Can Ether, which looks like Azuki, be popular?

Azuki's new series, Azuki Elemental Beans, is now on sale. Under the widespread attention of the community and the high expectations placed by investors, the results of the map opening were "not worthy of the name". A series of operations made Azuki officials questioned, and the price of Azuki series NFTs also fell accordingly. Many loyal Azuki Holders dumped and left the community one after another.

Among the many top NFT projects, Azuki has attracted many fans with its unique Japanese manga style and exquisite painting style. On the NFT series with similar styles, the prices of several similar projects were briefly raised, but most of them had a short life cycle, while Azuki rebounded quickly, and has always been firmly seated in the second position of blue chips outside BAYC.

So this time there will be alternatives to attract users who leave the community? Ether, which was established in 2022 and will be released in 2 days, has a high degree of discussion.

On June 30th, Ether will be officially launched at a public sale price of 0.65 ETH. Although it is not as good as Elementals, such a price is still quite high in the downturn of the NFT bear market. What is unique about this project?

(Community members are making a meme on this)

Ether is an anime-themed NFT project based on Ethereum. According to the project party's own description, the project "integrates fashion, innovation and story". Like most standard PFP laces, this one also consists of 10,000 characters.

Of the 10,000 characters, 5,000 are male and 5,000 are female. As for the character race, 50% of the characters are human, 30% are robot, 19% are vampire and 0.95% are mutant characters.

In addition to regular characters, Ether has 5 special 1/1 characters. The project party stated that these five special characters play an extremely important role in the Ether universe, and these works will have exclusive preview animations and are highly recognizable.

Officials believe that each character is expected to develop a storyline that fits the tone of the Ether brand.

The creator of Ether is VIII. The information on the official website shows that VIII is a digital artist who has extensive experience in the entertainment and game industries and has worked for many brands and public figures including Sony, Nike and Epic Games. VIII expresses a long-term interest in clothing, narrative and collecting.

Long warm-up and stale narrative

In July 2022, Ether's official Twitter sent its first tweet. At present, this project has been warming up for nearly a year.

In the NFT market with frequent changes and such a short life cycle, Ether is undoubtedly a very "slow" project, and there have been no sales activities for nearly a year.

According to the information published on the official website, Ether aims to become one of the first luxury brands to use blockchain technology to create high-quality clothing and collectibles. Ether sought to build this IP into a strong brand, seeking to create a "collaborative and immersive storytelling that pushes the boundaries of what's possible."

At present, the time has advanced to the middle of 2023. The market has already entered the deep bear market from the bull market in 2021 and is expecting a turning point. However, from the perspective of narrative, Ether is still limited to the most "regular" PFP design during the last round of bull market, without any new gameplay.

When referring to the motivation for creating Ether, founder VIII explained that "after the concept of blockchain confirmation was born, he tried to become one of the first artists to combine digital assets with physical goods."

In a podcast, the team explained the vision for Ether. They are trying to build Ether as a brand and are looking forward to cooperating with well-known brands or IPs. In the future, they are expected to conduct quarterly release activities or issue cooperative digital "skins". And try to create an ideal digital identity for users through ether.

In addition to the exquisite material design and long preparation time, Ether does not seem to have many bright spots.

Azuki

The public sale price of Ether is 0.65 ETH, and those on the White List (WL) can get it at a discounted price of 0.35 ETH. Although lower than Azuki Elementals, the price is still quite high for the current market environment.

(Comparison between Azuki and Ether)

Previously, the release time of Azuki Elementals has not been confirmed for a long time. After Ether announced the release date, Azuki Elementals quickly confirmed its release date. Many fans of Ether believe that Azuki chose this time node to snipe Ether with a similar style of painting and cut off their traffic.

However, this statement is untenable. After all, Azuki Elementals has been sold out by Azuki holders and BEANZ holders in the pre-sale, and there is no chance for the public sale round. Although the project party is disappointing, Azuki The strength of the community is obvious, and I believe it is also the crowd that Ether hopes to attract.

Official documents show that the funds sold by Mint will be used for the development of the Ether project, which is planned to be used to expand the team size and execute the roadmap with the highest quality. 70% will be used for the financial management of the project, 10% will be used for charity, and the remaining 20% will be used for team building.

At present, Ether is only 2 days away from its release. Can it fire the first shot in terms of content quality, and can it ignite a cluster of flames in the deep cold NFT market? Odaily Planet Daily will continue to pay attention to its performance.