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Azuki meets TON
Recorded: June 26, 2025 Duration: 1:15:42Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, Zagabon, founder of Azuki, outlined the project's evolution from an NFT collection to a vibrant anime universe, emphasizing its recent partnership with the TAN community and the innovative launch of a sticker pack on Telegram. The conversation highlighted the growing importance of community engagement and the potential for Web3 brands to thrive within the Telegram ecosystem.
Full Transcription
Thank you. So Yeah, everybody, welcome to the space.
Make sure to retweet the room in the bottom right corner and also engage with a pin tweets at the top.
We gotta wait for a couple more minutes for everyone to join in and we're gonna start shortly.
Let's get it.
Thank you, everybody, for being here on time. GMG, I'm Zagabond. Welcome in. Can you hear us? How are you doing, bro?
Yes, sir. Let's get it. Let's get it.
We hear you. Let's get it. I'm actually very stoked for this space. I've been waiting for a minute to educate people about Azuki,
and a lot of people have been wondering who you are,
where you're coming from.
So I think this is a very timely update as well for everybody.
Great.
I'm excited.
The same on my end.
And you guys are fans of anime, which I'm heavily
echoing as well.
And being a fan of Asian culture overall.
So I think there's a lot that you've been doing over the course of years that really stand out.
But we're going to learn more as we go through today.
You ever been to Japan?
Not to Japan, though.
I went to South Korea.
I went to Singapore, to Thailand. No Japan yet.
Haven't visited this one.
Yeah, Japan next. I've been to Hong Kong. Is it similar to Hong Kong or very different?
There's no place like Japan. It's one of those places. It's kind of like New York City.
If you go there, you'll know what I mean it's crazy I've been shocked by
the fact that there's like very rarely to see in trash bins and that people collecting trash into
the plastic bags for them I mean this is wild like I know a little bit about the culture but
never been there still dude bro I I went on a hike in Japan and um I had to keep all all my trash in
my backpack and I was walking around the
city with trash in my in my bag the whole time I was I was so pissed but then
yeah that's when I learned like yeah you got to take care of your own trash
what's the best place to go is it like Tokyo or is there somewhere else if it's
your first time there you got to hit up Tokyo you can easily spend a week in
Tokyo Kyoto is more traditional you can see a lot of the old temples which is If this is your first time there, you got to hit up Tokyo. You can easily spend a week in Tokyo.
Kyoto is more traditional.
You can see a lot of the old temples, which is really great.
Is it the island with the bunch of, not Ilk's, but how's it called?
Those like, like Bombay's, you know, looking like Bombay's. There's a whole island filled with them.
I forgot the name of it.
You mean Tia?
No. I don't know what you're talking about, but like bumbus there's a whole island filled with them i forgot the name of it you mean they are no
i don't know what you're talking about but um no this is um all all in the main i mean japan's like an island but it's all um kyoto and um tokyo are on the um uh like the main main island
main island i've heard that there's enormous traffic in the mattress uh i've seen how they
are getting jam-packed in some of the videos and this is crazy to me yeah yeah the people in the
in the trains but it runs smooth though it's it's uh it's on time but yeah there's a lot of people
in the city for sure yeah it, it's quite crowded area.
Where are you based at, by the way?
I'm in Los Angeles.
The Azuki headquarters is here in LA.
Most of the team is here.
We also have quite a few folks remote as well.
I see.
I thought you've been actually having a more diverse team in a sense of around the globe.
But this is great to hear that you're actually based in the LA.
Yeah, how about you? Where are you guys?
I'm living in the North Europe.
So enjoying the summer solstice.
How is it called when the sun doesn't go down?
Summer solstice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm based in the UK right now in a place called Newcastle.
But I am relocating to Dubai next month permanently.
Very cool.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Well, I think we've got a lot of people in the space right now.
A lot of the Azuki community and a lot of the Tung community.
For those in the Tung community that haven't met you yet, Zagabon, would you like to introduce yourself?
Zagabon, I'm the founder of Azuki.
We are an anime brand and universe.
We started as an NFT collection on Ethereum about four years ago.
And we are very excited to be a part of the TAN community now.
We've been in the community for about maybe just a month now,
but really, really cool to see a lot of the developments happening.
Been a Telegram user now for years.
So we had a very warm welcome.
So thank you for that.
And yeah, I've been in crypto now for about eight years.
So I've been building in the space for quite some time started um i started in defy back in 2017 and i have been full-time crypto ever since
yeah i could tell that you know four years in the nft space it feels like forever i feel like you
know what i mean when you take like just a couple days off
from crypto x and you're like cool what did i miss it feels like a year here bro there's no sleep
in the trenches no sleep no sleep and um vector introduce yourself as well to the azuki community
yes absolutely my name is victor i'm just someone you know, which is literally my username, and I'm working as a global community lead at Tom. And I'm very happy to be here today and actually finally have this conversation to educate people about what is Suzuki. Why is it so important? What is going on here? And thank you all for making it possible today. Thank you all for joining us and make sure to retweet the room in the bottom right.
making it possible today thank you all for joining us and make sure to read the room in the bottom
right absolutely gotta get the uh gotta get the retweets out and uh myself i'm ethan uh formerly
ethan dg i've just recently rebranded with a new pfp and a new name um i've been in crypto probably
about just about four and a bit years now um my last big role was on the board ape yacht club
council um on the team.
That was a great role over there, so I've got a lot of experience in NFTs.
And when I saw the TUN ecosystem start to pop off and what they were doing with NFTs and crypto in general,
it just made total sense.
And I'm now working with them directly.
I'm running the TUN blockchain page, and I'm very excited to be here and discuss Suzuki with the founder himself, Zagabond. Oh, so you're running the TUN blockchain page and i'm very excited to be here and discuss suzuki with the founder himself
zagabond oh so you're running the ton blockchain page so you're always on it man yeah yeah i'm i'm
the chief reply guy yeah but for real yeah i'm i'm absolutely on it all day long um trying to
try and make an impact but yeah um so zagabon with with uh tun blockchain um tell us about your
recent activations so our first activation coming into um telegram um well i think personally for
me i've been a telegram user for quite some time i think within my friend circle i was
pretty pretty early on to telegram um we used it back in 2017.
The funny thing is the term DeFi was actually coined in a Telegram group chat.
It was a few of the early protocol founders.
We were talking about what do we call this category that is disrupting finance?
And we had a few ideas.
OpenFi was one of them.
DeFi was another one.
And then we landed on DeFi.
I have a cool screenshot of the Telegram group chat of that combo.
And then what brought Azuki ultimately to Telegram is, you know, I was having some conversations with people in the space that
have been building in NFTs for quite some time. And, you know, we had been waiting for a platform
that had distribution, had real users, and was able to kind of embed crypto capabilities within the platform in a very native way.
And so when I saw that, you know, there's a wallet inside Telegram, there's GIFs, right,
are on chain, and then Stickers was a kind of budding ecosystem.
It really was a good way for Azuki to do what we do best, which is we create premium collectibles and we have a elevated IP and anime world.
Right. And we're creating original anime production to tell the story and showcase this IP to the world.
And so that combined with stickers on Telegram, which is a great way for people to collect a piece of the IP and also express themselves with the stickers, was a great way for us to just get introduced to the ecosystem. So
our first activation was the Shou sticker pack. And we dropped that. And, you know,
the sticker store went down for a little bit. There's a lot of demand for it. A lot of excitement,
which is great. You broke it. Be honest. You broke it. Yeah. You know, I feel like a lot of these,
these, these drops break the system these days. And that just shows you, you know, like we're early.
And so the infra has some room for improvement, which is great.
But, you know, I think features are improving.
The tech is scaling.
We have a lot more dope things planned.
So, yeah, that was our first foray into the ecosystem, which was a good experience.
Yeah, yeah.
That was insane to see.
It sold out in, I think, like two minutes, the first sticker pack you launched.
And it literally did break the servers.
There must have been 200,000, 300,000 trying to mint a very limited amount of NFTs.
How many were there again, Zagabond?
I think 110k around that, right?
Yeah, something like that.
But how many were there, Zagabond, think 110k around that track yeah something like that something like that but how many were there zagabond in that in that drop i think it was um five around 5k supply um
uh something like that yeah yeah so like or or maybe it was 5 000 stars with 3 000 supply
yeah one or the other yeah yeah whatever it was it broke the stars with 3,000 supply. Yeah, one or the other. Yeah, yeah.
Whatever it was, it broke the whole system.
And we've taken on the feedback, especially with the board 8 Mint as well,
happening shortly after.
And we're building a new sticker store because that sticker store isn't actually tied to Ton at all.
It's a third-party community-made marketplace.
Right.
So we're building out our own.
It'll include things like a whitelist, the
proper service to handle the demand. It'll just make this whole process so much more seamless.
But yeah, what's interesting about that is I like that culture on Telegram actually,
because Telegram obviously is built by a core team, but the Tan ecosystem seems to be very bottoms up
in terms of like the community ethos, right?
So there's a lot of third party applications.
People aren't really waiting around
asking for permission to start their own apps.
And it's great to see Telegram adopt
and integrate this into the ecosystem.
And so, you know, I think there's challenges there,
but overall, like that's the energy that you need
for an early community to start building something cool.
And so, you know, we take a similar approach
with how we grow the Azuki community
because there's tons of builders, creators,
artists within the ecosystem.
And they use their Azuki NFTs,
which are characters. And they do commission art, they create businesses on top of it.
And as long as you own that NFT, you're free to explore any sort of creative endeavors with it.
You have commercial rights over it.
Yeah, so that kind of builder ethos
I really vibe with.
Yeah, exactly.
Go on, Victor.
Yeah, what's interesting here
is that it made a full circle,
as you mentioned, Zagabon.
It started with Telegram back in the days when you've been trying to figure out what do we call DeFi as.
And today we're all circling back to Telegram and now Tuan as well, which is a phenomenal story in my opinion.
You know, what I'm wondering the most, where we all start, is actually how did Zuki take their beginning as a brand you as a founder like before
you know the whole mean process before you release this collection before it became one of the
most hype nfts overall in crypto like how did the idea get born like what led to this
so this was back in 2021 i had been building in DeFi for about four years. And what I really loved about DeFi was I remember this one meeting I had. There was this one kid who was, I think he was like 12 or 13 at the time. And he came into our office and he had this idea for a protocol he was building that was going to integrate with ZeroX, which was the DeFi protocols working at the time.
And this kid was 13, right?
And so he was so young that he didn't even fully understand the traditional banking system.
He just had an entirely different concept of what money even was, because his first
experience with money was with crypto.
And because of the permissionless rails that blockchain provides, he was just able to
start creating something completely new and wasn't possible in the traditional financial world.
And wasn't possible in the traditional financial world.
And so when that happened, I was like, this is really inspiring, right?
So there's a culture being built here in Web3 of people building unstoppable applications
on public blockchains.
And that's what crypto to me is all about.
And that's what crypto to me is all about.
And so for years of building in DeFi, what I realize is personally for me, I'm not a developer.
I can understand the code conceptually, but my strength and what I feel like I was put on this earth to do is really create something that can inspire people through art, through identity, through experiences.
And that comes through building up the culture of Web3, not so much in me building a protocol myself.
me building a protocol myself. And so I took my learnings and inspirations from DeFi.
And I said, well, what could an NFT become that fungible tokens have a hard time doing?
And what I realized was NFTs were really good to create a shared identity amongst the community. And that's the power of
the PFP. And that's the power of a 10,000 NFT collection, where visually, when you see it,
then you know, it's tied to a specific collection. And what does that collection stand for?
Then you're talking about the brand side of things. And that was where my passion was.
So back then, no one really thought of their NFT collection as a brand before Azuki.
It was just, oh, we have some cool art, right?
And there's some rare ones that are expensive.
You can collect it, you can flip it.
But when Azuki came up on the scene, our vision was, how can we create a brand that uses anime as a visual identity, but really this is a brand that encapsulates Web3 culture.
around focusing on creators and focusing on freedom to just build whatever the hell you want.
That was really the energy that we brought to building Azuki in the early days.
So that was initial inspiration for Azuki.
azuki and you know azuki in japanese it it means red bean um and that's where the concept of the
And, you know, Azuki in Japanese, it means red bean.
cart of the garden came around because we all see ourselves as uh little red beans in a garden
with giant potential and when you plant that seed and you let uh yourself really grow together with
other people in this community,
really amazing things can happen.
And so over the course of the last four years,
we've dropped some really great experiences.
But what's inspired me the most is just seeing what the community has built alongside the core team.
And yeah, that's the initial inspiration for Azuki.
Wow. Yeah, the lore of the art goes really deep.
I always remember seeing Azuki back in its early days, and it's a standout PFP.
It even faces the other way, as most NFT PFPs do.
And I don't know if that was intentional or not, but it always stood out to me.
And I'm a
big fan of the whole meaning behind azuki as well with a red bean like i guess yeah and in a way we
are all kind of red beans trying to grow and become something in the world so i sort of resonate with
that i resonate with that um but i want to welcome to the stage zenith the nft leader at ton uh just
introduce yourself there bro you basically did a quick introduction didn't you how we were
doing that was that was quite a nice little part to listen to as soon as i came in zegabond
i actually didn't fully know the story behind uh azuki and why you built it i was there when
it launched but uh sadly i didn't look too too much into it at the time but you know uh just
for all of you listening yes i'm the nft uh leader
tom foundation sorry i'm a little bit late i literally just got home uh like 10 minutes ago
so i had to go and get some stuff ready and then jump on uh but yeah happy to be here uh i'll
listen for a little bit and i'll join him let's go happy to have you zenith and before i continue a
couple more questions i firstly wanted to say we actually have Drio in the audience.
He is one of the major supporters of Tone.
He made some of the best content educating people about stickers and gifts.
By the way, if you haven't seen, check his pin post.
This is the latest one about the gifts.
But he's been rocking Kazuki PFP for forever since I know him, actually.
If you have a chance, listen to the stage,
I think he could have some interesting insights
as well to share.
But to my point, you know, you started as a PFP collection
and you had a great vision and already understanding
of CryptoZagabond.
And I was wondering, like at the beginning
when you just started Azuki, have you really seen it becoming what it is today
like four years later at this point I think I think I've always had a vision for what it could
ultimately become at the same time that that vision is malleable and i think you have to kind
of see what what happens day to day and and use that as new input um to help shape your vision
right so you know for us we we've always had this vision of azuki being um this open anime universe on day one, where it's not just the core team driving everything,
but it's the entire community that's helping shape this world. And in a world where
crypto is becoming more mainstream, where we can have true ownership with tokens and NFTs, and also in a world where AI is really changing the way that creators are able to
create not just, you know, stories, but also the art and visuals behind it. I think an IP and world
like Azuki is the perfect fit for that. So we're starting to see that start to form.
You know, at the same time, there's new opportunities that come up.
And so we're looking at those things as well.
But I had never thought that, you know, we would
we would get so big so quickly.
I think in terms of volume, secondary trading volume,
because I know there's some folks in the in the audience who may not be as familiar with the Ethereum NFT side.
But we've had like over a billion dollars in secondary trading volume on Azuki.
And I think that's probably just behind Bored Apes. Right? So, you know, there's, there was a lot of excitement right after we
minted, and this was about three and a half years ago. So very quickly, we had to, you know,
expedite a lot of our plans, because one, there's just a lot more people than we had expected early
on, but also we had a lot more capital to work with too. And so it's just been a sprint ever since then, honestly. We've had our ups and downs like every
project has. People have come and go within the community, but we still have a strong core of OGs
from day one. And we have new people joining the community every day. And I think every single day that passes, I feel more and more confident
in our vision because, you know, crypto is not slowing down anytime soon. Right. And I think
stable coins recently has really helped legitimize the industry. At the same time, anime as a medium and as a category is one of the fastest growing categories in the world.
And anime is becoming a lot more mainstream.
And this visual aesthetic really speaks to people all over the world.
So on top of just developing the IP, we're also building real product.
And so about
maybe half a year, longer than that, maybe almost a year ago now, we acquired anime.com.
And we're building that to be the home for anime fandom across the world. And so that's being built
by the Izuki Collective. I mean, the team is just part of the collective.
And we're building multiple products and anime.com is one of them.
So I think it's really cool that an IP like Izuki is really helping shape the anime industry.
And it's something that originated from Web3.
Anime.com is a platform that will provide really great utility for anime fans,
whether you're in Web3 or not.
And that platform originated from a team that started in Web3.
So I think you're starting to see
Web3 kind of play a hand in
not just culture, but also in technology.
And, you know, this this small community that we have within crypto is is
yeah, really moving on to to build a lot of great things.
So looking back at our four years or so, some things I didn't really imagine on day one.
Right. Like, did I imagine we would build something like anime.com?
No, not specifically, but it's in line with our vision and it's something that we saw a need
for um and we're excited to build um and we're continuing to um revise that that playbook um
every single day yeah you guys have built like no one else um absolutely true. I also wanted to ask here as well. Just let me find this. That's it. How are
you looking to expand on the Azuki storytelling and the TUN ecosystem as compared to Ethereum?
You've done a hell of a lot over there, but what do you think TUN can do for you that Ethereum can't?
Yeah, I think TUN has Telegram and that's the biggest weapon. And Telegram has real distribution, a billion users that are on the app. And being able to create experiences for real users in a platform native way is something that no other blockchain can provide. Other chains don't have
a platform like Telegram. And that's what chains are all fighting for right now is, you know,
the chain by itself is, you know, I think getting commoditized, right? But it's the application that really makes
a chain stand out. And so I think like last cycle, a lot of the infrastructure was still being built.
And so the way you stood out is how can you create a chain that's faster, that has more block space?
And, you know, I think speed was like the biggest factor.
And then that's how like...
Don't forget fees because that's why Solana went over Ethereum.
Of course, yeah.
Yeah, and that's how Solana really took over this last cycle.
And now there's like so many chains that are competing on that.
And it's great for builders, right? Because we have so many options. There's a bunch of L2s,
there's, you know, Mega ETH and Monad. And, you know, they've been building for quite some time.
But what they don't have is that killer app. And if they do have one, it has what?
Maybe like 10,000 users, 100,000 users,
which is great for Web3 standards.
But then you have Telegram, which has a billion users.
And that's integrated directly with Tan.
I mean, that's the most exciting part.
And so what that enables Azuki to do is create experiences
that can connect with real users in a really meaningful way.
Users that might not be there for only the upside of why most crypto people are here, right?
Like we want to make money, right?
If we're just being honest, and that's fine.
And a lot of the use cases that we've built have been for crypto native people.
And I think there's definitely still that community on Tan, which is great.
And I think being able to scale that to real users that appreciate the IP, that find utility with whether it's stickers or GIFs or mini games.
That whole ecosystem, I think, is really interesting.
And it makes for a user experience that you can't get on any other chain.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a billion monthly active users on Telegram right now as we speak.
And millions and millions of them are using the Tone ecosystem,
especially the mini-apps.
The mini-apps are often overlooked because they're not as shiny as the GIFs
and the stickers, but Pudgy Penguins has a game on there called Pengu Clash
that has two million monthly active users right now,
and it's probably generating them a hell of a lot of money.
Are you guys looking into building any mini-apps out
with the Azuki IP?
Definitely, yeah.
We're talking with a couple of partners right now.
I think what's really cool is anime and mobile gaming
has just such a strong synergy,
just from an art perspective.
Personally, I think nothing really beats
the anime art aesthetic that's why some of the top grossing games of all time
are it is a company called Mahoyo right in China they make Genshin Impact and
you know a ton of other games as well and you know the art is is phenomenal
and I think there's an opportunity for Azuki's art to really shine
and attract a whole new user base and player base
with some of these mini games that we're cooking up.
So for us, when we do something,
we don't necessarily have to be the first.
But when we do do it, we want to elevate and raise the bar. That's within
the Azuki DNA, right? And so when we're looking at stickers, for example, right, if you go look at
the first Xiao sticker pack right now, I think you'll see that, you know, the quality is really
something that shines for us.
And there's a lot of great sticker packs out there,
but when we try to do it,
we try to do it in our own way and we really put a lot of craftsmanship in it.
We have an art team of over a handful of artists
from really great backgrounds.
They've made some really iconic games.
And I think we're one of the few NFT
companies that have an art team of this size. So yeah, so I think mini games is definitely a good
evolution for us. We just want to make sure we work with the right teams. We have the right
game that works well with the Yuzuki IP and it's ultimately just a great experience for the player
let's go by the way there is a few things while you've been talking that i wanted to ask you about
you in the beginning mentioned that it's been also fascinating journey seeing how the community
helping contribute to what azuki is truly becoming would you elaborate a little bit more on that
from the community side of contributions
over the Azuki brand?
So there's a site called raid.xyz,
which is really cool.
It's a site where the community
can submit commissioned art.
And if you go there,
you'll see that Azuki by far
is the community that has the most fan art and commission art out of any single
project um and that's just one example as to the the creativity and the uh passion
from the community about azuki as an ip and about these characters that we have in our world
about Azuki as an IP and about these characters that we have in our world compared to any other
project. So I think that is really a key pillar of Azuki is just the art. And I think that's,
that's a big reason why people collect Azukis as well, is because you can just put up a Zuki PFP,
print it out, put it on your wall and, you know, it looks good. And, um, yeah, so, so that's,
that's one piece. Um, another piece is, um, there's, there's a lot of builders in the community
as well that are using the IP to make really cool products. And so at all the Azuki events,
if you go there, you will not leave empty-handed.
And it's not just the merch that Azuki as a team drops,
but it's also just the community.
They're making so many different products.
There's like someone made a mahjong set.
someone made a mahjong set someone else made playing cards you know custom stickers
Someone else made playing cards,
little trinkets physical collectibles someone made a board game like every time I go to these
events I'm just always inspired by the amount of creativity that you know people have and so
our job as a core team is to create dope things that set an example of where
we think the bar should be and hopefully that inspires the rest of the community to elevate
their game and to create alongside us this is actually very dope i've been also you know thinking a lot about the art that you guys got and this kind of
inspired and showed that anime art has a niche in crypto and nfts at scale that there is the
appreciation for this so i think the job that you've done is actually inspiring people not just
overall to the direction of art or nfts but the anime style and we've seen several
collections coming along the way some may still stay at the market some already gone but to my
point you inspired all of this to be created because in my perspective from what I remember
historically before you no one really thought of nftTs featuring the anime art at this scale.
So that's been a phenomenal journey.
And it's a great result that you've been able to achieve as well.
Seeing the community members even today rocking the PPPs they got back in the days,
exploring all the different ecosystems, and they still appreciate the art.
And I think one of the studios actually that done a lot of azuki art was f9 studios i
followed the guys like for a long time i even directed some people to them uh and they've done
tremendous amount of artworks i think some of the biggest ones being you know whale and couple
other guys uh shotgun etc they've been getting a lot of art featuring their spaces, etc. This has been amazing.
I wanted to ask you also, in terms of the art, you also later expanded toward more collections
from the original Azuki, and it's kind of going backwards to what Azuki means, the red bean,
and then you released the Azuki bean collection. Could you tell us a little bit thought process of
even getting to the Azuki bean collection. Could you tell us a little bit thought process of even getting to the Azuki Bean collection
as a separate part of your ecosystem?
Are you talking about the companion collection,
the Little Beans characters?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, Nelson.
Yeah, you know, when we dropped that,
it was a shock to a lot of people
because when they thought Azuki, it was like,
oh, it's dope, it's cool, it's clean,
and they wanted more of that.
But when we airdropped the Beans collection,
and it revealed to be these cute little Beans characters,
a lot of people were taken aback by that.
And the initial reception was not great.
But I think very quickly, people understood our vision there, which was, there's so many anime IPs in the world, right?
And how can you stand out?
You can stand out by the story, obviously, right?
But from a visual perspective, there's the iconic animes that have very distinct styles, right? So for Izuki, obviously, you know, left-facing,
the thick line art, the shadowing and all that
is pretty distinct to Izuki.
But I think having these Beans characters in the world
really helps solidify the IP as something truly unique.
And these Beans characters, they have their own lore too in terms of how
they're born,
what they
do, how they
eventually pass away,
how they work with their
Azuki
in this universe. So if you go
on our website, azuki.com,
there's a page where it goes
through the Beans lore.
And of course, we're working um original anime production that will bring this to life
and i think once you see um azuki and beans interact in an actual anime it it all starts to
click um and that was the vision for it um And another reason is because, you know, owning like a really cool and dope IP being a Zuki is great. I think it's a great PFP for people to build their digital identity behind. that are massive in the world. And that's like the more cute style
that's very prevalent in Asia.
And if you look at, you know, in Korea, right,
there's Line Friends, there's Kakao Friends,
and some of the top grossing IPs in the world,
like Hello Kitty, right, and all the Sanrio characters,
they're all catering to a audience that really likes those cute characters. And so Beans as a standalone IP,
tons of potential there as well, right? But they can also exist in the same universe.
And that's something unique to Izuki. No other IP really has that.
I actually got a couple questions here. Since you mentioned this cute bar of collectibles,
first, my question was quite simple one.
Did it naturally click when you saw a red blush, Pepe?
So our lead artist, his name is Arn.
He goes by Steam Boy.
He was the original character artist for Overwatch.
And he was at Blizzard for over a decade.
And he designed the original Izuki collection.
And we were ideating on what the companion collection could look like.
And we had experimented with some concepts like some animals, right? These like little cute animals,
some like spirit animals that kind of float on your shoulder. But when we were like, wait,
I mean, like a Zuki means like red bean, right? Like what if what was really core to this IP
and what made it truly unique
were that there were these magical little beans characters,
almost like a little Pokemon that lived with these Azukis.
And so when Arn put together some sketches for that,
we were like, wait, this is it.
This is it.
It's going to shock a lot of people.
Not everyone's going to vibe with it,
but it's going to grow on people.
And this is what we're going to go with.
I like that.
The red beans overall been like a magical idea too.
I think it attracted like a whole new crowd
of collector base as well,
since they've been an easier entry point.
I'll pass here over back to Ethan because he wanted to say something as well.
Yeah, I just wanted to ask, hearing all about the storytelling
and the ecosystem that lives within Izuki,
how do you plan on translating your new ton community over to see the rest of the IP,
the different projects and products that you produce?
That's something I want to work collaboratively on with the community.
Like ever since we launched that initial sticker pack, I've been,
I've been getting tons of DMS from you know,
the ton community and I've started chatting with a few folks.
You know, I think Zenith was one of the first people
that I started chatting with
and he's been super helpful in terms of ideating
on what additional things that we can do.
And I think it's a really interesting challenge
of we have all of this lore,
we have all of this content.
How do we share that and more
deeply integrate the Tan community? And so our first attempt at doing a better job of this was
we have the Azuki Telegram channel where we post updates and post some images and videos.
and post some images and videos.
So if you haven't followed that yet,
the handle is AzukiHQ.
And then also, you know,
I felt it was important for me
to build my own presence
in the community as well,
to share, you know,
my learnings from being in the crypto space
for almost a decade now,
to share our plans
and what we want to do within the TAN ecosystem with
Izuki. And so I made my personal channel as well. So it was actually a pretty lengthy process of
putting my own Zagabon handle because I was using that for my personal telegram,
but then migrating that over for a public channel.
So you can follow my public channel just at Zagabond.
And, you know, I post some thoughts and, you know, ideas as well.
So that's what we've been doing so far.
Speaking of your channel, to be honest, this being one of the best examples of the way you
could actually lead the channel on Telegram and some of the brands, I mean, I don't know if
they're necessarily 100% aware of this, but there has been a criticism from the community side that
they often just link something to X that they just post like no additional information other than just a short
piece of text and image and what you did with your channel here uh with azuki you also added zagabond
as the one of the people that post on there as a also a channel that is linked which i think
actually a great idea and you've really spent your time exploring how does that work and it shows and so to the people to the community sentiment it's been one of the things
they highlighted they they've been even asking why not every channel does it in the way that azuki
does making it more unique to really stand out and to be really more connected with this audience as
well because we do care to know what they think what they are here for what their thoughts um i was wondering how did this uh came to your mind that
this is the way that you should approach this because community sentiment reply to this was
very positive and toward everyone else who doesn't do that being quite criticizing
been quite criticizing because i'm running my own shit like i'm posting these are me typing my own
messages directly to the telegram community i'm not just copy pasting stuff that's been posted on
x because look you can just follow us on x right if you want to see our tweets um i mean there's
nothing wrong with that like cross posting right it's good to just kind of you know have your
entire audience um keep up to date with
what you're saying.
But when I post something on Telegram, I'm trying to think more deeply about what is
a user on Telegram who may not be seeing my tweets, who does not have all the context
of the Ethereum community, what do they want to know?
of the Ethereum community.
What do they want to know?
And what are some learnings that I have that is more applicable to someone in the Tawn community?
So that's for my mindset.
And yes, it does add more time in my day to manage another account, but I don't have anyone
managing my accounts.
No one's posting for me.
No one's ghostwriting for me. Like this is
all me. Like I even posted a video on my Telegram channel. I haven't even done that on Twitter.
But for some reason, I was compelled to just, I was just getting some sun on my patio. And I'm
like, all right, I think I want to, you know, say something to the Telegram community. I recorded a
video of myself, which I never do. So if that has gotten good feedback,
maybe I'll do more of it. But yeah, so it's just me trying to speak directly to the community,
because I feel like I do have some, you know, learnings that maybe not too many people have.
And I want to make sure this ecosystem gets built in the right way.
And culture is so important. And I just want to make sure that this community has the right
foundation. And you guys already do, but just like how I want to contribute to it,
I want to do that in the right way. Because I think like, when I look back at Telegram's history with Tan, it's really interesting, right? Because it's not
that long of a history. And Tan, from my research, at least, was kind of built almost separately from
Telegram. It wasn't launched by the Telegram core team, but there was a moment in time where
Telegram integrated Tan and that relationship started and then that
drove a lot of early excitement with um meme coins right and there was a whole like uh uh
mini app phase with meme coins and click farming and all that um which was which was cool to to
drive initial attention but what really makes a community sticky
really is the culture.
And I think there's no better token
than an NFT to build culture
because then you have people that appreciate the IP,
that are there for the values
that the brand really exemplifies.
And they'll be there through the ups and downs.
And that's the type of culture
that I want to bring over to Telegram.
And so, you know, that's,
so this is just my attempt at trying to build things the right way.
This is fascinating.
Kind of response being very positive to this.
I can say that people in the community can feel when someone coming with a
genuine intention, just to interact with them, to streamline the message.
And they do talk about this.
And the funny part is that they do that in all the different languages, Chinese,
they do that in Russian, they do that in Japan.
A lot of Russian.
I've seen a lot of Russian.
Yeah, you're accurate here.
There's a lot of CIS channels, Russian-speaking channels, all across the Telegram.
Because, you know, the fascinating part of the history that the Telegram originally started from this part of the world.
So that's where the original user base comes from. And then those values transcript to all around the globe now.
And the funny thing here is that what brings all those people together, as you mentioned, the culture is the resistance that being really the core of what Telegram is.
Because I think you probably saw the interview with the Tucker Carlson and Pavel Durov, the first one where he talks about history, how he left Russia, etc.
That was always a resistant nature.
He built Telegram because he was forced to technically sell VK, which was his first major social media application.
And then with the Telegram, he made it to default that there is no backdoor, that it's respecting privacy first and then everything else.
That's how it started.
And then it led to a major fight actually i i think you may
have not seen this really in real time because i have i've been one of the people that actually
threw the paper plane at the time of those protests out of the window i've been studying in
technical and sitting at the lessons and several of my classmates went and dropped the paper plane
out of the windows like it's not a joke. We really did this.
That was a significant moment where the Telegram being fighting the Russia trying to ban it.
And then they eventually gave up.
Like, my point here is that the government of Russia gave up.
Can you imagine that?
It's like, US cannot achieve that today.
You know, Telegram did that years and years ago.
So this is where this resistant
nature comes from and the community that formed around telegram is the one that understands those
core values of resistance and then there is a whole story of for example the resistance dog
uh which is one of the masters of telegram and ton ecosystem due to the fact that it's a hand
drawn uh sticker pack on telegram
like back into this is actually one of the first one drawn and it's hand drawn by the
power of himself and so that's how this whole culture played out into being this resistant
nature that actually exists and what's interesting there are people in town that's been here for like
two three years and we could say they've been in crypto
for like quite a month of time but they really never explored any other ecosystem other than thong
because due to its simplicity due to its resistant nature and its history and i think what you're
doing with your community and the way you approach that is really transcript to what they want to see
because they do respect the role the the lord they do to see because they do respect the role the the lord
they do respect the history they do respect the brand that values those core principles that have
been put it since the beginning so i think what a lot of people also wondering uh you've already
said that you're writing it uh yourself you don't have any ghostwriter but people wondering
like how many people are on your team helping you to manage it across the board like across
everything that you've got because you've got discord you've got x you've got your personal
page you've got the telegram personal channel on telegram you got my point yeah i mean first off what you were saying about um why the community on telegram
is so resistant by nature and like the lore behind and the history behind it like that that is is
super dope you know and and pavel durov is a g because i watched his interview with tucker
carlson and after all that he's gone through, and all the challenges that
he's faced, he's still the most diplomatic person, right? And I think he really leads by example.
I thought I was pretty diplomatic, but then I saw him, I'm like, dude, he takes it to another level.
And, you know, I think they're like the crypto space can be very toxic, especially to teams and founders.
And, you know, I think they're like, the crypto space can be very toxic,
And sometimes it might feel unfair.
But if you're able to go through those challenges and you really believe in what you build in, I think that attitude and that energy can really translate into a strong community that has your back.
So I can tell like the Telegram community
has Pavel's back,
Lazuki community has my back.
And I think we have a lot in common,
which is why I love our experience building here so far.
But to answer your question around the team
that's handling
everything in the back end, I mean, shout out to the team for real, because I don't
have anyone write my stuff, but we have an awesome team that is managing all the socials,
scheduling the posts. Our head of marketing, Elaine, manages things across the entire company. And we have
tons of products. She does a phenomenal job there. And she manages a team of community folks. And also
we have Alex Mingola on the team who's managing the socials and you might see him drop some memes.
We got to get him to start doing some memes for the Tan community. I think that would be dope.
But relatively speaking, I think we have a pretty lean community and social team,
but everyone's really passionate about their work. And so I think kind of, you know, like Ethan,
you would know this, like if you're not
passionate about this space there's no way you would spend all day responding to people uh on
the ton account right like there's no way um but because we love it we live and breathe it like
we're on this shit all day it doesn't even feel like work right we just open up uh twitter and
telegram first thing in the morning like you know that all good. Yeah, so that's kind of how we operate.
Yeah, it literally is that.
When people say, oh, I want to get into X,
I want to build an account and build a following,
the first thing you need to figure out for yourself is,
okay, but are you passionate about this?
Because if you're not,
you're not going to be able to sit there
for 10, 15 hours a day, like reply guy,
like I'm from my personal accountant from TUNN.
But I just really enjoy it.
I enjoy engaging with my community,
engaging with the TUNN community.
There's great people on both sides
and everyone's building some amazing stuff.
The things I'm seeing built on mini apps right now,
it's blowing my mind and it's only gonna get better.
I feel like Telegram's mastered the in-app social experience for a social
platform and i'm excited to see what they uh build from there and uh zenith's got his hand up there
sorry i'm a little bit quiet having some food so zagabon now as you have uh i would say definitely
enter the telegram and the ton ecosystem now in your opinion do we bring back 21 22 vibes
to turn into telegram with nfts you know i think if it could come back it would be here that's how
i feel no there is no if it will i'm not stopping until it's here all right i like that energy i
just want to hear your opinion because of course i'm
gonna lie you've seen killed rawl zagabond do you see what i'm talking about we got the best of the
best yes sir yes sir um it's i think focusing on the right team is very important so i think taking
a more curated approach um is is the right, which is what you guys have been doing.
I think teams that are building for the long term and that are here to stay and can really
take advantage of the full product stack of features that Tan and Telegram have to offer,
features that Tan and Telegram have to offer. That's the way that we do it. If we aim to just
replicate exactly what happened on Ethereum four years ago, then it's not going to happen.
We have to do it in our own way. And that's what got me excited about Tan is that it's not,
oh, this is exactly the same as Ethereum. Let's do the same thing all
over again. No, I think the whole space is a lot more mature at this point. And there's better
infrastructure now. And the major NFT communities have much larger scale IPs and brands today.
So how can we all work together here, bring the best
of both worlds and create new experiences for people? I think that's how we can have
a really dope moment like we did in 2021. And I think like, when you think back to 2021,
I think what was really interesting was the proliferation of PFPs. And what made PFPs
really valuable was that Twitter gave users digital real estate with the PFP.
And the community, if Twitter didn't exist, there's no way NFTs would have had that crazy run that we had back in 21. But because we're able to
flex a PFP to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis in terms
of impressions, I think it really made PFPs into a digital flex. And if you wear like a physical watch, right, and it's a, you know, Rolex,
whatever, how many people are seeing that every day? If you walk around, like maybe, I don't know,
you know, 10 people actually look at it. But online, there's 10s of 1000s, 100s of 1000s
people every day. And so I think that was a big, big component of what made that run
incredible. And on Telegram now, there's even more digital real estate to even more users,
where you can pin your gift on your profile. And so when I had Azuki come into the ecosystem, I said, we need to get a Pepe plush. Like we have to,
because this is almost like the crypto punk of the Tan ecosystem. And it's made so much sense.
And we pinned it in our profile. And for me, you know, it's the year of the snake, right? I'm Chinese. And so I just
got a bunch of lunar new year snakes. And so that's my profile. And this is a cool way to
express yourself. And so I think the next move for Telegram is we need some verified NFT PFPs,
is we need some verified NFT PFPs, right?
So that our identity can really be flexed on Telegram.
I think that would be a dope move.
But yeah, overall, I think if we can do those things,
also we got to move the stickers fully on-chain as well.
So I heard that's coming.
And then I think the whole ecosystem can start seeing a big boom.
Yeah. Oh, yes. and then I think the whole ecosystem can start seeing like a like a big boom yeah yes it's really interesting you like bring up the uh nft pfps because a lot of people on here that are
listening now might not even remember these twitter pfps but they really did like explode the whole
nft sort of ecosystem to the next level um because at the end of the day with an nft you want to
actually show off that you genuinely own it.
And the best way to do that at the time was connect your Meta mask or whatever
it was to Twitter.
And then you could show off whichever NFT you wanted to, and people could click
it and they could see, ah, yes, this is a real Bored Ape or a real Azuki.
And, uh, now you can basically do a very similar thing on Telegram where you can
pin the gift next to your name.
So everyone can see it in every chat and click it and see it's the real one and you've obviously got your profile
as well where you can display i think it's like six more on the top um and i totally agree with
you on the nft pfp side of things i think i'll be the next sort of obvious integration for ton
but we'll see if that happens and uh zenith's got his hand there. I'm not going to say anything about that,
but I've been trying to work on that as well, of course.
Believe me, Zagabon, before you even reached out to me about it,
I was already on my radar a long time ago
since I first even entered the ecosystem
because, of course, it makes sense.
Yeah, so look, I'm not going to promise anything, as always,
but we'll see what we can do.
For me, it makes sense.
I always like to call it the last infinity stone of Telegram and Tarnamifties.
We've literally got everything else technically ownable, right?
Your banner, what you put up on your banner next to your name,
your stickers now are going to be also on chain, right?
That you use, your username is on chain.
Your number is on chain if you so choose
for it to be the only thing is left is yeah now when when your friends make a telegram account
you know like we all get notified right where it's like oh sally just made a telegram account
now we can just message them be like oh hey sally and then she's like what the fuck that pfp is sick like how do i get that um and and i think
that that will be really cool and um because i get i still get new friends joining telegram
like every other day yeah this is actually a great reason why nft gifts for example already
so over 230 000 people trading them.
That is exactly why.
Because people just see this on other people's profiles and their friends' profiles.
Imagine, like, look, I'm in some chats with my friends that organize parties in my home country.
You know, like it's quite private parties.
They go to amazing events.
But to my point is like when i'm in the chat and they see
my profile they click on it they think holy fuck they don't even understand what is it like nearly
every one of them asked me then in person what are those things in your profile and then i tell
them that this thing cost like 13 15 grand on the floor like holy fuck what the fuck that even means
um i send them actually a couple gifts
but i wanted to ask yeah first they're like dude that's that's that's ridiculous
yeah and can you guys hear me yeah we can okay yeah sorry i just gotta call real quick but i
was gonna say like at first people are like what like 13 grand that's crazy but i feel like after
a while they're like okay you know it kind of makes sense
it kind of makes sense and then um that's how we uh that's how we um you know pepe pill them
um but no what was your question
i'm not i'm not sure if it was a question i I think it was just like, it was continuing a statement.
No, no, I've been asking, like, have you had this experience of anyone after seeing your personal channel, maybe in this regard,
since you created one, and they were like, holy fuck,
and reaching out to you, asking what it is?
Yeah.
Yeah, like, some friends reached out, like,
people that are in the crypto space already actually because
i separate my uh personal account from my um uh crypto account but even people in the crypto
space you know they they use telegram um you know religiously and i think a lot of them still don't
really know about gifts um but it's it's still it's still early i feel like um which is exciting
But it's still early, I feel like, which is exciting.
Absolutely.
Being early is exciting for everyone.
I remember being early back in 20...
Actually, I don't even think I was that early back in 21.
But I did kind of want to take it back to a little bit of talking about,
you know, I wouldn't say how to recreate those times, but how to...
You know, know look the best
phrase is history doesn't repeat itself it rhymes right um and i want that to rhyme here and i want
this to happen and i think one of the best things that we can do here on ton is encourage creator
economy right and also i want people to come into the community and I want our current community members to know
that they're able to go and join a collection
through primary markets, not just through secondary markets
and be able to be part of the community
before even the product is launched.
For me, what I loved back from 21 and 22
was that I was able to join a community
before collection was even dropped and really just vibe with the people there and get along, you know, maybe get rewarded
halfway through there by grinding for a wipe the spot or doing something similar to that, right?
And it was rewarding seeing people coming in and creating such amazing collections and such
amazing utility for different projects, because there was actually so many different people
coming in and there was so much creativity. And I think that's what really sparked the last NFT bull run
because so many people came in.
So they were able to create so many different products
and so many different collections, right?
As you did yourself over here with Azuki.
And this is what I would love to empower
for the Don and Telegram community.
Of course, you know, they can already do that.
But I think we still have to utilize communities
and distribution channels a little bit better.
And I think that will come with time, right?
Many apps and Tom and Telegram being connected,
integrated this deeply have only been around
just for a little bit over a year already, right?
And it will take some time
and it's still being worked on, but I'm still, you know, ever since and it's still being, being worked on.
But I'm still, you know, ever since I discovered Tom last year, I was excited
and I, and I haven't lost this excitement since then.
But I think NFTs on Tom really do have a home and I'm very much looking forward
to seeing how it, how it takes off.
Likewise, very excited to be part of this community
and we have a lot in store.
100%, 100%.
I'm just seeing that we're coming to the end of the hour there anyway,
so I just want to be time sensitive and wrap it up.
I know you're a busy man.
I just want to see how you think of the future of Tun and TG in one year.
Where do you see the ecosystem evolving?
Where do you see a Zuki thing into that within a one-year timeframe? I see every single Web3 brand and NFT
community having a presence on Ton and Telegram within a year. Absolutely. Not only that, I think we'll see Web2 brands onboarding onto Telegram within a year.
I think we'll continue to accelerate here because it just makes so much sense.
And if you don't have a Telegram presence, then there's just something wrong.
So that's where I think we'll be.
And I'm already talking with Web2 brands that are looking to launch something on Telegram
and do some cool experiences.
We have some collab opportunities that we're discussing as well.
I think it's a good way for some of these Web2 brands to do things the right way
so they're not doing everything by themselves.
So yeah, man, I think there's a lot in store within the next year. the right way so they're not doing everything by themselves um so yeah man i think um i think
there's a lot in store within the next year perfect yeah i i absolutely agree i see pretty
much everyone um onboarding into telegram and it makes so much sense it's the blockchain the
first blockchain in many many years we've've seen actually do so many different things
and integrate with a 1 billion user per month, whatever it is, app.
I'm going to hand it over to Victor as well just to do the wrap-up and closing remarks.
I want to make sure that everyone on stage gets a follow from all the listeners.
all the listeners it's been a great space and i'm very happy that it happened uh passing over to
It's been a great space and I'm very happy that it happened, passing over to Victor.
victor yeah no i'm absolutely happy of having this space too and it's been incredible also learning
more about the azuki's i see geo got a hand up funny enough he's one of the biggest supporters
of tong and been rocking kazuki pfp ever since i know him actually yo hello guys bro i didn't expect you to guys wrap it up so i
said like let me just say some stuff uh first of all it's been a big pleasure thanks for having me
here uh seeing azuki on tone and telegram i think it's really massive uh zagabond i think i am the
only one as a content creator like on tone uh racking azuki profile uh for a long time it's been a big pleasure man
i love azuki i'm not like a i'm not um you know anime person a lot but i love the art i love the
community for real and i love what you guys doing again i'm not gonna keep it longer uh but if you
don't know about uh stickers if you don't know much about the gifts uh i have
two videos on my page uh the stickers video that i showed two months ago i actually mentioned there
that board of yash club cup club can launch their stickers azuki can launch their stickers and stuff
and seeing these things happen it just makes me proud man again thank you so much guys
yeah you're a legend man and i love all the posts that you have educating everyone on how we can
onboard um and you're an og man appreciate you thank you so much let's go let's keep on crushing it and i mean the latest video has been also a phenomenal help you
also put a lot of guides on to like all the different traits in the gifts there's been also
a fascinating uh learning curve exploring them all to be honest i still discover them sometimes
i'm gonna lie to you zagabond uh there has been like instances that when you guys like pick up gifts, I was like,
holy fuck, you know, I've discovered one.
I think even you haven't discovered this one yet, but one of the community
members send it to the Azuki page.
I'll let you know about this one.
So there is a Christmas stocking with the ninja model and the community
members send it to the azuki channel they posted
about this on next and i was like holy fuck i didn't know about its existence all right we
gotta check that that that that sounds sick i mean i i study this dune dashboard that has every single
telegram gift um but i have not memorized all of them yet because I think there's close to 100 at this point
or something like that.
I think there's 70 collections in total.
Or 110, 110.
Yeah, currently, yeah.
And I mean, in those 77 upgraded,
there is many that have collection supplies
of like 100K.
For example, Jack in a Box is a good example of this one.
And there is models like a shy peppa
that is i don't know several times above the floor i think 10 times above the floor this is still
crazy to me i don't know how people even discover those things i mean i watched geo and whenever he
posts uh people all of a sudden start to know about them i mean ever since he posted about like pep
inspired gifts they glow up
um i feel like it's really a learning curve here i also discovered same way couple from the
uh luca he pinned the snow mittens pingu model i didn't know that there's a model called pingu
can you imagine this
yeah that's cool i think there's a lot of like um i think what's cool is like you can find the
gift that really represents what you're posting about or how you're feeling that day you know
um i i love cigars personally i was actually gonna do like a full cigar thing and i saw
bored apes do it i'm like okay you know what's a better fit for them. I'll save it for another time.
But Snakes goes really good with Azuki profile.
Yeah.
I mean, there are so many cool examples.
I think Damix here in the audience, we have a guy.
He has one of the best matching profiles as well.
He has like black and white style.
It's really is people exploring uh like very personalized versions of that and it goes
beyond just a single trade but even the backgrounds and symbols on it and yeah i've seen that you've
picked up a lot of lunar snakes you know you've upped the the floor a little bit on them so
um it became a little bit harder
to be collecting the same ones as you have.
Yeah, it's fun.
And I think the Zuki community will appreciate it
because we have a lot of collectors in the community, right?
Like we are the only NFT collection
that's gone this deep in terms of categorizing
all of the rare traits, assigning points to it.
We give a collector status to everyone within the holder base, depending on, you know, what
level of, you know, status you achieved amongst all your collection. So I think once they start
looking into gifts, it'll be a pretty natural transition for a lot of Azuki holders.
But yeah, this spaces was really exciting, guys.
I could stay on here for hours, but I got to run.
And thanks for having me.
And, you know, we should do this again soon.
Thank you so much for joining us, Zagabon.
Thank you, Azuki, and entire team for keeping us all in tune as well.
And thank you, incredible community tuning in and listening to us today.
And until the next time, and guys, this is a recorded space.
So if you want to learn a little more about the Azuki, feel free to listen back.
And thank you so much.
All the posts, by the way, that we mentioned and everything we referenced to
been pinned at the top as well.
So in case there's
any confusion, please refer to the official tweets. Thank you. The Yuzuki intern needs to end the space.
