A Quick Overview of Azuki's Newly Launched Virtual City "Hilumia"

Written by: Odaily, Tenwen

Virtual fashion, gaming platforms, and derivative projects may become the main tasks.

From the moment of its birth, Azuki, one of last year's NFT blue-chip projects, has been surrounded by various halos—selling out in three minutes, rapidly rising floor prices, a two-dimensional trendy brand, filling the gap in the Eastern market after BYAC… Its unique artistic style, diverse marketing strategies, and strong community cohesion have propelled Azuki to break through one obstacle after another, becoming a phenomenal NFT.

However, a dark history of the founder (for specific information, it is recommended to read “What Happened This Morning? Azuki Founder Exposes Himself?”) has led to public opinion fermentation, causing most NFT players to scoff at its past behavior, which also triggered panic selling, resulting in Azuki's floor price dropping by about 10 ETH, and its attention is not what it used to be. Coupled with the macro environment of a cliff-like decline in NFT trading volume since the second quarter of last year, Azuki has been performing mediocrely, without significant breakthroughs.

To gain long-term capital favor while allowing players to see community growth, every NFT project must innovate gameplay and seek new business or development models.

In June last year, Azuki shared plans to expand, combining IP, offline art experiences, and a series of activities such as releasing the PBT standard. This seems to announce that Azuki's metaverse plan is approaching us.

Today, on the occasion of Azuki's 1st anniversary, the team officially announced the launch of the community-built virtual city "Hilumia," where Azuki NFT holders or community participants can now explore. This virtual city includes various interactive experience platforms, such as the toy store Slowpoke's Toy Haven, the design platform Ember Square, the skateboard enthusiast community Golden Skate Park, and the opinion "collection box" Garden Express.

Upon the announcement, the floor price of Azuki's airdrop project Beanz Official rose sharply, increasing by 69% within 24 hours, and it ranked second on the Opensea leaderboard.

Hilumia: Azuki's Dream Town

From the official website, Hilumia presents the appearance of a dream town, featuring 10 main interactive locations that clearly showcase the purpose of each location and the plans being implemented, such as:

Ember Square: A design shop that features the latest designs and styles from various corners (even alleys) of Hilumia, making it a place to discover current trends and future fashion directions. Coupled with Azuki's recent series of collaborations with fashion brands, such as the limited edition clothing launched with Japanese streetwear brand AMBUSH®︎, the collaboration with Meta Street Market to release XNOR-Assassins virtual sneakers, and the release of the PBT standard supporting physical goods on-chain, we can boldly speculate that virtual fashion NFTs will be an important part of Azuki's development in the future metaverse.

Slowpoke's Toy Haven: A toy store that initially started as a small stall selling red bean and blue bean plush toys (which are Azuki's airdrop project Beanz). It will also produce other quality toys, but the production time is unpredictable (speculation suggests there may be new Azuki airdrops or derivative projects, and the toy store may also be a minting location).

9 Lives Arcade: An arcade. The official introduction states that it is a place to connect fans of classic old games with modern gaming enthusiasts. Players can enjoy games daily and participate in tournaments or events regularly. It is foreseeable that Azuki will launch a gaming platform, and the entire building's appearance and logo are cat-themed. Could the gaming theme also be related to cats?

Additionally, there is the skateboard enthusiast community Golden Skate Park, which seems to allow the collection of 9 golden skateboards. The Web3 version of Love Island, where 64 Azuki residents stay on a heart-shaped love island, with only 2 able to find their other half. There are also community plans like 56 Fitness and the graffiti platform MODA, among others. It can be said that Azuki is gradually enriching its story and is executing its initial positioning to build a metaverse ecosystem.

Azuki's Metaverse Quartet

In fact, Hilumia is not the first attempt in Azuki's metaverse plan. As early as June last year, Azuki held an offline event themed "Enter The Alley" at NFT.NYC, the world's largest NFT event, showcasing various art installations, tattoo shops, and physical merchandise. This event was also the first display under the World section of Azuki's official website, with Alley defined as the gateway for Azuki holders to the future world, leaving many airdrop clues inside.

Following that, in July, the World section of Azuki's official website added a game interface called "The Ruins," but it has not displayed more features yet. The only available feature is a stone tablet hanging with badges of different totems; clicking on a badge redirects to an Azuki holder's profile page, where holders can display the badges they have earned, the NFTs they hold, and participate in NFT airdrop activities. According to the official statement, the profile setting function is just a start, and more innovations will be explored as the community develops, such as IP interaction and community interaction features, with badges continuously increasing over time.

The Hilumia launched today is the third display under the World section. Of course, we have also discovered a fourth plan, which is currently blank with no images or information displayed. However, having seen Azuki's first three metaverse plans, we can see that Azuki is integrating the product series and technological updates it has launched in the past, starting a new narrative, and all characters in the Azuki metaverse have found their suitable positions, waiting for the plot to unfold.

The community atmosphere, user creations, and the development of future stories are all growing upward, indicating that Azuki is making some interesting attempts. The upcoming fourth Azuki metaverse plan may herald more surprises.