Those familiar with the NFT market in the Web3 domain are generally well acquainted with the blue-chip project Azuki, which has consistently been at the forefront of the NFT trading market in terms of total market value since its launch.

At the time of Azuki’s launch, its unique art design style led the wave of Japanese trends in the NFT market, resulting in many analogous imitation projects. However, since its launch in January 2022, there has been no same-style project that has surpassed it. The rule of “first come, first serve” and “winner takes all” also applies to NFT projects, let alone that Azuki is the first ERC721A contract NFT project.

With the popularity of Azuki in early 2022, most NFT enthusiasts and researchers held expectations for its development as a Web3 trend brand. The subsequent path indeed confirmed this speculation, but in this process, how to further endow the Azuki IP with more elements to enhance its impression in the users’ minds became the next move for the project team, Chiru Labs.

So, Beanz, which many crypto users consider an offshoot of Azuki, came afterward.

What is Beanz?

Beanz is a functional PFP NFT series with a total of 20,000 pieces, endorsed by Zagabond, the founder of Azuki, and issued by the studio Chiru Labs, which was responsible for the Azuki project. It officially launched on March 31, 2022.

On March 31, 2022, at the Azuki LA party, the project team announced an airdrop of Beanz to all Azuki holders. Each Azuki holder was airdropped two blind box NFTs named Something.

Just two months after Azuki’s boom, the promotion of Beanz NFT was very successful. Many crypto users who missed Azuki hoped to invest in the NFT project under Chiru Labs through this opportunity, which pushed the price of Something blind boxes to over 5ETH.

After the blind boxes were opened, Something was officially renamed Beanz. This project includes a dozen different types and has a distinct visual style of the Azuki series. Not only does it have the same art style, but the design of the Beanz NFT attributes also aligns with Azuki on a holistic level.

Introduction to the Beanz NFT Series

The Beanz NFT series is categorized into 12 different types, each with unique characteristics and specific details related to Beanz. These design distinctions within the Beanz NFT universe reinforce Azuki’s intellectual property content.

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Despite being a new series, the design style of Beanz NFT follows the established trajectory of Azuki, resulting in 12 distinct NFTs.

（Source:azuki.com）

Among them, Toshi is the most common type. Its signature color is the consistent red bean shade of Azuki. Regarding narrative, Toshi symbolizes optimism and leadership, making it Azuki’s most reliable partner.

（Source:azuki.com）

Gus represents trouble and is the most trouble-making character within the Beanz community. However, while being a headache, he also brings a fair share of amusement to Azuki.

（Source:azuki.com）

TAO is a tough, positive, and skilled warrior who has been in training since germination, hence his fiery temper.

（Source:azuki.com）

Link symbolizes knowledge and learning. She has superb analytical abilities, a keen insight into details, and an almost photographic memory.

（Source:azuki.com）

Johnny G. is the star of every party, with an everlasting spirit of happiness and joy. Coffee is his favorite beverage and toy, and his slightly neurotic aura can often be quite the headache.

（Source:azuki.com）

Penny is the most peculiar character among the Beanz, with a quirky personality that enables her to be adept at self-entertainment.

（Source:azuki.com）

Ash is the coolest in personality, quiet yet very relaxed. He always manages to stay calm in the face of chaos, a trait that the other Beanz admire.

（Source:azuki.com）

Pip is quiet most of the time, and her introverted character makes her enjoy solitude. Although she is a woman of few words, each sentence Pip utters is full of wisdom.

（Source:azuki.com）

Ed is an excellent fitness partner and personal trainer. As a stamina-filled athlete, exercising is his greatest joy, and his physique is the ultimate testament to his hard work.

（Source:azuki.com）

For creative painters, the world is their canvas, and Frida is a striking artist, writer, and musician.

（Source:azuki.com）

Sun, embodying the shape of a round and representing the Monkey King, is a radiant warrior protector. He is quite rare and possesses impressive combat skills, while being a very loyal companion.

（Source:azuki.com）

Lastly, the most mysterious of all is Kami, about whom very little is known. If we guess based on the name, “Kami” corresponds to “かみ” in Japanese, meaning deity. Everything about the deity is unknown, which seems quite fitting.

From the perspective of the worldview created by Chiru Labs for Azuki, the project has always been refining the brand completeness of this IP through narrative content. All efforts and focal points are aimed toward trend-setting art, music, and fashion.

Therefore, the Beanz NFT series, as an extension of the Azuki NFTs, has always been fundamentally positioned to supplement the IP narrative. Even in terms of image design, people can simply understand it as the mascot of the Azuki series.

Of course, this statement needs to be more comprehensive. In fact, Chiru Labs still harbors ambitions for the Beanz NFT series. While following the trend-setting route that Azuki has already established, they aim to circulate Azuki’s digital IP assets on the crypto market at a lower price. This strategy is designed to maintain the long-term vitality of the IP itself.

After all, with the Azuki NFTs currently commanding a floor price of over double-digit ETH, if you want the IP to reach mid-tier crypto users and attract their participation and investment, the relatively affordable Beanz NFTs from the same IP is a viable choice to tap into new markets.

As an extension of the Azuki IP, Beanz and Azuki have the same development path and pace. The project team has reserved 50 special NFTs for future business operations to reserve corresponding development resources. They are still targeting the fashion and trend sector, an area where Azuki’s IP excels.

Azuki and Chiru Labs

Many new users, who have recently turned their attention to the web, especially the NFT sector, have a limited understanding of the development process of top-tier NFT projects such as BAYC and Azuki. Their perception of these projects is primarily based on their high cost, without understanding why they have become top-tier projects recognized by the market and users.

Summing up, it’s relatively simple. Setting aside various marketing strategies in the operational phase, these kinds of NFT projects have attained their status today because they have played an important leading role during specific periods in the NFT market.

Take Cryptopunks as an example. It was born before the explosion of the NFT market, reshaping people’s understanding of the types of digital assets derived from blockchain technology.

Azuki, on the other hand, was launched in the heated NFT market of 2022. Its pioneering American-Japanese style PFP quickly gained a great deal of attention. The ERC721A contract, concurrently developed by the project team, has significantly promoted the development of the NFT field, making a significant contribution to the transitional stages of industry development.

Anything that dares to be the first to try and pave a new path will inevitably follow the trend of the times and gain recognition from its surrounding environment. Azuki is a prime example of this, and the project’s focus on popular culture has also enabled this brand to find its own growth path.

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It’s hard not to acknowledge Chiru Labs’ grasp on the Azuki IP. After gaining immense popularity, they actively collaborated with brands from various fields such as fashion, trends, music, and apparel. While sustaining brand influence, they continued to broaden the boundaries of the IP through storytelling.

Beanz NFT is a product conceived under this philosophy. It has also become an essential component of Azuki’s evolution towards a Metaverse form.

Combining Two NFT Applications

Upon opening the official Azuki website, many are attracted by its unique style and interactive content. When combining its two showcased NFTs, you can discover some fascinating content.

For instance, within the “World” page, you can explore a series of virtual scenes built around the brand. In the latest HILUMIA scene, you can find details about Azuki’s projects, activities, and intellectual property (IP) developments. Updates related to the project itself can be viewed here.

（Source:nftnow.com）

However, to understand more detailed content, one must follow Azuki’s social media and online community. This is the consistent approach of Chiru Labs, preferring to craft their official website as an art gallery for their own project, rather than cluttering it with extensive information like conventional project sites. They reach their users with the project’s content primarily through the community.

Therefore, the information gleaned from the official website isn’t substantial, including Azuki’s Beanz. The IP more often showcases its unique features at the project’s entrance. This aligns with the project team’s aspiration to become the next trendsetter in the anime brand based on blockchain technology.

That doesn’t mean it’s challenging for users to obtain updates on Azuki and Beanz. Their activities can mostly be found on the official Twitter or the social media sites of partner brands. This is also a consistent practice among leading NFT projects with an established brand, like BAYC.

The commercial profits from the IP’s image value benefit the users, who can conduct corresponding commercial authorizations with the NFT they hold. Based on the decentralized feature of Web3, this model avoids the complications faced in traditional business negotiations.

Azuki’s official team is also guiding users to participate in this path, not solely limiting them to secondary market investments of NFTs themselves.

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Under these circumstances, much like BAYC spawning MAYC, Beanz has made significant contributions to the richness of the Azuki brand. The combination of the two, in terms of narrative design, is more closely knit.

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Besides various offline physical product licenses and expansions, Beanz is also advancing the IP profit model online following the same pattern as Azuki. Although Beanz’s presence in some clothing industries and offline entertainment venues is less strong than Azuki, it still garners attention. This is the additional impact the IP brings to the product itself. These characteristics are not confined to the Web3 domain. They are, in fact, typical features of trend culture, demonstrating consistent logic over the past several decades.

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The combined application of Azuki and Beanz differs from their partnership mode with many brands. Their mutual existence strengthens the original IP, leading to any single brand association with the same IP.

During this process, Beanz usually plays a supporting role, which aligns with Chiru Labs’ initial IP design. Beanz is the best companion for Azuki. If a future anime based on Azuki emerges, Beanz’s appearance will certainly be reminiscent of the various characters in Pokemon.

Market Performance of Beanz

Let’s shift our focus back to the realm of Web3. As an NFT series, Beanz NFT has been well-received by crypto users since its launch.

During the initial sale, Chiru Labs airdropped Beanz NFT mystery boxes to all holders of Azuki NFT. As there were a significant number of them and Beanz NFT didn’t have a lot of associations with Azuki NFT in terms of equity design, the secondary market for Beanz NFT was relatively more active.

（Source:azuki.com）

However, this means that the price of Beanz NFT itself seemed less expensive than Azuki NFT. As of June 2023, its total transaction volume had reached 152,555ETH, with a floor price of 1.57ETH. Compared to many NFT projects, this market performance is already quite good.

Beyond NFTs, the market application of Beanz, like Azuki, focuses on online brand collaboration and offline commercial licensing. This area involves many off-market profits. But reasonably assuming, with the backing of Azuki’s IP and the team’s community-building experience, the future development of Beanz is promising.

The Market Strategy of Chiru Labs

Naturally, when it comes to the topic of commercial licensing, one must recognize the team behind Azuki and Beanz, two intellectual properties (IPs), which is Chiru Labs. The reputation and the notable achievements of its main members have been repeatedly introduced in the industry.

Here, we delve deeper into Chiru Labs’ market strategy.

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Firstly, it’s important to note that most top-tier NFT projects at this stage have already established their own brand effects, such as Cryptopunks’ performance in the art collectibles market, MAYC’s coverage in the celebrity and fashion sectors, and Doodle’s expansion in the entertainment and music industries.

These top-tier NFT projects have leveraged their IPs, linking both Web2 and Web3 markets. Even though they originated in the Web3 field, the Web2 environment has a broader market.

The logic followed by Chiru Labs also belongs to this proven path. Still, its approach is more akin to MAYC, which provides a standard IP design from the project side and then extends downwards, trying to influence as many market users as possible through enhanced impact. This is unlike projects like Doodle that use user content creation as the inherent competitiveness of their IPs.

However, the reason Chiru Labs can stand out in the Web3 market, besides the team’s strong technical and expressive abilities, lies in their distinctive choices.

Around the crossover period between 2021 and 2022, the overall NFT market began to show signs of fatigue after rapid expansion, resulting from market overheating. Reflected in the market were ubiquitous PFP NFT projects, which followed a blend of bizarre, absurd, technological, and futuristic elements set by Cryptopunks as the form of NFT expression.

The market was flooded with numerous low-quality projects, with new NFT projects popping up every day, and, at the same time, many NFT projects were facing embarrassing situations of breaking below their issue price or being worth zero.

While most practitioners were pondering about hype marketing and traffic sources, the emergence of Azuki brought fresh wind to the market environment. Frankly speaking, even today, many veteran designers and artists in the Web2 domain still scoff at Azuki. From the perspective of artistic style, it is hard to consider it art.

However, at that time, the overall quality of Azuki NFTs was exceptionally excellent and unique. There were very few projects related to Japanese painting style elements, which was enough to attract the attention of market users. Coupled with clever event marketing and the emerging ERC721A contract, the success of Azuki was inevitable.

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Subsequently, following the same path to enrich the IP, the launch of Beanz has enhanced brand influence and completeness.

On this basis, Chiru Labs aligns the development direction of its brands in the Web2 and Web3 fields with the design of the IP itself, focusing on trends and fashion sections, continuously using the IP influence to expand the business.

During this process, the large user base gathered by the project has become the most solid foundation for Chiru Labs. Unlike many NFT projects that emphasize economic model design, Azuki, and Beanz have attracted a considerable proportion of NFT enthusiasts, rather than risk investors overly concerned with short-term returns, thanks to their unique style and temperament.

This arrangement not only fully utilizes the advantages of the IP itself but also avoids competition with other leading NFT projects, allowing Chiru Labs to focus more on developing the Web2 market, rather than being constantly affected by the NFT trading market.

Many cases validate this point. Chiru Labs has had numerous failures, mostly centered on team leader Zagabond, who previously operated three NFT projects, all of which failed without exception.

The reason lies in the rash differentiation choices of previous NFT projects, which made it difficult for them to stand out in the fiercely competitive NFT market. Of course, it also has something to do with the technical strength of the team that Zagabond was a part of at the time.

Conclusion

As one of the successful projects on the NFT market featuring a Japanese anime style, Beanz NFT has strengthened its overall brand design by capitalizing on the IP effects and resource advantages accumulated by Azuki.

From another perspective, the fact that two consecutive NFT projects under Chiru Labs have achieved satisfactory market results, and continuously explore the trend area based on this foundation, is inseparable from the enormous community cohesion gathered by Azuki in the early stages. The emotional connection users have towards Beanz, as part of the same IP, has become the project’s most stable support.

Even if you look at Beanz NFT alone, its characteristics reflect the style that mainstream aesthetics can accept, and it has unique elements consistent with Auzik. Each Beanz NFT image is a masterpiece in the NFT field in recent years.

Regarding the NFT’s gameplay, Chiru Labs also introduced an image fusion tool for Azuki and Beanz. What can be perceived from this perhaps is the project team’s pursuit of creation in the form of NFTs, which is indeed very thoughtful.

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From the current perspective, the future of Beanz NFT holds many more possibilities. It all depends on what level the combination exploration with Azuki, as an IP, can reach. It is truly worth anticipating.