Azuki founder "exposes" his failed entrepreneurial history, NFT prices suffer a heavy blow

Author: Azuma, Planet Daily

In the early morning of May 10, Beijing time, Azuki founder ZAGABOND.ETH published a handwritten article titled "A Builder's Journey," detailing his career path and personal reflections in the NFT space, while reiterating his and the entire Azuki team's firm belief in the project itself and the development of Web 3.0.

Surprisingly, ZAGABOND.ETH disclosed for the first time in the article that he had previously created three other NFT projects—CryptoPhunks, Tendies, and CryptoZunks—and summarized different lessons learned from these three "failures," ultimately integrating all the experiences and reflections to cultivate the current Azuki.

ZAGABOND.ETH stated that he learned different things from the past three projects

Although ZAGABOND.ETH claimed that these three projects played an indispensable role in his personal growth and the future success of Azuki, the community clearly did not interpret it so simply. A significant portion of community members viewed that, due to the poor market performance of CryptoPhunks, Tendies, and CryptoZunks, ZAGABOND.ETH's disclosure felt like an admission of his participation in three rug projects over the past year.

For example, Ex Populus co-founder soby tweeted a question: "So the Azuki founder is admitting to creating and abandoning three projects in the past year?"

Similarly, the well-known figure ZachXBT, with hundreds of thousands of followers, questioned: "So Web 3.0 equals rugging three projects in a year?"

The community's outcry quickly spread to the secondary market. After ZAGABOND.ETH's handwritten article was published, the floor price of Azuki briefly dropped to 10 ETH, and as of 10:00, it was reported at 13.46 ETH, while the floor price of BEANZ had fallen to 1.93 ETH. Although it is undeniable that the drop in Azuki's floor price is also related to the overall market decline, a horizontal comparison with other NFT blue-chip projects shows that ZAGABOND.ETH's article was clearly one of the key reasons.

The performance of Azuki and BEANZ (Something) compared to other projects on Flip.finance shows a decline; this platform's data has some delay compared to OpenSea but can roughly reflect the current market situation.

So why did ZAGABOND.ETH choose to publish this article to FUD his own project at this time? This is currently the biggest confusion within the community. As the founder of a leading NFT project, ZAGABOND.ETH should not be so "foolish." Even with well-crafted rhetoric, such a significant disclosure is bound to provoke widespread controversy.

Regarding this, well-known NFT KOL Hustler provided an answer (unverified). Hustler stated that ZAGABOND.ETH suddenly published the article because there were rumors that the Cool Cats team was about to investigate his past project history, so ZAGABOND.ETH had to choose to "self-disclose" immediately; after all, what he says would be more controllable, and the impact would be relatively smaller.

Returning to Azuki, after the article was published, ZAGABOND.ETH did not engage in arguments with others or provide much further explanation, only leaving a sentence on Twitter.

"We have fulfilled all our promises. Do I wish they (CryptoPhunks, Tendies, CryptoZunks) were more successful? Of course. In the end, the product did not match the market, but that does not mean they were rugs."