Crafting Digital Legacies: Azuki's Vision in Building Web3 IP

Immerse yourself in the visionary journey of Azuki, a trailblazer in the Web3 space, as they navigate the intricate process of building a robust intellectual property.

This transcript offers a rare glimpse into the strategies and philosophies driving Azuki's success (despite the scandals surrouding his founder & community members)

From embracing community co-creation to understanding the nuances of digital branding, the conversation illuminates the path to creating enduring and engaging digital identities in the ever-evolving Web3 landscape.

TRANSCRIPT

Legendary 00:02:20 GMG, absolutely love feedback with our weekly spaces with ZTX.

Legendary 00:02:58 And for today, we have planned something that a bit different to the latest spaces that we have been doing. And Carmen and I have been on a call and have been strategizing a bit. And We kinda realized that with so many of the gaming projects that we've been speaking about, often it came to the point that many games, many projects start as a single product first. They start with a game with a very, very specific focus.

Legendary 00:03:26 And many of them want to scale, want to build up their own ecosystem, eventually want to have their own a world of games, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, but they are just not yet at that point.

Legendary 00:03:39 And they also highlighted many founders did that It is so important to, like, focus on one thing first and then start thinking about how you can scale from a product to an ecosystem and for that reason, we thought given the, 2nd anniversary of Azuki and given the plethora of announcements that we've seen around that, that there is no better guest and no better brand to have with us on stage than, them and and Azuki to kinda talk about what it takes to grow a brand from a single product to an ecosystem that focuses on more than one individual thing And, also, we have seen a knot in into gaming.

Legendary 00:04:23 We have seen a Suki announcing that they do want to have one of the focus points on gaming, on a hyper casual mobile game featuring the Beans IP, which I'm also curious to hear more about that thought process and more about where this, basically line of thinking in the overall strategic lineup is coming from And with that out of the way, then welcome to the stage. It's been a while since we chatted last time. How have you been?

Dem ⛩️ 00:04:52 Hey, legendary. It's great to be up on the stage, especially on the 2nd anniversary of Azuki and with so many Azuki in the audience. And, man, I'm so impressed by how far you've come and and all you've grown, this last year. So it's amazing to be on on one of your stages. Finally, thanks for having me.

Legendary 00:05:09 Thank you very much. Thank you. Parma, welcome to the stage. Are you feeling a bit better? How are you doing?

Karma 00:05:16 Hello, everybody. Yeah. I'm I'm on the 6th side, but I'm actually feeling really elated. I'm in New York right now, just traveling And I woke up today, and everything is completely bathed in snow. It looks like in a fairy tale, I'm looking out of the window right now and It just, yeah, it just looks like a fairy tale. I've never seen anything like this in New York, gorgeous thing to wake up to. And of course, an even better panel jump into. So, you know, just yesterday, I was on the simplified spaces.

Karma 00:05:48 It's with Who's Dow, and we discussed, gaming and CTX is is very frequently tuning in to share our experiences. And we were discussing even on that game gaming spaces, the power of IP and how important it is going forward for the gaming, you know, sub niche for the hyper casual gaming niche. So I'm really excited to jump into the conversation today and show just how intertwined IP in the gaming is, and there is just no better IP to discuss this with than Azuki.

Legendary 00:06:23 Couldn't agree more with that. Ashley, welcome to the stage. How are you doing?

Ashley 00:06:28 How have you been? I am fantastic. I am I've been super busy. I feel like this year, I feel like all of us had that, you know, weird holiday season where we don't really do much, and I feel like now I've made up for that a lot. So super excited to have this conversation, actually. I've been a beans beans holder for a while. And, so, yeah, I just I just love the fact that, you know, web 3 is going in a more gaming direction. I really want more RPGs to be honest. So that's that would make my day even better, to be honest.

Legendary 00:07:04 The one thing though I would have to add is I love RPGs, but when do we find the time to play all of those? Like, I've been thinking to give Balderskate, 3 a try it, but then I realized I just don't have a 110 hours to put into the main campaign now. So this is the only caveat to that. Hassanza, welcome to the stage. When when I'm scrolling through the audience, I see so many elementals, Azuki's beans, and that's absolutely amazing. What are your thoughts on on the panel on the audience? And how have you been?

Sanza 00:07:36 Hey. Sorry, voice crack. I didn't drink water. Like I should have have started talking. So good. So good. Good morning. I first of all, I'm I'm doing great. Doing great. I also do not have a 110 hours into gaming like yourself. Unless my daughter wants to start playing with me in which case then maybe. But now I I absolutely have been loving everyone kind of unseeing Azuki for what we kind of always knew was always here. I'm just beautiful to see people just kind of bring bring into their conviction as a little bit as well. I, you know, I don't know if you know legendary.

Sanza 00:08:12 I started a group chat called Garden Central for people who are new all Azuki elemental and beans. Because I found that there was a little bit of a lack of of of a group chat for all holders to kind of talk and reconvene. So we've been busy, not gonna lie, and that's that's that's a testament to how how well Azuki has executed with the announced men over the last couple of weeks. So really, really excited for, Derek to hear them today. You know, my my man my man is is when, you know, when he gets on his soapbox, he gets on his soapbox, but everyone better be taking notes. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

Legendary 00:08:50 Absolutely. Love to hear that. Yeah, with that out of the way, let's let's get started. Maybe let's, start with you, Dem, And let's not, start with diving into the plethora of announcements, but start on a personal note. How did you feel from, you know, in over this journey over the last 2 years from, via Zukkimen to getting to the 2nd anniversary, how that how did it feel on a personal level?

Dem ⛩️ 00:09:17 I got I got pretty emotional. I'm not gonna lie. As you may know, I was at Google before as a product manager and I had achieved a certain level of success there, and I was leading my own team, but but I was very unfulfilled by the work that I was doing at Google and the fact that I was launching product to millions of people, but everything that I launched kind of turned into numbers and metrics. And it it just felt very dehumanizing. And so when Sagabond called me 2 plus years ago and said, hey, like, what do you know about this course? I I didn't know anything about this card, but I was just, like, looking it up as we talk. And I was like, yeah. Yeah. Discard. I know I know so much about this or put me in coach.

Dem ⛩️ 00:09:57 And so I just I I couldn't miss the next thing that he launched after after having seen what he did with the CRX protocol. And I just, you know, I just sort of fake it till I make it. You know, I just sort of manifested, this role, and and it's been it's been such a fulfilling journey. Even though it's been tough at times and and we've lost the trust of people and and we've made mistakes, overall when you look at the community and how interconnected it is and and how much people believe in the brand and and and want to succeed and how much they've built themselves of that brand, how much they put into it.

Dem ⛩️ 00:10:31 It puts me in a situation personally where I am with probably the best team that I ever work with, with a ton of resources and a, and a ton of things to, to develop and build, but also building something that it's quite personal Like, sometimes we think of Azuki as, like, a really big brand in the web 3 space, but in the overall concept of brand, like, in the in the in the real term of, like, how big a brand can be there, they're they're quite small. Like, we we make product for for a very passionate, group of people.

Dem ⛩️ 00:11:00 And so to to reach the 2 year mark, on such a strong note, with such a strong year ahead in terms of what we can release and the things that we can develop this year, it's it's a blessing and and to have been given multiple opportunities by our community to learn from our mistakes and and come back again. It's exciting. So it felt nostalgic, but it also felt really energizing to to reach this point and, you know, and to see that what we were putting out was really resonating with people. After 2 years, that that that gave us all a lot of energy.

Legendary 00:11:33 Yeah. I can absolutely relate to that. And 2 years is a very, very long time in crypto, like, feels more like 2 decades in in a web tool life. I mentioned it a couple of times that you have those 3 more than one focus point, you actually have those 3 focus points that you outlined in in the announcement, 4 days ago. Anime, physical, gaming.

Legendary 00:11:57 I think over the course of, our conversation, we will definitely dive into all of those But why don't you give us, like, a headline overview of what those individual aspects are anime physical gaming and what is happening in those verticals.

Dem ⛩️ 00:12:14 Yeah. I think the I think the tweet was necessary because we had started Azuki as a metaverse anime brand. And and we want to evolve into something much greater. We've always had a dream of being a decentralized anime ecosystem, a decentralized anime brand. And it was very important to put it into such simple terms as 3 branches or 3 pillars of the IP strategy because We've been doing really exciting things, but we saw from our community and from the wider space that they were not really connecting the dots as much as as as we thought they were.

Dem ⛩️ 00:12:51 So this is not a change of our strategy. This is not like a like a pivot. It's just a a a way to encapsulate it in as simple as as as possible terms that that we can then repeat in terms of narrative and in terms of the space understanding us. So this is just an iteration of what Suzuki has always been. We've always talked about decentralized brand building. We've always talked about co creation. We've always had an anime aesthetic. We've always had great physical products that we made with a lot of love. And we've always had gaming people within our company.

Dem ⛩️ 00:13:25 We always had a gaming DNA when you look at Hoshi Boi previous projects or when you look steamboy, who was the lead character on Overwatch, there was always a game like component in what we did. And so it was really important from a storytelling perspective because this space is so narrative driven that we now could go into 2024 and tell people very clearly, we're becoming a decentralized enemy ecosystem and the way in which we're gonna grow that IP and reward our community is through anime, is through physical goods, and it is through gaming. And it's that simplicity, I think, that we're gonna carry into this year terms of the energy that we ring on the on the storytelling that we do.

Dem ⛩️ 00:14:05 So it was important to put it together, but it it's but it's not a pivot, you know, like, we've been doing this. Like, we're not new to you know, we're we've been we've been doing this, but it's it's important to tell that story, you know, in a clear and concise way because some of the points were not being connected, as strongly before.

Legendary 00:14:20 Is it fair to say that the connective tissue, the glue between those 3 verticals is the IP, is the brand, that Azuki is building?

Dem ⛩️ 00:14:32 Absolutely. And I think it's more important than just the connective tissue. It is the whole thesis for the brand. Because as we enter a world in which you can create so cheaply with AI Technology, you know, to enter a world in which we're so like, heavily interconnected online. And as we enter a world in which you can have part ownership in the characters and in the IP of any single brand, it will become more and more important how strong the IP is on top of which the ecosystem is built than the actual ecosystem building. I mean, you can look at it from a gaming perspective, like the barriers to create a game were so high before. You needed so much money.

Dem ⛩️ 00:15:11 You need such a strong team. The thesis is that in 5 to 6 year time, is going to take actually very little to make a game, and it's all about who are the characters, what is the world, what is the story that's who's gonna draw people Same thing with animation. Like, it used to take so much money to make animation. And now that that that that caused that barrier to entry gonna decrease over the next 10 or 15 years, and it's all about, it's all gonna be all about who are the characters, who what is the world, and what is my connection to it.

Dem ⛩️ 00:15:39 And most importantly, the fact that we can give people ownership of characters, you can give people ownership of different parts of the IP through the method of NFTs, that is gonna be a differentiating factor between companies that are billed centralized and they build their IP in a centralized way, and they're constantly chasing down and shutting down any cocreation and companies that embrace co creation that are like co creation first that invite co creation and that are able to accelerate past those centralized brands because at their core, they're already sharing a flywheel rewards for people that co create with them.

Dem ⛩️ 00:16:16 So it's not just connective tissue. Like, IP, like, that is the thesis. Like, that is the future of Azuki as a brand, and and we think that that is the future of brands. The future of brand is really, really strong IP that is decentralized first and open to co creation.

Legendary 00:16:32 You mentioned a couple very, very interesting things in there. You said on the one hand, you know, anime is It is a very competitive segment. The entry barriers are getting lower. AI is definitely, a tool that will allow many, many more people to explore building projects, trying to build their own IP, etcetera, in in the world that shapes out like this and in a sector as competitive as the anime market, which I feel like that many people, are still underestimating.

Legendary 00:17:04 And, you know, we have a very, very gaming, strong audience and just taking that that minute before I get to the question to compare those two markets real quick If you look at the gaming industry as a whole, the market size for projected to be for 2024 is 272,000,000,000 US dollars. The anime market has been at 25 ish 1,000,000,000 last year, so that's already a tenth of the gaming market. And if you look at the growth rate at the CAGR, the compounded annual growth rate, it's actually, the anime market is growing a bit faster than gaming.

Legendary 00:17:40 And if you look at those numbers in in 2030 where they're projected to be, the anime market will be at 63,000,000,000 and gaming will have grown to 426,000,000,000 US dollars. So it is a very, very competitive sector. It is a sector that's growing so fast, even faster. Also, it's not by, a large margin, but even faster than gaming, and you have AI as a technology coming in where many people will have an easier way to try to build their own IP. So what does it really take in a competitive landscape like that? To build, a brand to build an intellectual property.

Legendary 00:18:20 That's truly outstanding and unique.

Dem ⛩️ 00:18:28 Oh, did did he cut out? I I I stopped here in Lending Drake.

Legendary 00:18:31 Can you guys hear? Can you guys hear me? Or did I lose everyone?

Karma 00:18:36 No. We can hear you.

Dem ⛩️ 00:18:37 We can hear you. Right? I can I can hear you?

Legendary 00:18:39 Yeah. Yeah. Where did you lose me then on my long ass monologue?

Dem ⛩️ 00:18:45 I think I think you were talking about, like, gaming and anime the growth rates.

Legendary 00:18:48 Okay. I'll I'll I'll I'll sum it up real quick. So I said gaming sector very competitive. Anime, very competitive. Anime is growing even faster than gaming. And in a competitive landscape where, anime draws a lot of attention where AI makes it easier for people to try to build their own brand, their own IP, what does it take for a brand like Azuki to build an IP, to build a brand that truly stands out amidst that competition.

Dem ⛩️ 00:19:16 Of course. I mean, the number one thing is a set of characters and a story that really truly draws you in. And and that is down to us as a team to create I think one misconception when we say decentralized brand building, it sounds like everything's gonna be pushed out to the community and no work welcome from us. And I think that is the wrong way to think about it. I think, the key to success here is that we create characters, and we create a narrative, and we create a world that is incredibly compelling, and that draws eyelids both from, like, web 2 and web 3 people.

Dem ⛩️ 00:19:54 And so with our short form anime series, the goal is that we can prove that the Azuki IP is not just super powered by the fact that it is NFT enabled, but also by the fact that we can create a really high quality piece of content of anime with really veterans from the industry and and with very well respected people and that that story can capture your regular anime fans attention. So it needs to be a really strong story, and it needs to be really strong characters. There needs to be a commitment across the board to higher than average quality. And I think that's an advantage that Azuki has because the way that we're built and the way that we're resource, we don't have any, like, VC money.

Dem ⛩️ 00:20:34 We don't have any of those, like, restricting factors for larger companies where they have to cut in costs and they have to cut on production and quality because they have these, like, sort of targets of year over year. You know, we're not tied down by those things. We can come in really hard with really high quality products. And then I think the secret sauce and the reason why we will eventually, you know, perform much better than centralized IPs is that we're open to co creation. So if we do a great job of creating a really compelling universe with really compelling characters that are very, very much like attracting the attention of web 2 people and web 3 people, and we continue to deliver very high quality projects and really high quality products and experiences.

Dem ⛩️ 00:21:14 Since we're open to co creation, we will then attract, and we will continue to encourage creator within our community that are rewarded by a flywheel to, to do their creation And then we will have not just sheer labs pushing for the Azuki IP, but all of these different nodes in the network also pushing for that's stage 3, but that's the differentiator, right? Because, like, everybody can everybody that's talented can create great characters. Everybody that has a lot of money can create very high quality products with no compromise for cost, but the final stage, you know, like the final leg of the race when you're really to head with the final competitors.

Dem ⛩️ 00:21:51 That's where if we've built the right flywheel to encourage co creation from our community, then all of a sudden we've got 100,000 of people pushing for us while they're running out of steam, and they're just this one centralized company that's building the IP altogether. So it will be a multi year process to, like, sort of build all of this out. But I think in the end stage, when they're sort of running out of Jews, they're sort of running out of steam and fumes, we will have a flywheel to reward our creators, and we will have all of these innovative ideas that centralize IPs often miss out on. Like, one one story that I go back to a lot is the story of Twilight and 50 Shades of gray. I don't know if you guys have read 50 Shades of gray.

Dem ⛩️ 00:22:30 I'm pretty sure Ashley is aware of 50 Shades of gray. I don't know why. I think Saundice has heard it as well.

Ashley 00:22:35 Maybe the audiobook.

Dem ⛩️ 00:22:36 Oh, I I've, you know You're aware. You're familiar with the material. 50 Shades of gray started as fan fiction for Twilight. So so it started as a story of, you know, Edward and and and then, like, you know, doing the dirty, but the twilight people didn't want that. They didn't want that creator in their community. So they're like, no, you can't build within our ecosystem. You can't build and and co create with us. Get out of here. So the author, she was a very smart woman. She was like, alright, I'll just create my own IP. She's sold more books than Twilight. She's sold more movies than Twilight because frankly, the idea is brilliant.

Dem ⛩️ 00:23:10 And and and the twilight people as an IP, they've lost out on all of that value because they were not built for co creation. So it's not that like Twilight just sat around and waited for their community to make dope stuff But when the community of toy like make dope stuff, they were not built to accept that and incorporate it into their brand, and they missed out on like a 2x3x growth on their brand because they were not really willing to co create. So I think at the end of the race, if we execute all of the things that are in the playbook. At the end of the race, the last bit of advantage would be that cocreating piece.

Legendary 00:23:45 I love the focus on cocreation and I also like how this is a pattern that because you mentioned the Twilight story, that is also a pattern that we see in gaming very, very often. Right? So many popular games or franchises where actually mods off other games' data being based on on on the Warcraft IP, is one of the first examples that always comes to my mind. And I also liked how you explained that building a decentralized brand doesn't mean just pushing the work on the community.

Legendary 00:24:18 And, obviously, you've been doing a lot of work to to grow the Azuki IP, also outside of x, outside of our little, a bubble in here. And I think it was in April, in April of last year that you unveiled the partnership with, IPX formally aligned line friends and line friends being that that global character brand that originated from the line messaging app and, has obviously millions of users in in in the States, but even more users in Asia.

Legendary 00:24:58 And has built their own IP has built their own merchandise and has been doing a lot to well, grow that and nurture that IP. We've seen pudgy penguins, following an approach where they absolutely dominate GIFI dominant Instagram, half of the physical toy lines, we, see a ZT X that they follow a playbook where they now partner up or with with stickily.

Legendary 00:25:28 And I think all of those partnerships, acquisitions, collaborations in whatever form they happen, very, very important to grow a brand from, like, a singular position to something that can carry a whole ecosystem that exists outside of a bubble. And I also think, I definitely wanna hear more about that.

Legendary 00:25:52 And I know it's a year old news, but I find it very relevant in the context of talking about IP about that IPX partnership, how, that has, basically evolved and if, if, if possible, how that fits into your thinking of cocreation and also here, for the sake of, basically having multiple views on that from UCARMA after that on the collaboration with Stickley.

Dem ⛩️ 00:26:24 Yeah. I think that's gonna be a great question for when, Wiz Wang or head of growth gets up on sand's spaces. So let me let me just show a espresso shot later today. You're gonna have a list there, and she's gonna be talking about IPX. And then tomorrow, we're gonna be doing a discord stages at, 6 PM where we're gonna have Feb and we're gonna have a Steam Boyd talking about our partnership with Dentsu. I think what I would say in a more general term is whenever you decide on an element for your IP strategy, it needs to be, like, a net add to what you're trying to build. And so when you decide to bring in a partner, you need to bring in a partner that has skills or capabilities for assets that you know, you do not have.

Dem ⛩️ 00:27:03 So for example, one thing that line friends has figured out is an in store experience that feels really premium and luxury and cute, but at the same time is in, like, prime location. So the bean the beans brand was all over gangnam, which was the, you know, the best sort of shopping neighborhood in, of, in, in order of Seoul, it is like where all the luxury stores are. They have a location. They're like a physical retail location that is beautiful. It's a really experiential type of store. And so to be able to put our products and our IP within that cons context really elevates it. So when you look at somebody like line friends and IPX, the resources that they have are of course production resources.

Dem ⛩️ 00:27:42 But more importantly, physical locations. Like, they were putting 247, a beans video on Times Square all of all throughout this week. As people were, like, walking around, they were seeing beads in Times Square. Like, that is something that they bring to the partnership for free. Same thing with Dentsu. Like, Dentsu is an amazing production agency, but they're also a really, really large advertiser with a lot of, like, really strong brand connections. So not only is Dentsu helping us connect to legendary directors like Goro Tani Gucci in terms of the anime production because they have such a wide range of skill sets. They're also suggesting us partners and sponsorship partners for the garden tour events.

Dem ⛩️ 00:28:19 Like, when you can find a partner or you can find a strategy that benefits you in multiple dimensions, then you're onto something really exciting. Like, why is Pudgy so smart? On one hand, the Jiffy strategy is brilliant because it gets a lot of people looking at their GIFs, and it gets a lot of people, like, being a great aware of, like, what the pudges look like. But at the same time, they're able to use that production to create custom GIFs for their community, which the community really enjoys. They feel like really recognized by it. So, boom, they found an element of their IP structure that does multiple things for them. That's so much better than getting you a partner that just does, like, the one thing. You know?

Dem ⛩️ 00:28:56 And I think that's why you have some partnerships that are more of, like, a one and done, like, Oh, this was cool. This was exciting. Like, Museum of my homes. You know, we were able to do something with Patrick Mahomes. He's a great quarterback, but You know, there weren't there weren't like a whole set of capabilities that help each other out, but when you look at a more long term partner or a long term strategy, it needs to give you multiple things at once. For it to be worth all the time and investment.

Legendary 00:29:19 Yeah. I also liked how you said that such a long term partnership at the end of day needs to be a net add for your brand. And I have one more follow-up question before I'm gonna throw it to you, Carmen, on that. If you partner up with a company or with a project that is to be a more long term, a more sustainable partnership. And liking the case with, IPX is actually something that touches the heart of your brand touches the IP and works like in very, very crucial parts, of your brand.

Legendary 00:29:51 How do you make sure that that partner actually understands the DNA of your company and the DNA of the brand that your building? Is this something that only time can tell? Is this something where you have to purely rely on gut feeling or are there a couple of criteria that you can apply to them? Did I cut out again, or did, them lose me?

Karma 00:30:19 Karma, can you hear me? I can hear you perfectly fine. Them, are you still with us, or were we just confused as to which one of us should be answering the question?

Dem ⛩️ 00:30:28 Actually thought that was a question for you, Karma. How many times?

Legendary 00:30:33 No. What that that was a question for you then, though.

Dem ⛩️ 00:30:36 Alright. Can you repeat it then? Because I was like, I was like, alright. I'm off the I'm off the spotlight now.

Legendary 00:30:41 It's Karma's time. Taking taking a moment to hydrate. Yeah, the question was when you when you have a partnership, like the one with IPX that is sustainable, that is long term, and that touches, the heart of your brand, the is your IP? How do you make sure that that partner really understands the DNA, of your brand, of your company, of your IP. Is it something that only time can tell? Is it something where you go by gut feeling, or are there a couple of criteria that you can find?

Dem ⛩️ 00:31:10 It's it's time and especially when it's an international, partnership, it it's travel time. So Wiss Wang and the team and Sagabaughn and and Elaine had to travel to multiple times to visit their stores and to sit down with them and show them our Twitter feed and show them our community members and their creations, and they had to show us their products and their production.

Dem ⛩️ 00:31:33 And we have to talk about our history and we have to go back into, like, why certain decisions were made with our IP, and they had to tell us certain stories and and sort of the lore of the brand, like sort of those intra intra company, intra community things that are very, sort of, you know, central to to to us. And so that's why the IPX partnership wasn't, as quick as, like, the web 3 mind would expect. You know, the web 3 mind would be, Okay. The partnerships announced and the products are in store like 2 months later. We really took the time to make sure we understood Brown, and we understood the cast of characters and what they meant.

Dem ⛩️ 00:32:11 And they trusted us to treat those characters well within our ecosystem, and they understood beans. They knew who these characters were and what they were doing in the world, and they understood our community and why our community was so engaged with beings and that takes time. It takes travel. It takes trust. You know, and and it's and it's it has to be done right. And so I think it's really good that we took our time to do this thing right. And I think now there's a very strong understanding between both IPX and ourselves about what our IPs are and what our capabilities are and, what we can trust each other on and we can bring to the table. And so that's unfortunate because web 3 doesn't always necessarily give you the time to do that. There's a ton of pressure to rush things.

Dem ⛩️ 00:32:50 There's a ton of pressure to, to bring figs out the door. And I understand also from the community that you know, it can be frustrating to see things not move at the speed, that other projects might move or that other, brands might move, but I think it's crucial. I think it's crucial, and we're lucky to have a core community that's patient enough and experienced enough, and that has run their own businesses and that has been in these negotiations before that they understand it. Because otherwise it will be very, very difficult to do what we do, but, you know, when you can finally show them the end result and they look at it and they're like this field. Right? I think that's actually a really good point of, like, re earning the trust of the community.

Dem ⛩️ 00:33:28 So we're lucky to have a community that gives us time to do things, right? And we don't take that for granted. And so we take, we take all that time that they give us to make the best product possible and make sure that it feels right at at launch.

Legendary 00:33:41 That makes so much sense. And I like how you highlighted the the value of travel time in, you know, a space that is so digital as ours. It probably something that we don't necessarily think about at the first glance. Carmel would love to loop you into this conversation. And here from from your side, a, what is going on with stickily and ZT X and what is the IP play, the thinking behind that?

Karma 00:34:08 Yeah. And I will need to zoom out in order for, you know, like, my plug to make sense within the realm of the IP discussion that we've been in. And something I really, really value about everything you've just outlined then, like, you really drill in on the long term vision and the individual steps and considerations needed to do this quote unquote right. And I think that's that's, you know, the fundamental of it.

Karma 00:34:35 So at ZT X, we are building something slightly different than Azuki, whereas Azuki is building, you know, IP first and product seconds, which in my opinion is the best way for NFT projects to grow and, you know, expand. ZT X is building a platform first and IP second, with the consideration that, you know, We do have the web 2 business. We have Zepetto behind us with 400,000,000 users plus.

Karma 00:35:05 So there is the backing that is necessary for us to pivot build a platform and start onboarding an audience second, you know, whereas, whereas for the majority of NFT projects, it's the inverse. That's that's the case. And one thing I wanted to echo that you also said is the timeline of things. In web free, we genuinely are living on incredible speed. I don't think or rather, when we approach brands for, you know, future fashion collaborations and digital fashion, drops that we will be doing at CTX.

Karma 00:35:42 And we have been doing at Zepetto the normal work length or the work timeline with with a web to brand is usually counted in, like, you know, 6 months plus. Like, you start at, like, 6 months of ideation slash planning, and then you go from there. Whereas in web free, you know, the timeline is absolutely insane. Like, you feel like if you send someone a message and they haven't responded in 24 hours, they will just never respond to you. Like, this has died a very premature death. I'm sure you you will all relate.

Karma 00:36:18 Sometimes when it's, like, you know, pre whitelist stage, someone doesn't have to respond in an hour and you immediately have a feeling like, it's so over. Okay, this was just like a funny, funny degradation. But in terms of building IP and building a very, very sound platform, Another thing that really resonated with me, that you said, was how gracious and how important it is to have the initial community that will allow you that necessary time and will allow you the ideation that is necessary for you to deliver the best product to them.

Karma 00:36:52 I feel like very, very often the, I would say the missteps we've seen in this space, the missteps we have seen I mean, misstep is like, you know, a very valued way to to call it. So please bear with me. But some of the things which haven't gone as well as we have hope for in this space, I feel we're largely due to the immense pressure from communities on those teams. And, of course, to a large degree, this is justified. We all want the projects to do well. We all want them to really advance and, you know, outperform all the other ones. Is that 0 sum thinking?

Karma 00:37:28 But so very often, the projects which will build robust ecosystems and robust IPs need to really measure their steps and rather execute at the highest level of quality at a slower pace. Then, you know, keep iterating in a very, very quick succession on things which may or may not be a hit. So, yeah, these were these were some very, very loose thoughts on, you know, everything you've just said and how it resonates in context of building a platform rather than an IP. And I think these are universal lessons that many, many projects could take to heart.

Legendary 00:38:11 Yeah. Love love that reflection. And one topic I really also wanted to dive a bit deeper into is, the collector status 1.0 because I think it perfectly ties into our IP conversation. Has one of the challenges, in my opinion, at least for, particular brands in web 3, PFP projects in web 3 is that you, on the one hand, have the overall collection.

Legendary 00:38:38 On the other hand, you want to drive, exposure to individual elementals, individual key's individual beans and want to actually make people be excited about specific traits, specific trait, combinations, And for me, one of my hypothesis when I, changed my PFP to my elemental slots was exactly that. There is not, like, I wanted to be the number one slot in the web 3 space, and the slot wasn't occupied as a brand by a content creator back then. And I found this guy, right, with him and just went on that brand building journey.

Legendary 00:39:17 And I think I'm not the only one who has seen something very specific in their Azuki, in their bean, in their elemental, and then went with it. And you have recently introduced the collector status with the tears, with, new emblems, Can you maybe before we get into into the discussion into some of the more detailed questions that I have on that, outline the thinking behind the collector status, how that came to be, and how it fits into the existing, collector profile needs with the existing emblems.

Dem ⛩️ 00:39:55 Absolutely. Collector status is very integral to IP building, but at the same time, it's a very targeted product. And it's not like the end all be all for the Suzuki ecosystem, neither from, like, an IP growth per se perspective or from, like, rewards to collector's perspective, It is a very target, and it, and it's the version 1.0 of what will eventually become the whole collector status experience.

Dem ⛩️ 00:40:21 But, but the reason why it's so important to IP building is that there was already this behavior of buying an Azuki or an elemental or a beans that you love and then shopping around the collection and falling in love with different trades and falling in love with different types that is not just the collector behavior. It is also an IP building behavior.

Dem ⛩️ 00:40:45 The more time that our fans and our community spends looking at all the different elementals and learning about the different domains, and looking at the different Azuki and looking at the different weapons and trades, the more time that they spend there, that's time that they're spending in the universe. That is IP building. Like, that creates a connection between them and the characters and the world because these characters are built very much within the universe.

Dem ⛩️ 00:41:10 And so creating a numerical system that enshrined the value that we give to the more rare Azuki to the super rare Azuki to the spirits, to the kigurumi, to the gold, creating a system that, like, rewarded people from appreciating that was very, very important because as an IP company that wants to build characters, We don't want NFTs to just become tokens.

Dem ⛩️ 00:41:37 We've always said that the art is a wrapper for the token, but if we really hyper financialize NFTs, AZuki as a brand loses a huge advantage that it has over other collections, which is the death of the collection and how enjoyable it is to find that one Azuki that really represents you as the brand. Now the goal of collector status is really to reward type of behavior that's not rewarded anywhere else. There's all these other systems that will reward you for providing liquidity for giving out loans, for taking out loans, for bidding, for buying, for selling, for dumping, all that shorter term behavior is really well enshrined within other systems like blur.

Dem ⛩️ 00:42:17 But the long term collecting, trading, building, curating a collection, really appreciating the rarity. Like, that is not really appreciated anywhere in the current systems. It's very important to assign these numerical values that are not they're not based on what we think about the rarity of the collection, blah blah, they're based on the existing marketing market behavior. Like, markets are really powerful. And so we looked at what was trading above floor We looked at what trades already had a community built around them. We looked at what trades people were being excited about, and we're like, let's really try to find a set of numbers.

Dem ⛩️ 00:42:52 That allow the short term people and the long term people to agree on the potential value of of an NFT. Because right now, the only measure of value for NFTs is being enshrined by other systems. And so everything's turning very short term, very buy it, sell it, buy it, sell it, flip it, flip it. But with this system, what we're starting to see is that a short term trader and a long term collector with long term conviction, they can now have a more clear discussion about what the true value of one of these NFTs are because there's now point system with it.

Dem ⛩️ 00:43:27 Obviously, it's such a complex system, and there's so many factors at at play that we're gonna need to iterate on this. Like, I'm held. It's not being taken into consideration right now. This long term holding behavior, community contributions, which are huge. Like, all of those things that people do outside of just collecting are massive. And so I think that's why it's also a very targeted system. It is very it's being very targeted at the collector at, like, the long term collector and an holder, and it is not the end all be all, but we can only release one product at a time. I think if we had released you know, 6 or 7 products at a time, it really would have cost like a lot of confusion. And so we have to keep it simple.

Dem ⛩️ 00:44:05 We're very happy with the reaction of the market and with the reaction both long term and short term collectors of it. I'm also getting a lot of feedback about, you know, this thing we could have done better and that thing we could have better, which is healthy. Like, that's exactly at the stage at which are in terms of the development of the product. Like, we need to hear from the community what could have done best. But I think what's very important for me to say out loud is that long term collecting and spending a lot of time looking at the collection to try to optimize the points and try to maximize the points that you get out of the collection. That is actually a good behavior for IP building. You know, like, that's the old joke of, like, I came into this collection just, like, flip it, and I became a community member.

Dem ⛩️ 00:44:45 Like, we have created a system now where even if you're coming in as a flipper, and as a short term holder, you're gonna have to read through all of our emblems out in order of, like, our fluffy lower stuff and blah blah blah blah. And you might just fall in love with that one animal, and you might just fall in love with that one red OG, Azuki, and you might just fall in love with that one kigurumi. And so maybe we can turn more long term short term flippers into longer term, but more importantly, we can reward long term collectors and those that appreciate of the collection, we can reward them. We can show them with points, and we can show them with with badges and and with these progression system. We can show them just how much we appreciate them.

Dem ⛩️ 00:45:24 So It was a very important release, and god, I was so nervous launching it because there's so many factors to play. So even though it wasn't perfect at launch, it did get a good reception, and now we get some time to really look at the feedback and keep improving it.

Legendary 00:45:40 I love how you said that you used the the market data to also establish, a bit of the the points ranking. And I also liked the decision that you made on purpose to not have the protocol support to not have lending, liquidity farming, other points farming on on external platforms as part of that, but really focus on that long term holding behavior that you want to incentivize.

Legendary 00:46:08 And when when you guys posted the update on the collector status, you mentioned that the longest discussion, the most difficult discussion was transparency versus clickability, do you want to make sure that all the points are known and be as transparent as possible so that everyone can make an informed decision versus do you want to keep the magic of not completely revealing the formula and the secret sauce behind all of that and keep a bit of the collecting magic.

Legendary 00:46:43 And in the end, you made the decision, to go towards transparency and show how, the the specific point values work What was the deciding factor that swayed the decision pro transparency in the end?

Dem ⛩️ 00:47:02 Yeah. We're lucky to have, you know, some really smart people working on this product that are not me because I'm not very smart. So location TBA and and Sarah, from our team. Sarah is our new VP of Product and and location TBAs is one of the co founders. They were most involved in this decision making. And I was pretty happy with how they laid out, like, the the advantages and the and the disadvantages. And I think at the end of the day, the compromise towards more transparency was important because we have a more holistic understanding of their NST space now, and you can't ignore the short term traders.

Dem ⛩️ 00:47:40 You can't ignore those people that are hustling on the intraday trades and on the swing trades and that are flipping and that are providing liquidity. And so if we had over invested in the storytelling and in the lower aspect of it, we would have missed a chance to create a common language between some market participants and other market participants. And and the goal the whole goal of collector status was to try to get the market to appreciate what our long term collectors already knew, which is that the Azuki collection is very deep. It has a lot of really different traits that are very cool to collect and to discover.

Dem ⛩️ 00:48:18 And so if we had really obfuscated the point value to a point where a trader couldn't really understand it, we would have missed a chance to create a bridge between are super fans that love a red, a Zuki, or a blue, a Zuki, or a gold kigurumi, and the people that are just here for a quick clip. And so We're pretty happy with the balance that we struck, but it's something we have to say vigilant because once you gamify the collecting experience, it could become overly gamified. And so, you know, I think world, you know, Sarah is a big nerd and location is a big nerd. We all talk about different video game systems. They were talking about location TV always talks about civilization.

Dem ⛩️ 00:48:57 Personally, I'm a Dungeons and Dragons nerd. And in Dungeons and Dragons, like, Of course, there's rules and there's numbers and there's math, and you can minmax your characters to hell. But if you really wanna have a great game at the table, you gotta keep the telling alive. And and you cannot let one single player just be doing, like, very complex math all the time and boring the hell out of all the other players. And so We need to stay vigilant that this gamification of the collecting experience serves as a language between short term traders and long term collectors, but it doesn't become this, like, insane game of point maximization that just completely destroys our culture.

Dem ⛩️ 00:49:36 And that's that's just gonna happen through iteration, and we're happy to have a community that's very vocal when they don't see something that they when they see something that they don't like. And so we'll just keep listening to them and and try to find a happy balance. But, you know, given how high the launch was and all the factors.

Dem ⛩️ 00:49:54 I'm very happy with the decision that Sarraf and location made here towards more transparency because we are seeing short term traders be able to value, a mid rare now based on the point system that we establish even though they might not care so much about the fact that it's a kigurumi and it's a cat and it's so cute and it has a sword, but they're like, oh, you know, I can see that it's worth this many points. So, therefore, I'll buy it and I'll hold it, and I'll wait for somebody who appreciates the art because I inherently think that, you know, the point value increases its valuable and slower. And and I think we're we're happy with that at this point.

Dem ⛩️ 00:50:29 Well, we'll keep on pushing for a better and and more advanced system, but it it is quite an meant, and I'm very happy that tariff and location made made that decision.

Legendary 00:50:37 I think that the and the analogy is just fantastic, and my inner nerd is cheering it because it makes so much sense. Right? You enjoy the storytelling. You enjoy the narrative. And, yes, there there is fun in min maxing, but that can't be everything for a brand that is building and and IP ecosystem. Carmel, when we spoke about the collective status, I know you had many, many, many thoughts on that, so I would absolutely love to hear from you.

Karma 00:51:05 Yeah. This is a brilliant topic. And, you know, for those who are just tuning into the spaces, like, you know, what could potentially a metaverse like ZTX and an NFT slash bra, you know, like, IP project like Azuki have in common. And the fact is that you can just learn so much from rather. And I remember, you know, months ago even back when we were still designing the UI, the look of the ZTX platform, the user experience, I'm going to be honest with them.

Karma 00:51:35 Like, the the Azuki Collector profiles were, for me, one of the main example I was bringing up to my team in our, you know, meetings on on the user user journey within ZTX on how I would love to involve and then tangle the user into the ZT X space. And now bear with me as I spend on this on this topic because it's generally something that I believe everybody should be looking into. Now for those of you who have never seen an Suzuki Collector profile, you know, maybe your the ZT X community, it's almost like your online calling card.

Karma 00:52:13 You can feature all the NFTs you own within the Azuki ecosystem. It sort of like really like blows up your NFT. Like, it extends the background onto your entire screen. So it just looks like a gorgeous deliberate page rather than something you were viewing an open sea. And you look much more at someone's identity than just their inventory of NFTs. It's it's a very, very emotional experience, even looking at, you know, someone's at someone else's you then also see their journey within the ecosystem.

Karma 00:52:44 You see different emblems, which signify, you know, different trades that they've collected You also see different badges, which can be awarded for participation in community sprints, community missions. Now apologies then. Like, I should I I'm like, woman explaining Azuki Pro us to execute community, but this is this is for the benefit of the CTX community here.

Dem ⛩️ 00:53:03 It's fascinating to see it from your perspective, actually. So I'm learning on time.

Karma 00:53:06 Keep keep keep keep moments explaining, please. So, yeah, so when I was looking into it originally, it generally seems to me like the first successful instance, of of establishing, participant's identity within an ecosystem in a shareable way. Because you also get your own URL, it's azuki.com slash collector slash whoever you are. I'm right now looking at Dingerlinx, you know, page and just simply over his NFTs. So It it gives you not only a link that you can share with your fellow community members. It gives it gives your NFTs.

Karma 00:53:46 It gives your collection a home. Which fills, you know, a part of the ecosystem, again, rather than just the clinical cold and emotionless front page or like your collector page of an open sea. So this was an incredible move, and I haven't seen it done remotely as well as Suzuki did anywhere in any capacity. And now, of course, you've also added this point system where people can, you know, acquire ranks, different traits, like, select boost you in different ways. It's an entire gamified presence. Now, okay, like, I've synced enough. Now, what's my point here?

Karma 00:54:24 Now, for the majority of not just NFT projects, meta versus games, What you care about as a project, what you care about as a team is retention. How long do you get to keep the customer, keep your community member within your ecosystem. And this was a brilliant move to keep them within that ecosystem even more. And help them identify with that ecosystem in a very, very tangible way. And this is something the majority of games, gaming projects also have to look at. You know, no matter what you're into, you know, you look at parallel, you look at, I don't know, Star Atlas, all those different games want to achieve the same thing.

Karma 00:55:04 They want you to be really involved within the within the ecosystem. They want you to be involved in the story, and they want the highest possible user retention. They want to retain you on their websites. And similarly down the line for ZTX, you know, your ZT X avatar is going to be your identity within that metaverse, and we want you to identify with that person. With that, digital you, and we want to create a page, create a home for all your assets, for earlier interactions, for the digital fashion that you are accumulating for different aspects and different NFTs that you craft in game.

Karma 00:55:43 And to select finish this entire tangent, the Azuki Collector profile is always going to be, for me, exhibit a of how we want to do it. And what we want to strive towards over a long period of time, because, of course, for a game, it's going to be significantly more complex than in Azuki's case, which you know, static static NFTs, but just an incredible, an incredible example of how one project can learn from another, even if they are in completely different verticals. Because we are all at the end of the day standing at the same well of user engagement.

Karma 00:56:20 From this initial very small pool of web free user base, we are now expanding towards, yeah, IP. Enemy. We are like hyper contextualizing. And in terms of games, you know, we really need to learn from that in order to also understand how to retain that user base and make them very, very passionate, advocacy, sorry, advocates for us. Just like the Azuki communities. Okay. This was a very, very long tangent, but I think you see them how it, like, it has featured very heavily in all my discussions with the team. So it was great to see also from your perspective how these collector profiles have grown. And it also pivots me towards the topic.

Karma 00:56:59 I think that we wanted touch up on legendary of, marketplaces. You know, it's not that far removed from, like, you know, the realm of possibilities that eventually, the majority of large projects will also have their own marketplace. Now I know this meta comes and goes and, you know, OpenC still retains, you know, stronghold over everything. We all love liquidity. We all love just like a one stop shop.

Karma 00:57:27 But I think as these, you know, IP metaverse gaming projects advance and become bigger and bigger, the NFTs will become more and more complex, it's going to significantly become much more difficult for the for the marketplaces to display all those, you know, all those important metrics. For example, if you're buying a gaming NFT, it's very difficult to see an open sea what the utility is, how that NST will look like in game.

Karma 00:57:57 And my personal little, anticipation, is that we will see more and more projects 2024, 2025 advance and have integrated in game, in experience, marketplaces, and purchase opportunities in order to come away from the clinical collective PFP marketplace experience. But this is just something I wanted to throw out there and would really love to hear what you think about that then.

Dem ⛩️ 00:58:27 Yeah. I mean, on the wider point of how you build a great product and and, you know, you'd you'd look in at our our product, I I really appreciate that. And I and I think it's it it looks really good for CTX in the future. Because you can only build great product by by looking at and being inspired by other great product.

Dem ⛩️ 00:58:48 I love to share one of our biggest inspirations for the collector profile, which was actually, Rohitosan, who is, one of our advisors for a long time and and sort of a legend in all sorts of collecting circles, and a conversation that he had with Sagabon on on a tour of his house, He is a massive Ferrari collector collector, and he keeps all of his, Ferrari collectibles in this glass sort of grand glass, collectible space in in the garage.

Dem ⛩️ 00:59:19 And and he sort of he he showed that to Sagabaugh and and said, whatever you make whether it's something big or something small, you need to imagine that the collectors within within your community, that people that fold your brand, they're going to want to show it at the center of their home. And and whenever they bring somebody over to their home, it's gonna be a special moment for them to show that. To to everyone. And so I think that was one of the physical spaces or inspirations that we took away from.

Dem ⛩️ 00:59:47 This idea that whether it's an NFT or whether it's a physical product or whatever it is, it needs to fill a place within within this glass exhibition space that that are that are, you know, communities going to use to to show to their friends. And so it was one of the main inspirations for the for the collector profile. I think that on the topic of retention, we're maybe in a different position interestingly. So, like, I've always fought to increase retention and reduce churn in the products that I was building. And it was all about, like, how we can increase it.

Dem ⛩️ 01:00:23 And I think with Suzuki, we have, sort of backwards problem where we have already such an engaged and loyal community And we're now just trying to build products and experiences that justify their commitment and their long term stay in power. These people that have been with us for 2 years, like, It is more about just making them feel rewarded for all the things that they've already done. And so, you know, I think collector status is less of, like, a forward looking effort to increase your attention and more of like a backwards thing of like, hey, we saw you taking all of these rares and these mid rares, and we saw you creating communities around all of these trades and, like, we want to reward that experience.

Dem ⛩️ 01:01:02 We we want you to feel like we also get it. Like, we also love that the fact that you're doing this. And so it's interesting. And I think that's one of the differences between building and web 3 because through the power of NFTs and through the power of, like, those sort of decentralized ownership, your starting point is not that you have to build an audience. Your starting point is that you already have an audience, and now you gotta build product that they'll love and engage with. And that's always been something that Azuki has had to deal with because We very early on acquired a very excited community and a very loyal community, and now we had to deliver on their expectations. And that will continue to be a big challenge into 2024.

Dem ⛩️ 01:01:42 And it's a very interesting topic, which is the topic of expectations. Now whatever we do something great, our community really celebrates and they feel justified in their past conviction, but also they take whatever we did and they create like a 10 x expectation for what our next delivery will be. Which is kind of a dangerous road to be on. On one hand, it's like amazing to have that passion. But, you know, if I mentioned something like oh, Japan Airlines might be a sponsor at our next event. The instant reaction of unnecessary community member is like, oh, we're all getting free tickets. Sponsored by Japan Airlines to go to the event. And it's like, that is such an unreasonable increase in expectations.

Dem ⛩️ 01:02:18 Like, do you know how hard it will be to even hype theoretically launch that partner, like, actually onboard them in time, but but it is it is just the the fuel, like, the rocket fuel that drives web 3 projects forward. And so, I mean, you know, as far as, like, is it bad or is it good? It's actually great. You know, like, it's better to be building with the with the raw materials of, like, such massive passion for a brand than to be trying to get people excited about something that they're not really excited about. It is a completely different challenge, and so you have to switch the way that you that you think about it. So I don't know how well that answers your question, but it was something that I really wanted to talk about. So I just took it to what I wanted to talk about.

Legendary 01:02:58 So And it's such an important point, right, the expectation management and the user retention. As you said, the expectation wouldn't be economy tickets wouldn't be business class, but it would be 1st class tickets because we are in web 3. Right? And I think this is also one of the reasons why we thought that having that that fireside chat with you would be such a valuable discussion because many games that we are talking about, many founders that we are talking about typically are in the stage of user acquisition. They are pre launch. They are maybe just about to launch a token, and they are not yet in the user retention phase. And this is why I love to you connected user retention with the collective profile.

Legendary 01:03:38 And, we only really touched on the the anime side of things a bit. We didn't get into the gaming. We didn't get into the PBTs. So, I do think we have to to do another round of that, fireside chat, in in in in the future. Because we've been running for a bit more than 1 hour, and I do want to be respectful, of everyone's time. Both everyone in the audience as well as our speakers.

Legendary 01:04:08 But before we go, then one final question, out of everything that's basically on the horizon for Azuki, what's the number one thing that excites you most for 2024 and beyond if you have to pick 1?

Dem ⛩️ 01:04:23 That's a great question. I think it's the fact that we have strongly decided to communicate our north star, our direction as a brand, our our narrative, more frequently, more transparently, and to more people more often. And so we have really listened to our community And they've said, we love the secrecy, but but we love the surprises, like keep the surprises, but we need to know what direction you guys are going. So that we can all pull in the same direction. And so what I'm really excited about, you know, there's really big things.

Dem ⛩️ 01:05:02 We're releasing a short form anime in April. We're look we're working on long form content anime. We're looking we're working on short form anime content. We're working on partnerships, physical products. We're working on hyper casual gaming experiences, we might, you know, we we might work on a on an additional game on top of that. I mean, there's all these things that are exciting because they're finished and they're ready to launch and there's all these things that are exciting because we're in development phase for them, but I think what's going to really change the vibe and the energy of being in the garden is the fact that we now have a cohesive, coherent narrative that we want to repeat over and over and over so that our community really understand it.

Dem ⛩️ 01:05:42 So I'm gonna be on spaces a lot more. We're gonna be holding a monthly, like these tight stages tomorrow, we're doing the first one in anime, but we will do one in other topics. And I think it's going to be that, like, acceleration co creation through better communication, like more clear and more more current and more, open communication with the community while also keeping surprises and exciting things and, like, a little bit of hype, oh, here and there, you know. So so I think it's just gonna be a year where we get to talk about what we do more often. And our community is less confused about what's happening in the Suzuki world, and they have a very much more clear image.

Dem ⛩️ 01:06:22 And that way we can move away from this energy that we've had in the garden of like, what's really gonna happen? Should I really be holding this or whatever? And my get just get excited about the things that are actually being launched. We don't have to get excited about this, like, fake hype or, like, these images that we built in our brains. Like, we can just be like, okay, this is releasing at this date. Oh, that's really cool. Okay. The beans are in the IPX store right now. That's very cool. I think that's really going to change my job, and it's really going to change our relationship with the community, and it's going to allow us to do more co creation.

Dem ⛩️ 01:06:53 So, yeah, that, that, that's better communication more more more clear north star, a bunch of stuff to deliver and and still some mystery, some secret stuff that nobody knows about. That that that's such a great mix for you for a start of the year.

Legendary 01:07:07 That is such a good answer. I really appreciate it, especially also from the perspective, of being a holder myself. With that being said, Karma, why don't you wrap those up for today's space?

Karma 01:07:19 Absolutely. Well, I've been searching for my elemental for, like, 2 months now. I just can't find any with, like, black, wavy hair so that it actually fits me, if someone has one. I I I thereby encourage you. No. Jokes side, this has been an incredibly illuminating conversation, and I really appreciate everybody's time.

Karma 01:07:44 I won't repeat myself, but I do want to highlight again that it's very, very incredible how much you can learn from other projects in the space, even if they are not in the same vertical as you and we keep these spaces on a weekly because there is it's it's one of the single most ROI friendly things we've ever done at ZT X, just talking openly with other builders, with other communities, and knowing exactly which directions to take, or which angles to consider as we expand our product in order to learn from everybody else because, you know, many people have done this roller coaster ride before or in front of you.

Karma 01:08:24 And you're just missing out on all the important lessons. They might they may be able to, you know, pass on to you along the way. And for our community, I also wanted to say that I know everybody is incredibly eager to jump back into the ZTX beta We are earlier in the stage of, you know, expanding our product and, Azuki is. But our entire team is working very diligently on getting in the back online after we have to implement some changes. So stay tuned, please.

Karma 01:08:54 We're going to be back with more updates very, very soon and relaunching that beta, allowing everybody also from the garden to jump in and check out CTX is the absolute priority right now. So looking forward to that for sure, and thank you then. Looking forward to more discussions like this in the future.

Dem ⛩️ 01:09:11 Yeah. I hope all the, elementals and Azuki and beans here give CTX to follow, give legendary a follow, and and give Karma a follow. You guys are definitely asking all the right questions, and I'm excited about the way that you guys think about product. And legendary man. You I've, I I've never been a host in one of your spaces, but it was such a great experience. So thanks for having me up. And I hope that, you get a bunch of fellows from all these Suzuki and beans out here. And you do become the number one sloth in the in in the garden.

Legendary 01:09:39 Love it. Thank you so much. And thank you again for your time, and thank you to everyone in the audience have a fantastic rest of it Tuesday.

Crafting Digital Legacies: Azuki's Vision in Building Web3 IP

Immerse yourself in the visionary journey of Azuki, a trailblazer in the Web3 space, as they navigate the intricate process of building a robust intellectual property.

This transcript offers a rare glimpse into the strategies and philosophies driving Azuki's success (despite the scandals surrouding his founder & community members)

From embracing community co-creation to understanding the nuances of digital branding, the conversation illuminates the path to creating enduring and engaging digital identities in the ever-evolving Web3 landscape.

TRANSCRIPT

Legendary 00:02:20 GMG, absolutely love feedback with our weekly spaces with ZTX.

Legendary 00:02:58 And for today, we have planned something that a bit different to the latest spaces that we have been doing. And Carmen and I have been on a call and have been strategizing a bit. And We kinda realized that with so many of the gaming projects that we've been speaking about, often it came to the point that many games, many projects start as a single product first. They start with a game with a very, very specific focus.

Legendary 00:03:26 And many of them want to scale, want to build up their own ecosystem, eventually want to have their own a world of games, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, but they are just not yet at that point.

Legendary 00:03:39 And they also highlighted many founders did that It is so important to, like, focus on one thing first and then start thinking about how you can scale from a product to an ecosystem and for that reason, we thought given the, 2nd anniversary of Azuki and given the plethora of announcements that we've seen around that, that there is no better guest and no better brand to have with us on stage than, them and and Azuki to kinda talk about what it takes to grow a brand from a single product to an ecosystem that focuses on more than one individual thing And, also, we have seen a knot in into gaming.

Legendary 00:04:23 We have seen a Suki announcing that they do want to have one of the focus points on gaming, on a hyper casual mobile game featuring the Beans IP, which I'm also curious to hear more about that thought process and more about where this, basically line of thinking in the overall strategic lineup is coming from And with that out of the way, then welcome to the stage. It's been a while since we chatted last time. How have you been?

Dem ⛩️ 00:04:52 Hey, legendary. It's great to be up on the stage, especially on the 2nd anniversary of Azuki and with so many Azuki in the audience. And, man, I'm so impressed by how far you've come and and all you've grown, this last year. So it's amazing to be on on one of your stages. Finally, thanks for having me.

Legendary 00:05:09 Thank you very much. Thank you. Parma, welcome to the stage. Are you feeling a bit better? How are you doing?

Karma 00:05:16 Hello, everybody. Yeah. I'm I'm on the 6th side, but I'm actually feeling really elated. I'm in New York right now, just traveling And I woke up today, and everything is completely bathed in snow. It looks like in a fairy tale, I'm looking out of the window right now and It just, yeah, it just looks like a fairy tale. I've never seen anything like this in New York, gorgeous thing to wake up to. And of course, an even better panel jump into. So, you know, just yesterday, I was on the simplified spaces.

Karma 00:05:48 It's with Who's Dow, and we discussed, gaming and CTX is is very frequently tuning in to share our experiences. And we were discussing even on that game gaming spaces, the power of IP and how important it is going forward for the gaming, you know, sub niche for the hyper casual gaming niche. So I'm really excited to jump into the conversation today and show just how intertwined IP in the gaming is, and there is just no better IP to discuss this with than Azuki.

Legendary 00:06:23 Couldn't agree more with that. Ashley, welcome to the stage. How are you doing?

Ashley 00:06:28 How have you been? I am fantastic. I am I've been super busy. I feel like this year, I feel like all of us had that, you know, weird holiday season where we don't really do much, and I feel like now I've made up for that a lot. So super excited to have this conversation, actually. I've been a beans beans holder for a while. And, so, yeah, I just I just love the fact that, you know, web 3 is going in a more gaming direction. I really want more RPGs to be honest. So that's that would make my day even better, to be honest.

Legendary 00:07:04 The one thing though I would have to add is I love RPGs, but when do we find the time to play all of those? Like, I've been thinking to give Balderskate, 3 a try it, but then I realized I just don't have a 110 hours to put into the main campaign now. So this is the only caveat to that. Hassanza, welcome to the stage. When when I'm scrolling through the audience, I see so many elementals, Azuki's beans, and that's absolutely amazing. What are your thoughts on on the panel on the audience? And how have you been?

Sanza 00:07:36 Hey. Sorry, voice crack. I didn't drink water. Like I should have have started talking. So good. So good. Good morning. I first of all, I'm I'm doing great. Doing great. I also do not have a 110 hours into gaming like yourself. Unless my daughter wants to start playing with me in which case then maybe. But now I I absolutely have been loving everyone kind of unseeing Azuki for what we kind of always knew was always here. I'm just beautiful to see people just kind of bring bring into their conviction as a little bit as well. I, you know, I don't know if you know legendary.

Sanza 00:08:12 I started a group chat called Garden Central for people who are new all Azuki elemental and beans. Because I found that there was a little bit of a lack of of of a group chat for all holders to kind of talk and reconvene. So we've been busy, not gonna lie, and that's that's that's a testament to how how well Azuki has executed with the announced men over the last couple of weeks. So really, really excited for, Derek to hear them today. You know, my my man my man is is when, you know, when he gets on his soapbox, he gets on his soapbox, but everyone better be taking notes. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

Legendary 00:08:50 Absolutely. Love to hear that. Yeah, with that out of the way, let's let's get started. Maybe let's, start with you, Dem, And let's not, start with diving into the plethora of announcements, but start on a personal note. How did you feel from, you know, in over this journey over the last 2 years from, via Zukkimen to getting to the 2nd anniversary, how that how did it feel on a personal level?

Dem ⛩️ 00:09:17 I got I got pretty emotional. I'm not gonna lie. As you may know, I was at Google before as a product manager and I had achieved a certain level of success there, and I was leading my own team, but but I was very unfulfilled by the work that I was doing at Google and the fact that I was launching product to millions of people, but everything that I launched kind of turned into numbers and metrics. And it it just felt very dehumanizing. And so when Sagabond called me 2 plus years ago and said, hey, like, what do you know about this course? I I didn't know anything about this card, but I was just, like, looking it up as we talk. And I was like, yeah. Yeah. Discard. I know I know so much about this or put me in coach.

Dem ⛩️ 00:09:57 And so I just I I couldn't miss the next thing that he launched after after having seen what he did with the CRX protocol. And I just, you know, I just sort of fake it till I make it. You know, I just sort of manifested, this role, and and it's been it's been such a fulfilling journey. Even though it's been tough at times and and we've lost the trust of people and and we've made mistakes, overall when you look at the community and how interconnected it is and and how much people believe in the brand and and and want to succeed and how much they've built themselves of that brand, how much they put into it.

Dem ⛩️ 00:10:31 It puts me in a situation personally where I am with probably the best team that I ever work with, with a ton of resources and a, and a ton of things to, to develop and build, but also building something that it's quite personal Like, sometimes we think of Azuki as, like, a really big brand in the web 3 space, but in the overall concept of brand, like, in the in the in the real term of, like, how big a brand can be there, they're they're quite small. Like, we we make product for for a very passionate, group of people.

Dem ⛩️ 00:11:00 And so to to reach the 2 year mark, on such a strong note, with such a strong year ahead in terms of what we can release and the things that we can develop this year, it's it's a blessing and and to have been given multiple opportunities by our community to learn from our mistakes and and come back again. It's exciting. So it felt nostalgic, but it also felt really energizing to to reach this point and, you know, and to see that what we were putting out was really resonating with people. After 2 years, that that that gave us all a lot of energy.

Legendary 00:11:33 Yeah. I can absolutely relate to that. And 2 years is a very, very long time in crypto, like, feels more like 2 decades in in a web tool life. I mentioned it a couple of times that you have those 3 more than one focus point, you actually have those 3 focus points that you outlined in in the announcement, 4 days ago. Anime, physical, gaming.

Legendary 00:11:57 I think over the course of, our conversation, we will definitely dive into all of those But why don't you give us, like, a headline overview of what those individual aspects are anime physical gaming and what is happening in those verticals.

Dem ⛩️ 00:12:14 Yeah. I think the I think the tweet was necessary because we had started Azuki as a metaverse anime brand. And and we want to evolve into something much greater. We've always had a dream of being a decentralized anime ecosystem, a decentralized anime brand. And it was very important to put it into such simple terms as 3 branches or 3 pillars of the IP strategy because We've been doing really exciting things, but we saw from our community and from the wider space that they were not really connecting the dots as much as as as we thought they were.

Dem ⛩️ 00:12:51 So this is not a change of our strategy. This is not like a like a pivot. It's just a a a way to encapsulate it in as simple as as as possible terms that that we can then repeat in terms of narrative and in terms of the space understanding us. So this is just an iteration of what Suzuki has always been. We've always talked about decentralized brand building. We've always talked about co creation. We've always had an anime aesthetic. We've always had great physical products that we made with a lot of love. And we've always had gaming people within our company.

Dem ⛩️ 00:13:25 We always had a gaming DNA when you look at Hoshi Boi previous projects or when you look steamboy, who was the lead character on Overwatch, there was always a game like component in what we did. And so it was really important from a storytelling perspective because this space is so narrative driven that we now could go into 2024 and tell people very clearly, we're becoming a decentralized enemy ecosystem and the way in which we're gonna grow that IP and reward our community is through anime, is through physical goods, and it is through gaming. And it's that simplicity, I think, that we're gonna carry into this year terms of the energy that we ring on the on the storytelling that we do.

Dem ⛩️ 00:14:05 So it was important to put it together, but it it's but it's not a pivot, you know, like, we've been doing this. Like, we're not new to you know, we're we've been we've been doing this, but it's it's important to tell that story, you know, in a clear and concise way because some of the points were not being connected, as strongly before.

Legendary 00:14:20 Is it fair to say that the connective tissue, the glue between those 3 verticals is the IP, is the brand, that Azuki is building?

Dem ⛩️ 00:14:32 Absolutely. And I think it's more important than just the connective tissue. It is the whole thesis for the brand. Because as we enter a world in which you can create so cheaply with AI Technology, you know, to enter a world in which we're so like, heavily interconnected online. And as we enter a world in which you can have part ownership in the characters and in the IP of any single brand, it will become more and more important how strong the IP is on top of which the ecosystem is built than the actual ecosystem building. I mean, you can look at it from a gaming perspective, like the barriers to create a game were so high before. You needed so much money.

Dem ⛩️ 00:15:11 You need such a strong team. The thesis is that in 5 to 6 year time, is going to take actually very little to make a game, and it's all about who are the characters, what is the world, what is the story that's who's gonna draw people Same thing with animation. Like, it used to take so much money to make animation. And now that that that that caused that barrier to entry gonna decrease over the next 10 or 15 years, and it's all about, it's all gonna be all about who are the characters, who what is the world, and what is my connection to it.

Dem ⛩️ 00:15:39 And most importantly, the fact that we can give people ownership of characters, you can give people ownership of different parts of the IP through the method of NFTs, that is gonna be a differentiating factor between companies that are billed centralized and they build their IP in a centralized way, and they're constantly chasing down and shutting down any cocreation and companies that embrace co creation that are like co creation first that invite co creation and that are able to accelerate past those centralized brands because at their core, they're already sharing a flywheel rewards for people that co create with them.

Dem ⛩️ 00:16:16 So it's not just connective tissue. Like, IP, like, that is the thesis. Like, that is the future of Azuki as a brand, and and we think that that is the future of brands. The future of brand is really, really strong IP that is decentralized first and open to co creation.

Legendary 00:16:32 You mentioned a couple very, very interesting things in there. You said on the one hand, you know, anime is It is a very competitive segment. The entry barriers are getting lower. AI is definitely, a tool that will allow many, many more people to explore building projects, trying to build their own IP, etcetera, in in the world that shapes out like this and in a sector as competitive as the anime market, which I feel like that many people, are still underestimating.

Legendary 00:17:04 And, you know, we have a very, very gaming, strong audience and just taking that that minute before I get to the question to compare those two markets real quick If you look at the gaming industry as a whole, the market size for projected to be for 2024 is 272,000,000,000 US dollars. The anime market has been at 25 ish 1,000,000,000 last year, so that's already a tenth of the gaming market. And if you look at the growth rate at the CAGR, the compounded annual growth rate, it's actually, the anime market is growing a bit faster than gaming.

Legendary 00:17:40 And if you look at those numbers in in 2030 where they're projected to be, the anime market will be at 63,000,000,000 and gaming will have grown to 426,000,000,000 US dollars. So it is a very, very competitive sector. It is a sector that's growing so fast, even faster. Also, it's not by, a large margin, but even faster than gaming, and you have AI as a technology coming in where many people will have an easier way to try to build their own IP. So what does it really take in a competitive landscape like that? To build, a brand to build an intellectual property.

Legendary 00:18:20 That's truly outstanding and unique.

Dem ⛩️ 00:18:28 Oh, did did he cut out? I I I stopped here in Lending Drake.

Legendary 00:18:31 Can you guys hear? Can you guys hear me? Or did I lose everyone?

Karma 00:18:36 No. We can hear you.

Dem ⛩️ 00:18:37 We can hear you. Right? I can I can hear you?

Legendary 00:18:39 Yeah. Yeah. Where did you lose me then on my long ass monologue?

Dem ⛩️ 00:18:45 I think I think you were talking about, like, gaming and anime the growth rates.

Legendary 00:18:48 Okay. I'll I'll I'll I'll sum it up real quick. So I said gaming sector very competitive. Anime, very competitive. Anime is growing even faster than gaming. And in a competitive landscape where, anime draws a lot of attention where AI makes it easier for people to try to build their own brand, their own IP, what does it take for a brand like Azuki to build an IP, to build a brand that truly stands out amidst that competition.

Dem ⛩️ 00:19:16 Of course. I mean, the number one thing is a set of characters and a story that really truly draws you in. And and that is down to us as a team to create I think one misconception when we say decentralized brand building, it sounds like everything's gonna be pushed out to the community and no work welcome from us. And I think that is the wrong way to think about it. I think, the key to success here is that we create characters, and we create a narrative, and we create a world that is incredibly compelling, and that draws eyelids both from, like, web 2 and web 3 people.

Dem ⛩️ 00:19:54 And so with our short form anime series, the goal is that we can prove that the Azuki IP is not just super powered by the fact that it is NFT enabled, but also by the fact that we can create a really high quality piece of content of anime with really veterans from the industry and and with very well respected people and that that story can capture your regular anime fans attention. So it needs to be a really strong story, and it needs to be really strong characters. There needs to be a commitment across the board to higher than average quality. And I think that's an advantage that Azuki has because the way that we're built and the way that we're resource, we don't have any, like, VC money.

Dem ⛩️ 00:20:34 We don't have any of those, like, restricting factors for larger companies where they have to cut in costs and they have to cut on production and quality because they have these, like, sort of targets of year over year. You know, we're not tied down by those things. We can come in really hard with really high quality products. And then I think the secret sauce and the reason why we will eventually, you know, perform much better than centralized IPs is that we're open to co creation. So if we do a great job of creating a really compelling universe with really compelling characters that are very, very much like attracting the attention of web 2 people and web 3 people, and we continue to deliver very high quality projects and really high quality products and experiences.

Dem ⛩️ 00:21:14 Since we're open to co creation, we will then attract, and we will continue to encourage creator within our community that are rewarded by a flywheel to, to do their creation And then we will have not just sheer labs pushing for the Azuki IP, but all of these different nodes in the network also pushing for that's stage 3, but that's the differentiator, right? Because, like, everybody can everybody that's talented can create great characters. Everybody that has a lot of money can create very high quality products with no compromise for cost, but the final stage, you know, like the final leg of the race when you're really to head with the final competitors.

Dem ⛩️ 00:21:51 That's where if we've built the right flywheel to encourage co creation from our community, then all of a sudden we've got 100,000 of people pushing for us while they're running out of steam, and they're just this one centralized company that's building the IP altogether. So it will be a multi year process to, like, sort of build all of this out. But I think in the end stage, when they're sort of running out of Jews, they're sort of running out of steam and fumes, we will have a flywheel to reward our creators, and we will have all of these innovative ideas that centralize IPs often miss out on. Like, one one story that I go back to a lot is the story of Twilight and 50 Shades of gray. I don't know if you guys have read 50 Shades of gray.

Dem ⛩️ 00:22:30 I'm pretty sure Ashley is aware of 50 Shades of gray. I don't know why. I think Saundice has heard it as well.

Ashley 00:22:35 Maybe the audiobook.

Dem ⛩️ 00:22:36 Oh, I I've, you know You're aware. You're familiar with the material. 50 Shades of gray started as fan fiction for Twilight. So so it started as a story of, you know, Edward and and and then, like, you know, doing the dirty, but the twilight people didn't want that. They didn't want that creator in their community. So they're like, no, you can't build within our ecosystem. You can't build and and co create with us. Get out of here. So the author, she was a very smart woman. She was like, alright, I'll just create my own IP. She's sold more books than Twilight. She's sold more movies than Twilight because frankly, the idea is brilliant.

Dem ⛩️ 00:23:10 And and and the twilight people as an IP, they've lost out on all of that value because they were not built for co creation. So it's not that like Twilight just sat around and waited for their community to make dope stuff But when the community of toy like make dope stuff, they were not built to accept that and incorporate it into their brand, and they missed out on like a 2x3x growth on their brand because they were not really willing to co create. So I think at the end of the race, if we execute all of the things that are in the playbook. At the end of the race, the last bit of advantage would be that cocreating piece.

Legendary 00:23:45 I love the focus on cocreation and I also like how this is a pattern that because you mentioned the Twilight story, that is also a pattern that we see in gaming very, very often. Right? So many popular games or franchises where actually mods off other games' data being based on on on the Warcraft IP, is one of the first examples that always comes to my mind. And I also liked how you explained that building a decentralized brand doesn't mean just pushing the work on the community.

Legendary 00:24:18 And, obviously, you've been doing a lot of work to to grow the Azuki IP, also outside of x, outside of our little, a bubble in here. And I think it was in April, in April of last year that you unveiled the partnership with, IPX formally aligned line friends and line friends being that that global character brand that originated from the line messaging app and, has obviously millions of users in in in the States, but even more users in Asia.

Legendary 00:24:58 And has built their own IP has built their own merchandise and has been doing a lot to well, grow that and nurture that IP. We've seen pudgy penguins, following an approach where they absolutely dominate GIFI dominant Instagram, half of the physical toy lines, we, see a ZT X that they follow a playbook where they now partner up or with with stickily.

Legendary 00:25:28 And I think all of those partnerships, acquisitions, collaborations in whatever form they happen, very, very important to grow a brand from, like, a singular position to something that can carry a whole ecosystem that exists outside of a bubble. And I also think, I definitely wanna hear more about that.

Legendary 00:25:52 And I know it's a year old news, but I find it very relevant in the context of talking about IP about that IPX partnership, how, that has, basically evolved and if, if, if possible, how that fits into your thinking of cocreation and also here, for the sake of, basically having multiple views on that from UCARMA after that on the collaboration with Stickley.

Dem ⛩️ 00:26:24 Yeah. I think that's gonna be a great question for when, Wiz Wang or head of growth gets up on sand's spaces. So let me let me just show a espresso shot later today. You're gonna have a list there, and she's gonna be talking about IPX. And then tomorrow, we're gonna be doing a discord stages at, 6 PM where we're gonna have Feb and we're gonna have a Steam Boyd talking about our partnership with Dentsu. I think what I would say in a more general term is whenever you decide on an element for your IP strategy, it needs to be, like, a net add to what you're trying to build. And so when you decide to bring in a partner, you need to bring in a partner that has skills or capabilities for assets that you know, you do not have.

Dem ⛩️ 00:27:03 So for example, one thing that line friends has figured out is an in store experience that feels really premium and luxury and cute, but at the same time is in, like, prime location. So the bean the beans brand was all over gangnam, which was the, you know, the best sort of shopping neighborhood in, of, in, in order of Seoul, it is like where all the luxury stores are. They have a location. They're like a physical retail location that is beautiful. It's a really experiential type of store. And so to be able to put our products and our IP within that cons context really elevates it. So when you look at somebody like line friends and IPX, the resources that they have are of course production resources.

Dem ⛩️ 00:27:42 But more importantly, physical locations. Like, they were putting 247, a beans video on Times Square all of all throughout this week. As people were, like, walking around, they were seeing beads in Times Square. Like, that is something that they bring to the partnership for free. Same thing with Dentsu. Like, Dentsu is an amazing production agency, but they're also a really, really large advertiser with a lot of, like, really strong brand connections. So not only is Dentsu helping us connect to legendary directors like Goro Tani Gucci in terms of the anime production because they have such a wide range of skill sets. They're also suggesting us partners and sponsorship partners for the garden tour events.

Dem ⛩️ 00:28:19 Like, when you can find a partner or you can find a strategy that benefits you in multiple dimensions, then you're onto something really exciting. Like, why is Pudgy so smart? On one hand, the Jiffy strategy is brilliant because it gets a lot of people looking at their GIFs, and it gets a lot of people, like, being a great aware of, like, what the pudges look like. But at the same time, they're able to use that production to create custom GIFs for their community, which the community really enjoys. They feel like really recognized by it. So, boom, they found an element of their IP structure that does multiple things for them. That's so much better than getting you a partner that just does, like, the one thing. You know?

Dem ⛩️ 00:28:56 And I think that's why you have some partnerships that are more of, like, a one and done, like, Oh, this was cool. This was exciting. Like, Museum of my homes. You know, we were able to do something with Patrick Mahomes. He's a great quarterback, but You know, there weren't there weren't like a whole set of capabilities that help each other out, but when you look at a more long term partner or a long term strategy, it needs to give you multiple things at once. For it to be worth all the time and investment.

Legendary 00:29:19 Yeah. I also liked how you said that such a long term partnership at the end of day needs to be a net add for your brand. And I have one more follow-up question before I'm gonna throw it to you, Carmen, on that. If you partner up with a company or with a project that is to be a more long term, a more sustainable partnership. And liking the case with, IPX is actually something that touches the heart of your brand touches the IP and works like in very, very crucial parts, of your brand.

Legendary 00:29:51 How do you make sure that that partner actually understands the DNA of your company and the DNA of the brand that your building? Is this something that only time can tell? Is this something where you have to purely rely on gut feeling or are there a couple of criteria that you can apply to them? Did I cut out again, or did, them lose me?

Karma 00:30:19 Karma, can you hear me? I can hear you perfectly fine. Them, are you still with us, or were we just confused as to which one of us should be answering the question?

Dem ⛩️ 00:30:28 Actually thought that was a question for you, Karma. How many times?

Legendary 00:30:33 No. What that that was a question for you then, though.

Dem ⛩️ 00:30:36 Alright. Can you repeat it then? Because I was like, I was like, alright. I'm off the I'm off the spotlight now.

Legendary 00:30:41 It's Karma's time. Taking taking a moment to hydrate. Yeah, the question was when you when you have a partnership, like the one with IPX that is sustainable, that is long term, and that touches, the heart of your brand, the is your IP? How do you make sure that that partner really understands the DNA, of your brand, of your company, of your IP. Is it something that only time can tell? Is it something where you go by gut feeling, or are there a couple of criteria that you can find?

Dem ⛩️ 00:31:10 It's it's time and especially when it's an international, partnership, it it's travel time. So Wiss Wang and the team and Sagabaughn and and Elaine had to travel to multiple times to visit their stores and to sit down with them and show them our Twitter feed and show them our community members and their creations, and they had to show us their products and their production.

Dem ⛩️ 00:31:33 And we have to talk about our history and we have to go back into, like, why certain decisions were made with our IP, and they had to tell us certain stories and and sort of the lore of the brand, like sort of those intra intra company, intra community things that are very, sort of, you know, central to to to us. And so that's why the IPX partnership wasn't, as quick as, like, the web 3 mind would expect. You know, the web 3 mind would be, Okay. The partnerships announced and the products are in store like 2 months later. We really took the time to make sure we understood Brown, and we understood the cast of characters and what they meant.

Dem ⛩️ 00:32:11 And they trusted us to treat those characters well within our ecosystem, and they understood beans. They knew who these characters were and what they were doing in the world, and they understood our community and why our community was so engaged with beings and that takes time. It takes travel. It takes trust. You know, and and it's and it's it has to be done right. And so I think it's really good that we took our time to do this thing right. And I think now there's a very strong understanding between both IPX and ourselves about what our IPs are and what our capabilities are and, what we can trust each other on and we can bring to the table. And so that's unfortunate because web 3 doesn't always necessarily give you the time to do that. There's a ton of pressure to rush things.

Dem ⛩️ 00:32:50 There's a ton of pressure to, to bring figs out the door. And I understand also from the community that you know, it can be frustrating to see things not move at the speed, that other projects might move or that other, brands might move, but I think it's crucial. I think it's crucial, and we're lucky to have a core community that's patient enough and experienced enough, and that has run their own businesses and that has been in these negotiations before that they understand it. Because otherwise it will be very, very difficult to do what we do, but, you know, when you can finally show them the end result and they look at it and they're like this field. Right? I think that's actually a really good point of, like, re earning the trust of the community.

Dem ⛩️ 00:33:28 So we're lucky to have a community that gives us time to do things, right? And we don't take that for granted. And so we take, we take all that time that they give us to make the best product possible and make sure that it feels right at at launch.

Legendary 00:33:41 That makes so much sense. And I like how you highlighted the the value of travel time in, you know, a space that is so digital as ours. It probably something that we don't necessarily think about at the first glance. Carmel would love to loop you into this conversation. And here from from your side, a, what is going on with stickily and ZT X and what is the IP play, the thinking behind that?

Karma 00:34:08 Yeah. And I will need to zoom out in order for, you know, like, my plug to make sense within the realm of the IP discussion that we've been in. And something I really, really value about everything you've just outlined then, like, you really drill in on the long term vision and the individual steps and considerations needed to do this quote unquote right. And I think that's that's, you know, the fundamental of it.

Karma 00:34:35 So at ZT X, we are building something slightly different than Azuki, whereas Azuki is building, you know, IP first and product seconds, which in my opinion is the best way for NFT projects to grow and, you know, expand. ZT X is building a platform first and IP second, with the consideration that, you know, We do have the web 2 business. We have Zepetto behind us with 400,000,000 users plus.

Karma 00:35:05 So there is the backing that is necessary for us to pivot build a platform and start onboarding an audience second, you know, whereas, whereas for the majority of NFT projects, it's the inverse. That's that's the case. And one thing I wanted to echo that you also said is the timeline of things. In web free, we genuinely are living on incredible speed. I don't think or rather, when we approach brands for, you know, future fashion collaborations and digital fashion, drops that we will be doing at CTX.

Karma 00:35:42 And we have been doing at Zepetto the normal work length or the work timeline with with a web to brand is usually counted in, like, you know, 6 months plus. Like, you start at, like, 6 months of ideation slash planning, and then you go from there. Whereas in web free, you know, the timeline is absolutely insane. Like, you feel like if you send someone a message and they haven't responded in 24 hours, they will just never respond to you. Like, this has died a very premature death. I'm sure you you will all relate.

Karma 00:36:18 Sometimes when it's, like, you know, pre whitelist stage, someone doesn't have to respond in an hour and you immediately have a feeling like, it's so over. Okay, this was just like a funny, funny degradation. But in terms of building IP and building a very, very sound platform, Another thing that really resonated with me, that you said, was how gracious and how important it is to have the initial community that will allow you that necessary time and will allow you the ideation that is necessary for you to deliver the best product to them.

Karma 00:36:52 I feel like very, very often the, I would say the missteps we've seen in this space, the missteps we have seen I mean, misstep is like, you know, a very valued way to to call it. So please bear with me. But some of the things which haven't gone as well as we have hope for in this space, I feel we're largely due to the immense pressure from communities on those teams. And, of course, to a large degree, this is justified. We all want the projects to do well. We all want them to really advance and, you know, outperform all the other ones. Is that 0 sum thinking?

Karma 00:37:28 But so very often, the projects which will build robust ecosystems and robust IPs need to really measure their steps and rather execute at the highest level of quality at a slower pace. Then, you know, keep iterating in a very, very quick succession on things which may or may not be a hit. So, yeah, these were these were some very, very loose thoughts on, you know, everything you've just said and how it resonates in context of building a platform rather than an IP. And I think these are universal lessons that many, many projects could take to heart.

Legendary 00:38:11 Yeah. Love love that reflection. And one topic I really also wanted to dive a bit deeper into is, the collector status 1.0 because I think it perfectly ties into our IP conversation. Has one of the challenges, in my opinion, at least for, particular brands in web 3, PFP projects in web 3 is that you, on the one hand, have the overall collection.

Legendary 00:38:38 On the other hand, you want to drive, exposure to individual elementals, individual key's individual beans and want to actually make people be excited about specific traits, specific trait, combinations, And for me, one of my hypothesis when I, changed my PFP to my elemental slots was exactly that. There is not, like, I wanted to be the number one slot in the web 3 space, and the slot wasn't occupied as a brand by a content creator back then. And I found this guy, right, with him and just went on that brand building journey.

Legendary 00:39:17 And I think I'm not the only one who has seen something very specific in their Azuki, in their bean, in their elemental, and then went with it. And you have recently introduced the collector status with the tears, with, new emblems, Can you maybe before we get into into the discussion into some of the more detailed questions that I have on that, outline the thinking behind the collector status, how that came to be, and how it fits into the existing, collector profile needs with the existing emblems.

Dem ⛩️ 00:39:55 Absolutely. Collector status is very integral to IP building, but at the same time, it's a very targeted product. And it's not like the end all be all for the Suzuki ecosystem, neither from, like, an IP growth per se perspective or from, like, rewards to collector's perspective, It is a very target, and it, and it's the version 1.0 of what will eventually become the whole collector status experience.

Dem ⛩️ 00:40:21 But, but the reason why it's so important to IP building is that there was already this behavior of buying an Azuki or an elemental or a beans that you love and then shopping around the collection and falling in love with different trades and falling in love with different types that is not just the collector behavior. It is also an IP building behavior.

Dem ⛩️ 00:40:45 The more time that our fans and our community spends looking at all the different elementals and learning about the different domains, and looking at the different Azuki and looking at the different weapons and trades, the more time that they spend there, that's time that they're spending in the universe. That is IP building. Like, that creates a connection between them and the characters and the world because these characters are built very much within the universe.

Dem ⛩️ 00:41:10 And so creating a numerical system that enshrined the value that we give to the more rare Azuki to the super rare Azuki to the spirits, to the kigurumi, to the gold, creating a system that, like, rewarded people from appreciating that was very, very important because as an IP company that wants to build characters, We don't want NFTs to just become tokens.

Dem ⛩️ 00:41:37 We've always said that the art is a wrapper for the token, but if we really hyper financialize NFTs, AZuki as a brand loses a huge advantage that it has over other collections, which is the death of the collection and how enjoyable it is to find that one Azuki that really represents you as the brand. Now the goal of collector status is really to reward type of behavior that's not rewarded anywhere else. There's all these other systems that will reward you for providing liquidity for giving out loans, for taking out loans, for bidding, for buying, for selling, for dumping, all that shorter term behavior is really well enshrined within other systems like blur.

Dem ⛩️ 00:42:17 But the long term collecting, trading, building, curating a collection, really appreciating the rarity. Like, that is not really appreciated anywhere in the current systems. It's very important to assign these numerical values that are not they're not based on what we think about the rarity of the collection, blah blah, they're based on the existing marketing market behavior. Like, markets are really powerful. And so we looked at what was trading above floor We looked at what trades already had a community built around them. We looked at what trades people were being excited about, and we're like, let's really try to find a set of numbers.

Dem ⛩️ 00:42:52 That allow the short term people and the long term people to agree on the potential value of of an NFT. Because right now, the only measure of value for NFTs is being enshrined by other systems. And so everything's turning very short term, very buy it, sell it, buy it, sell it, flip it, flip it. But with this system, what we're starting to see is that a short term trader and a long term collector with long term conviction, they can now have a more clear discussion about what the true value of one of these NFTs are because there's now point system with it.

Dem ⛩️ 00:43:27 Obviously, it's such a complex system, and there's so many factors at at play that we're gonna need to iterate on this. Like, I'm held. It's not being taken into consideration right now. This long term holding behavior, community contributions, which are huge. Like, all of those things that people do outside of just collecting are massive. And so I think that's why it's also a very targeted system. It is very it's being very targeted at the collector at, like, the long term collector and an holder, and it is not the end all be all, but we can only release one product at a time. I think if we had released you know, 6 or 7 products at a time, it really would have cost like a lot of confusion. And so we have to keep it simple.

Dem ⛩️ 00:44:05 We're very happy with the reaction of the market and with the reaction both long term and short term collectors of it. I'm also getting a lot of feedback about, you know, this thing we could have done better and that thing we could have better, which is healthy. Like, that's exactly at the stage at which are in terms of the development of the product. Like, we need to hear from the community what could have done best. But I think what's very important for me to say out loud is that long term collecting and spending a lot of time looking at the collection to try to optimize the points and try to maximize the points that you get out of the collection. That is actually a good behavior for IP building. You know, like, that's the old joke of, like, I came into this collection just, like, flip it, and I became a community member.

Dem ⛩️ 00:44:45 Like, we have created a system now where even if you're coming in as a flipper, and as a short term holder, you're gonna have to read through all of our emblems out in order of, like, our fluffy lower stuff and blah blah blah blah. And you might just fall in love with that one animal, and you might just fall in love with that one red OG, Azuki, and you might just fall in love with that one kigurumi. And so maybe we can turn more long term short term flippers into longer term, but more importantly, we can reward long term collectors and those that appreciate of the collection, we can reward them. We can show them with points, and we can show them with with badges and and with these progression system. We can show them just how much we appreciate them.

Dem ⛩️ 00:45:24 So It was a very important release, and god, I was so nervous launching it because there's so many factors to play. So even though it wasn't perfect at launch, it did get a good reception, and now we get some time to really look at the feedback and keep improving it.

Legendary 00:45:40 I love how you said that you used the the market data to also establish, a bit of the the points ranking. And I also liked the decision that you made on purpose to not have the protocol support to not have lending, liquidity farming, other points farming on on external platforms as part of that, but really focus on that long term holding behavior that you want to incentivize.

Legendary 00:46:08 And when when you guys posted the update on the collector status, you mentioned that the longest discussion, the most difficult discussion was transparency versus clickability, do you want to make sure that all the points are known and be as transparent as possible so that everyone can make an informed decision versus do you want to keep the magic of not completely revealing the formula and the secret sauce behind all of that and keep a bit of the collecting magic.

Legendary 00:46:43 And in the end, you made the decision, to go towards transparency and show how, the the specific point values work What was the deciding factor that swayed the decision pro transparency in the end?

Dem ⛩️ 00:47:02 Yeah. We're lucky to have, you know, some really smart people working on this product that are not me because I'm not very smart. So location TBA and and Sarah, from our team. Sarah is our new VP of Product and and location TBAs is one of the co founders. They were most involved in this decision making. And I was pretty happy with how they laid out, like, the the advantages and the and the disadvantages. And I think at the end of the day, the compromise towards more transparency was important because we have a more holistic understanding of their NST space now, and you can't ignore the short term traders.

Dem ⛩️ 00:47:40 You can't ignore those people that are hustling on the intraday trades and on the swing trades and that are flipping and that are providing liquidity. And so if we had over invested in the storytelling and in the lower aspect of it, we would have missed a chance to create a common language between some market participants and other market participants. And and the goal the whole goal of collector status was to try to get the market to appreciate what our long term collectors already knew, which is that the Azuki collection is very deep. It has a lot of really different traits that are very cool to collect and to discover.

Dem ⛩️ 00:48:18 And so if we had really obfuscated the point value to a point where a trader couldn't really understand it, we would have missed a chance to create a bridge between are super fans that love a red, a Zuki, or a blue, a Zuki, or a gold kigurumi, and the people that are just here for a quick clip. And so We're pretty happy with the balance that we struck, but it's something we have to say vigilant because once you gamify the collecting experience, it could become overly gamified. And so, you know, I think world, you know, Sarah is a big nerd and location is a big nerd. We all talk about different video game systems. They were talking about location TV always talks about civilization.

Dem ⛩️ 00:48:57 Personally, I'm a Dungeons and Dragons nerd. And in Dungeons and Dragons, like, Of course, there's rules and there's numbers and there's math, and you can minmax your characters to hell. But if you really wanna have a great game at the table, you gotta keep the telling alive. And and you cannot let one single player just be doing, like, very complex math all the time and boring the hell out of all the other players. And so We need to stay vigilant that this gamification of the collecting experience serves as a language between short term traders and long term collectors, but it doesn't become this, like, insane game of point maximization that just completely destroys our culture.

Dem ⛩️ 00:49:36 And that's that's just gonna happen through iteration, and we're happy to have a community that's very vocal when they don't see something that they when they see something that they don't like. And so we'll just keep listening to them and and try to find a happy balance. But, you know, given how high the launch was and all the factors.

Dem ⛩️ 00:49:54 I'm very happy with the decision that Sarraf and location made here towards more transparency because we are seeing short term traders be able to value, a mid rare now based on the point system that we establish even though they might not care so much about the fact that it's a kigurumi and it's a cat and it's so cute and it has a sword, but they're like, oh, you know, I can see that it's worth this many points. So, therefore, I'll buy it and I'll hold it, and I'll wait for somebody who appreciates the art because I inherently think that, you know, the point value increases its valuable and slower. And and I think we're we're happy with that at this point.

Dem ⛩️ 00:50:29 Well, we'll keep on pushing for a better and and more advanced system, but it it is quite an meant, and I'm very happy that tariff and location made made that decision.

Legendary 00:50:37 I think that the and the analogy is just fantastic, and my inner nerd is cheering it because it makes so much sense. Right? You enjoy the storytelling. You enjoy the narrative. And, yes, there there is fun in min maxing, but that can't be everything for a brand that is building and and IP ecosystem. Carmel, when we spoke about the collective status, I know you had many, many, many thoughts on that, so I would absolutely love to hear from you.

Karma 00:51:05 Yeah. This is a brilliant topic. And, you know, for those who are just tuning into the spaces, like, you know, what could potentially a metaverse like ZTX and an NFT slash bra, you know, like, IP project like Azuki have in common. And the fact is that you can just learn so much from rather. And I remember, you know, months ago even back when we were still designing the UI, the look of the ZTX platform, the user experience, I'm going to be honest with them.

Karma 00:51:35 Like, the the Azuki Collector profiles were, for me, one of the main example I was bringing up to my team in our, you know, meetings on on the user user journey within ZTX on how I would love to involve and then tangle the user into the ZT X space. And now bear with me as I spend on this on this topic because it's generally something that I believe everybody should be looking into. Now for those of you who have never seen an Suzuki Collector profile, you know, maybe your the ZT X community, it's almost like your online calling card.

Karma 00:52:13 You can feature all the NFTs you own within the Azuki ecosystem. It sort of like really like blows up your NFT. Like, it extends the background onto your entire screen. So it just looks like a gorgeous deliberate page rather than something you were viewing an open sea. And you look much more at someone's identity than just their inventory of NFTs. It's it's a very, very emotional experience, even looking at, you know, someone's at someone else's you then also see their journey within the ecosystem.

Karma 00:52:44 You see different emblems, which signify, you know, different trades that they've collected You also see different badges, which can be awarded for participation in community sprints, community missions. Now apologies then. Like, I should I I'm like, woman explaining Azuki Pro us to execute community, but this is this is for the benefit of the CTX community here.

Dem ⛩️ 00:53:03 It's fascinating to see it from your perspective, actually. So I'm learning on time.

Karma 00:53:06 Keep keep keep keep moments explaining, please. So, yeah, so when I was looking into it originally, it generally seems to me like the first successful instance, of of establishing, participant's identity within an ecosystem in a shareable way. Because you also get your own URL, it's azuki.com slash collector slash whoever you are. I'm right now looking at Dingerlinx, you know, page and just simply over his NFTs. So It it gives you not only a link that you can share with your fellow community members. It gives it gives your NFTs.

Karma 00:53:46 It gives your collection a home. Which fills, you know, a part of the ecosystem, again, rather than just the clinical cold and emotionless front page or like your collector page of an open sea. So this was an incredible move, and I haven't seen it done remotely as well as Suzuki did anywhere in any capacity. And now, of course, you've also added this point system where people can, you know, acquire ranks, different traits, like, select boost you in different ways. It's an entire gamified presence. Now, okay, like, I've synced enough. Now, what's my point here?

Karma 00:54:24 Now, for the majority of not just NFT projects, meta versus games, What you care about as a project, what you care about as a team is retention. How long do you get to keep the customer, keep your community member within your ecosystem. And this was a brilliant move to keep them within that ecosystem even more. And help them identify with that ecosystem in a very, very tangible way. And this is something the majority of games, gaming projects also have to look at. You know, no matter what you're into, you know, you look at parallel, you look at, I don't know, Star Atlas, all those different games want to achieve the same thing.

Karma 00:55:04 They want you to be really involved within the within the ecosystem. They want you to be involved in the story, and they want the highest possible user retention. They want to retain you on their websites. And similarly down the line for ZTX, you know, your ZT X avatar is going to be your identity within that metaverse, and we want you to identify with that person. With that, digital you, and we want to create a page, create a home for all your assets, for earlier interactions, for the digital fashion that you are accumulating for different aspects and different NFTs that you craft in game.

Karma 00:55:43 And to select finish this entire tangent, the Azuki Collector profile is always going to be, for me, exhibit a of how we want to do it. And what we want to strive towards over a long period of time, because, of course, for a game, it's going to be significantly more complex than in Azuki's case, which you know, static static NFTs, but just an incredible, an incredible example of how one project can learn from another, even if they are in completely different verticals. Because we are all at the end of the day standing at the same well of user engagement.

Karma 00:56:20 From this initial very small pool of web free user base, we are now expanding towards, yeah, IP. Enemy. We are like hyper contextualizing. And in terms of games, you know, we really need to learn from that in order to also understand how to retain that user base and make them very, very passionate, advocacy, sorry, advocates for us. Just like the Azuki communities. Okay. This was a very, very long tangent, but I think you see them how it, like, it has featured very heavily in all my discussions with the team. So it was great to see also from your perspective how these collector profiles have grown. And it also pivots me towards the topic.

Karma 00:56:59 I think that we wanted touch up on legendary of, marketplaces. You know, it's not that far removed from, like, you know, the realm of possibilities that eventually, the majority of large projects will also have their own marketplace. Now I know this meta comes and goes and, you know, OpenC still retains, you know, stronghold over everything. We all love liquidity. We all love just like a one stop shop.

Karma 00:57:27 But I think as these, you know, IP metaverse gaming projects advance and become bigger and bigger, the NFTs will become more and more complex, it's going to significantly become much more difficult for the for the marketplaces to display all those, you know, all those important metrics. For example, if you're buying a gaming NFT, it's very difficult to see an open sea what the utility is, how that NST will look like in game.

Karma 00:57:57 And my personal little, anticipation, is that we will see more and more projects 2024, 2025 advance and have integrated in game, in experience, marketplaces, and purchase opportunities in order to come away from the clinical collective PFP marketplace experience. But this is just something I wanted to throw out there and would really love to hear what you think about that then.

Dem ⛩️ 00:58:27 Yeah. I mean, on the wider point of how you build a great product and and, you know, you'd you'd look in at our our product, I I really appreciate that. And I and I think it's it it looks really good for CTX in the future. Because you can only build great product by by looking at and being inspired by other great product.

Dem ⛩️ 00:58:48 I love to share one of our biggest inspirations for the collector profile, which was actually, Rohitosan, who is, one of our advisors for a long time and and sort of a legend in all sorts of collecting circles, and a conversation that he had with Sagabon on on a tour of his house, He is a massive Ferrari collector collector, and he keeps all of his, Ferrari collectibles in this glass sort of grand glass, collectible space in in the garage.

Dem ⛩️ 00:59:19 And and he sort of he he showed that to Sagabaugh and and said, whatever you make whether it's something big or something small, you need to imagine that the collectors within within your community, that people that fold your brand, they're going to want to show it at the center of their home. And and whenever they bring somebody over to their home, it's gonna be a special moment for them to show that. To to everyone. And so I think that was one of the physical spaces or inspirations that we took away from.

Dem ⛩️ 00:59:47 This idea that whether it's an NFT or whether it's a physical product or whatever it is, it needs to fill a place within within this glass exhibition space that that are that are, you know, communities going to use to to show to their friends. And so it was one of the main inspirations for the for the collector profile. I think that on the topic of retention, we're maybe in a different position interestingly. So, like, I've always fought to increase retention and reduce churn in the products that I was building. And it was all about, like, how we can increase it.

Dem ⛩️ 01:00:23 And I think with Suzuki, we have, sort of backwards problem where we have already such an engaged and loyal community And we're now just trying to build products and experiences that justify their commitment and their long term stay in power. These people that have been with us for 2 years, like, It is more about just making them feel rewarded for all the things that they've already done. And so, you know, I think collector status is less of, like, a forward looking effort to increase your attention and more of like a backwards thing of like, hey, we saw you taking all of these rares and these mid rares, and we saw you creating communities around all of these trades and, like, we want to reward that experience.

Dem ⛩️ 01:01:02 We we want you to feel like we also get it. Like, we also love that the fact that you're doing this. And so it's interesting. And I think that's one of the differences between building and web 3 because through the power of NFTs and through the power of, like, those sort of decentralized ownership, your starting point is not that you have to build an audience. Your starting point is that you already have an audience, and now you gotta build product that they'll love and engage with. And that's always been something that Azuki has had to deal with because We very early on acquired a very excited community and a very loyal community, and now we had to deliver on their expectations. And that will continue to be a big challenge into 2024.

Dem ⛩️ 01:01:42 And it's a very interesting topic, which is the topic of expectations. Now whatever we do something great, our community really celebrates and they feel justified in their past conviction, but also they take whatever we did and they create like a 10 x expectation for what our next delivery will be. Which is kind of a dangerous road to be on. On one hand, it's like amazing to have that passion. But, you know, if I mentioned something like oh, Japan Airlines might be a sponsor at our next event. The instant reaction of unnecessary community member is like, oh, we're all getting free tickets. Sponsored by Japan Airlines to go to the event. And it's like, that is such an unreasonable increase in expectations.

Dem ⛩️ 01:02:18 Like, do you know how hard it will be to even hype theoretically launch that partner, like, actually onboard them in time, but but it is it is just the the fuel, like, the rocket fuel that drives web 3 projects forward. And so, I mean, you know, as far as, like, is it bad or is it good? It's actually great. You know, like, it's better to be building with the with the raw materials of, like, such massive passion for a brand than to be trying to get people excited about something that they're not really excited about. It is a completely different challenge, and so you have to switch the way that you that you think about it. So I don't know how well that answers your question, but it was something that I really wanted to talk about. So I just took it to what I wanted to talk about.

Legendary 01:02:58 So And it's such an important point, right, the expectation management and the user retention. As you said, the expectation wouldn't be economy tickets wouldn't be business class, but it would be 1st class tickets because we are in web 3. Right? And I think this is also one of the reasons why we thought that having that that fireside chat with you would be such a valuable discussion because many games that we are talking about, many founders that we are talking about typically are in the stage of user acquisition. They are pre launch. They are maybe just about to launch a token, and they are not yet in the user retention phase. And this is why I love to you connected user retention with the collective profile.

Legendary 01:03:38 And, we only really touched on the the anime side of things a bit. We didn't get into the gaming. We didn't get into the PBTs. So, I do think we have to to do another round of that, fireside chat, in in in in the future. Because we've been running for a bit more than 1 hour, and I do want to be respectful, of everyone's time. Both everyone in the audience as well as our speakers.

Legendary 01:04:08 But before we go, then one final question, out of everything that's basically on the horizon for Azuki, what's the number one thing that excites you most for 2024 and beyond if you have to pick 1?

Dem ⛩️ 01:04:23 That's a great question. I think it's the fact that we have strongly decided to communicate our north star, our direction as a brand, our our narrative, more frequently, more transparently, and to more people more often. And so we have really listened to our community And they've said, we love the secrecy, but but we love the surprises, like keep the surprises, but we need to know what direction you guys are going. So that we can all pull in the same direction. And so what I'm really excited about, you know, there's really big things.

Dem ⛩️ 01:05:02 We're releasing a short form anime in April. We're look we're working on long form content anime. We're looking we're working on short form anime content. We're working on partnerships, physical products. We're working on hyper casual gaming experiences, we might, you know, we we might work on a on an additional game on top of that. I mean, there's all these things that are exciting because they're finished and they're ready to launch and there's all these things that are exciting because we're in development phase for them, but I think what's going to really change the vibe and the energy of being in the garden is the fact that we now have a cohesive, coherent narrative that we want to repeat over and over and over so that our community really understand it.

Dem ⛩️ 01:05:42 So I'm gonna be on spaces a lot more. We're gonna be holding a monthly, like these tight stages tomorrow, we're doing the first one in anime, but we will do one in other topics. And I think it's going to be that, like, acceleration co creation through better communication, like more clear and more more current and more, open communication with the community while also keeping surprises and exciting things and, like, a little bit of hype, oh, here and there, you know. So so I think it's just gonna be a year where we get to talk about what we do more often. And our community is less confused about what's happening in the Suzuki world, and they have a very much more clear image.

Dem ⛩️ 01:06:22 And that way we can move away from this energy that we've had in the garden of like, what's really gonna happen? Should I really be holding this or whatever? And my get just get excited about the things that are actually being launched. We don't have to get excited about this, like, fake hype or, like, these images that we built in our brains. Like, we can just be like, okay, this is releasing at this date. Oh, that's really cool. Okay. The beans are in the IPX store right now. That's very cool. I think that's really going to change my job, and it's really going to change our relationship with the community, and it's going to allow us to do more co creation.

Dem ⛩️ 01:06:53 So, yeah, that, that, that's better communication more more more clear north star, a bunch of stuff to deliver and and still some mystery, some secret stuff that nobody knows about. That that that's such a great mix for you for a start of the year.

Legendary 01:07:07 That is such a good answer. I really appreciate it, especially also from the perspective, of being a holder myself. With that being said, Karma, why don't you wrap those up for today's space?

Karma 01:07:19 Absolutely. Well, I've been searching for my elemental for, like, 2 months now. I just can't find any with, like, black, wavy hair so that it actually fits me, if someone has one. I I I thereby encourage you. No. Jokes side, this has been an incredibly illuminating conversation, and I really appreciate everybody's time.

Karma 01:07:44 I won't repeat myself, but I do want to highlight again that it's very, very incredible how much you can learn from other projects in the space, even if they are not in the same vertical as you and we keep these spaces on a weekly because there is it's it's one of the single most ROI friendly things we've ever done at ZT X, just talking openly with other builders, with other communities, and knowing exactly which directions to take, or which angles to consider as we expand our product in order to learn from everybody else because, you know, many people have done this roller coaster ride before or in front of you.

Karma 01:08:24 And you're just missing out on all the important lessons. They might they may be able to, you know, pass on to you along the way. And for our community, I also wanted to say that I know everybody is incredibly eager to jump back into the ZTX beta We are earlier in the stage of, you know, expanding our product and, Azuki is. But our entire team is working very diligently on getting in the back online after we have to implement some changes. So stay tuned, please.

Karma 01:08:54 We're going to be back with more updates very, very soon and relaunching that beta, allowing everybody also from the garden to jump in and check out CTX is the absolute priority right now. So looking forward to that for sure, and thank you then. Looking forward to more discussions like this in the future.

Dem ⛩️ 01:09:11 Yeah. I hope all the, elementals and Azuki and beans here give CTX to follow, give legendary a follow, and and give Karma a follow. You guys are definitely asking all the right questions, and I'm excited about the way that you guys think about product. And legendary man. You I've, I I've never been a host in one of your spaces, but it was such a great experience. So thanks for having me up. And I hope that, you get a bunch of fellows from all these Suzuki and beans out here. And you do become the number one sloth in the in in the garden.

Legendary 01:09:39 Love it. Thank you so much. And thank you again for your time, and thank you to everyone in the audience have a fantastic rest of it Tuesday.