The gleaming badge of brilliance in Azuki collector’s profile

fcitradoteth
4 min readOct 17, 2022

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Last Saturday, 14 October 2022, Azuki team released two announcements, one of which is Azuki’s collector’s profile on their website. In this post I’m going to list three aspects that show how well Azuki team knows the web3 culture and how the project benefits from them.

Full disclosure: I took the Red Bean; I am an Azuki token holder.

First, Azuki team treats the collector’s profile announcement as a second reveal. Everyone now can see the full and uncut version of Azuki weapons and their tokens’ traits. The image size of the profile is a perfect fit for Twitter banners.
How this benefits the project?
Azuki holders cannot wait to show how beautiful the water hair traits are, how cute the kigurumi tails are, and how huge the floor sweeper really is. They make posts and threads about it, show the profile to anyone that is willing to listen, and put the full picture as banners. The collector profile is also a big win for Bobu token holders as they get a dope banner of Azuki with a fireflies trait.

Beautiful spirit Azuki with water hair traits and elements
The red panda kigurumi has a cute tail
Profile page of a Bobu fraction holder

Second, badges give additional value to mid-rare items and special traits. Aside from aesthetics, special traits did not unlock anything different compared to tokens with common traits. No incentive to holding on to your sloth T-shirt, red panda cap, or seek tokens with elemental traits. This changed when collector badges were introduced.

How this benefits the project?
Holding a red panda trait unlocks the red panda badge. Hoarding all animals unlocks a beast master badge. Same case with holding or collecting all elements and special traits. There is now incentive to trade and collect these traits because they give collectors the power to flex. The badges also give possibility for future utility: enable targeted airdrops, form trait communities, and unlock future quests.

A collector and whale flexing their badge

This morning, I checked that there have been 73 Azuki trades after the introduction of collector’s profile, 53% of the tokens traded have at least an animal, element, or a special trait on them. If we compare this with 73 Azuki trades before the announcement, this percentage is up from 40% of Azuki traded.

Third, reward participation. This one is I think most important towards the Azuki universe. Not everyone can have enough capital to hoard Azuki tokens, not all users are good in editing and contributing dope artwork, but everyone can participate. The spirit of web3 is to award participation and Azuki team, knowing very well the web3 culture, adds community badges to drive this. Here’s an example of a badge unlocked from a “Rescue Demna” community run initiative:

How this benefits the project?
The goal of Azuki collection is to create a web3 anime universe. They have 10k genesis and 20k Beanz. They need their community to be active: create events, create initiative, make friends, participate in community movement. The more active the community is, the wider the boundaries of Azuki universe can expand. Community badges are introduced to entice community members to participate. Imagine if an Azuki character has no special trait but appears in various universe or media within the Azuki IP. Its value might be higher than an Azuki with a semi-rare trait.

Honorary mention: the profile page adds a layer of safety. Many scammers try to scam Azuki holders to swap their Azuki with a worthless token. These scammers mainly operate via Twitter direct message (DM). I explained the steps on how they tried to lure potential victims here:

The scammer made a mistake trying to scam fcitra

Azuki holders can add their legitimate Twitter handle in their collector’s profile. That way, people can check whether a particular Azuki token is really held by a Twitter profile offering an Azuki swap. Of course, setting your Twitter handle is rewarded with a badge in the collector’s profile.

TL;DR. Azuki’s collector profile page is a smart addition to the Azuki universe:

  1. The 2nd reveal vibes give something to talk and post about for holders, creating more visibility and maintaining excitement towards the project.
  2. Gorgeous arts garner credit for Azuki team to only deliver dope shit.
  3. Collector badges gives additional value for certain traits, creating a demand for mid-rare tokens.
  4. Community participations are noted and rewarded.
  5. Social media contact linked to a collector’s profile adds a layer of safety for doing trades with other legitimate holders.
Here is my lovely girl with her katana displayed in full

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