Bankless: What surprises will Azuki’s upcoming ANIME token bring?

Author: William M. Peaster, Bankless; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Last year, I wrote an article about how Azuki became a contributor to Animecoin and AnimeChain as part of its Anime 2.0 project, which aims to build a new type of open anime world.

Not surprisingly, I noted at the time that the launch of this token and network could be a huge catalyst for the Azuki ecosystem.

Fast forward to today and we finally know a little more about the $ANIME token.

Over the weekend, the Animecoin team announced that it will launch its $ANIME token generation event (TGE) later this month.

As the creator explains:

“ANIME is a cultural currency – a movement that transforms 1 billion anime fans into a community-owned creative network. Where passion becomes power, cultural energy becomes real value, and the boundaries between consumers and creators disappear ”

As for token economics, we know that the total supply will be 10 billion, with $7.69 billion of the initial $ANIME in circulation.

The token will also be launched on Ethereum and Arbitrum, with distribution as follows:

The 37.5% allocated to Azuki community holders is quite impressive. In comparison, 25.9% of the recent $PENGU airdrop was allocated to Pudgy Penguin community holders.

Also worth noting:

• 24.44% of $ANIME will be distributed to the Animecoin Foundation to support the development of the ecosystem

• 13% will go into community-managed treasury through AnimeDAO

• 2% will go to partner projects such as Arbitrum, Hyperliquid and Kaito Community

While no exact release date has been announced yet, there's no doubt that this drop will be significant.

For example, the current market cap of the Pudgy Penguins NFT is $610 million, while the market cap of the new $PENGU token has climbed to $1.8 billion — the more fungible, the more holders, right.

By analogy, the current market value of Azuki NFT is $414 million. As a rough estimate, if $ANIME follows $PENGU's early growth trajectory, it could reach a market cap of $1.2 billion in its first month.

This brings us to the question of the long-term outlook.

The thing about $ANIME is that its creators envision it not only as a token for the Azuki ecosystem, but as a rising community token for the entire global anime fan base.

It's ambitious to say the least, but this is the anime 2.0 master plan, centered around the upcoming pillars of $ANIME, anime.com, and the Arbitrum Orbit-powered AnimeChain.

Big idea?

Establish an ecosystem where fans can raise funds on-chain to co-create new anime worlds, so they can jointly own the intellectual property and profit as a community from any related releases.

We'll see how this vision pans out, but there's no doubt there will be demand. There are more than 1 billion animation viewers worldwide, and the current global animation market exceeds US$50 billion.

If $ANIME and its surrounding infrastructure can make headway here, and the popularity of anime in general continues to rise, this community token could become a mainstay among the top 100 cryptocurrencies in the long term.

In the meantime, we have to wait for the release date to be announced. For now, stay tuned to see how the main Azuki series performs ahead of the much- anticipated airdrop.