The newly launched Azuki Elementals NFT collection experienced a sharp decline in prices after the art reveal. NFT collectors observed that the Elementals NFTs were nearly identical to the originals, with only slight alterations. The presence of duplicates in the collection significantly reduced its appeal among collectors, resulting in a massive sell-off.
Consequently, the price of Elemental NFTs dropped from 2 ETH to 1.2 ETH, while the floor price of the original Azuki NFTs also saw a 32% drop from 10 ETH to 9.35 ETH, according to data from NFT Price Floor. NFT holders also complained that the Azuki Elementals looked strikingly similar to the original Azuki PFPs and even had odd imperfections.
In response to the collectors’ doubts, Azuki co-founder 2PMFLOW.ETH stated that the ‘duplicate’ NFTs appeared due to a technical glitch. Wu Blockchain explained in a tweet that the metadata for a few NFTs was processed incorrectly due to outdated event logs from a data provider caused by an eth block reorg.
In response to the community's doubts about the existence of the same metadata/images for Azuki Elementals NFT, the co-founder of Azuki stated that this was a technical glitch where the metadata for a few tokens were processed incorrectly due to event logs from a data provider…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) June 28, 2023
However, the presence of duplicate NFTs in the Elementals collection diluted its demand, resulting in a declining NFT floor price. Azuki Elementals NFTs, initially sold for 2 ETH, dropped as low as 1.32 ETH on the OpenSea Marketplace in the last 24 hours. However, at the time of writing, the price climbed back to 1.7 ETH.
Despite this setback, the combined volume of Azuki Elementals NFTs in the last 24 hours is 53,293 ETH, which amounts to approximately $100 million, as stated in blockchain analytics platform Nansen’s tweet.
with combined volume (incl. minting) of 53,293 ETH in the last 24 hours, that's close to $100 million 👀 pic.twitter.com/dvravO5W2u
— Nansen 🧭 (@nansen_ai) June 28, 2023
Nansen also highlighted that the top holder of both Azuki and Elementals is Andrew Kang, who currently possesses 299 Azuki, 580 Elemental NFTs, and 436 BEANZ. Most recently, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Bureau has launched an NFT collection in a bid to recruit cyber talent. With such initiatives, it appears that the year 2023 has much in store for NFT enthusiasts.
The blue-chip Ethereum NFT collection, Azuki, extended its project with the release of 20,000 new NFTs called Azuki Elementals on Tuesday. The first batch of 10,000 anime-themed NFTs was airdropped to existing Azuki NFT holders, while the remaining 10,000 were put up for presale.
During the presale, Azuki NFT holders were given a 10-minute minting window, followed by BEANZ holders (a derivative product) getting access to the presale for the next 10 minutes. During the 20-minute presale window, both Azuki and BEANZ holders were required to deposit 2 ETH. The entire Azuki Elementals collection sold out within 15 minutes, fetching over $38 million (20,000 ETH) according to data from Etherscan.
