How did Azuki suddenly become the best-selling NFT series?

In the past four weeks, these two-dimensional anime-like "skateboarder" characters have reached $300 million in transactions, even surpassing "Bored Ape Yacht Club" (Bored Ape Yacht Club).

On January 12, at 10 a.m. PT, four men in their 30s living in Los Angeles issued 8,700 NFTs. The anime-style characters, dubbed "Azuki," sell for $3,400 each. They sold out in three minutes and made more than $29 million. A few days later, another $2 million worth of NFTs from the same series were sold in a private auction. Then things started to heat up. Azuki traded close to $300 million in several major NFT marketplaces, including OpenSea, in the four weeks ended Feb. 11. The most expensive Azuki can now sell for $500,000; the cheapest can be had for $36,000. Over the past month, Azuki has easily surpassed better-known tokens such as Boring Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks in total sales to become the eighth most-traded NFT product of all time. Chiru Labs, the startup that developed Azuki, collects a 5% royalty on every resale of Azuki NFTs, which means the company has earned an additional $15 million in royalties on top of the $31 million it received on the initial release .

The four founders of Chiru did not reveal their identities, which is not unusual in the privacy-conscious world of cryptocurrencies (recently, the death of two South Florida men who made millions from the "Boring Apes Yacht Club" The identity was revealed, which led to outspoken dissatisfaction on Twitter). But Chiru's fifth key role is relatively well-known -- at least in the gaming industry -- as Arnold Tsang. Until two weeks ago, the 39-year-old concept artist was designing characters for Overwatch. Overwatch is a very popular shooter from Activision Blizzard with 60 million registered players. Today, Arnold Tsang officially joins Chiru full-time and intends to expand the Azuki brand he designs in his spare time into clothing and other areas.

"For Azuki, our dream is to create a huge IP that can make animated series, even games and all kinds of merchandise," he said. Arnold Tsang also added that he chose to reveal his identity "as a Guarantee of trust. This is me, this is my work. Trust me, I won't run off to a deserted island after making money."

Arnold Tsang and the four Chiru Labs founders are the latest to profit from the NFT gold rush. The five-year-old industry has exploded over the past year, with OpenSea completing $5 billion worth of NFT transactions in January alone. The 10,000 NFTs that make up the CryptoPunk collection are worth about $4 billion in total, according to analytics firm Nansen, more than the market cap of upscale U.S. department store chain Nordstrom or tax firm H&R Block. But at the same time, it’s also a smoky market with lots of fake deals. A recent Reuters survey of a newer market found that the market’s 27 most expensive NFT transactions totaling more than $1 billion last month were all between two wallets; 100 transactions happen only between 16 wallets.