick fire question and answer with Zagabond

What was your first crypto purchase?

“Ethereum was my first crypto purchase. I bought it on Coinbase in early 2017.

What is your favorite NFT other than the PFP you currently hold?

“I'd say it's probably a collection of Art Blocks. It's called “Flowers by Arvig” and the reason I love it is that before things started to get busy with Azuki, I went to this one day, and I remember sending her these NFT flowers when I asked her, giving her a personal check of your wallet time. She was already in the crypto space, so she had a wallet, and I got her address, and sent her one of the flowers via RVig. She loved it, so that set is perfect for me. It's like generating a bunch of flowers; Some of them are really cute, so I'd say this one might be for me.

Do you have a favorite digital artist in the space?

“Lately, I've been a big fan of Yucca. She is an anime artist in the community. Yuka makes commissioned art for the owners of Azuki, and is based in Tokyo. I love her artwork – it's so unique.

What is an NFT project that you think people can sleep on?

I call it “Kaiju Kings”, a collection of pixel art. I haven't heard much about them lately, and I don't know what's going on there, but I remember talking to the founder and he was an amazing builder and I really felt in it for the right reasons. Maybe that's dormant now because I don't see many people talking about it.”

Who would be your top three followers on Twitter for NFTs?

1. Defarmer – “He's an azuki but he's also strong in the ape community. He tweets more than NFTs, but DFarmer is an awesome follower. He always cuts straight to the chase – no BS. So he is for me.

2. Wale — “Of course, you have to give a shout out to our brother Wale. When we first talked to Wale, he didn't have that much of a following and he was in the Clone X community at the time, but we saw the content, the threads, and saw a lot of potential in him, so he reached out and asked if he wanted to do research for us. To give us some information and some ideas on how things work in space.

“That was a while ago, but he was very consistent with the content, and now that he's seen as the NFT content guy, I'm really proud of how far Wale has come, so I'm going to put him there.”

3. Chun0069 – “Give a shout out to someone in the Azuki community. I love his memes, and he also gives great stuff when he's not doing memes. I love Chun, he's a very funny guy. Those are my top three.”

What advice would you give to someone discovering NFTs for the first time today?

“In the first place, I would ask why they were interested, because now there are so many different types of NFTs, they point in different directions depending on their interest. But now that the market is hot, if people are joining NFTs, I point them to these new chains because you can get some cheap mints and make some money. To participate in these communities, some Find whitelist opportunities and then see which communities you're active with and where to go.

They recently retweeted a tweet they posted in December 2022. why?

I don't build for haters shouting from the outside.

I'm always building for my team behind me, the thousands of community fans, and the millions of future Azuki fans.

— Zagabond (@Zagabond) December 30, 2022

“Sometimes, when I think about how far we've come because we've gone through some major challenges in the last three years and that could have killed a lot of communities. I'm now proud of how far we've come, the support I've received, how tight-knit the community is, and I want to show my community that they should be proud too.

“It's a privilege to lead this community, and I'm really building it for the people who believe in me. There are a lot of people who will never change their minds about Azuki or what I think, and that's okay. It is not our job to convince them. We continue to excrete stimulants. I will be here building years from now, and this is the legacy I want to leave behind. This is how I want to inspire the world. That's why I brought the tweet back.

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Greg Oxford

Greg Oakford is the CEO of Upside DAO, Australia's leading crypto and web3 collaboration hub and investment fund. He is an avid NFT collector and founder of NFT Fest Australia. Prior to crypto, Greg was a marketing and sponsorship specialist in the sports industry working on professional events.

Follow the author @GregOakford