Azuki DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) associated with the Azuki non-fungible token (NFT) collection, has announced a rebranding to “Bean” as it withdraws a proposed lawsuit against the NFT collection’s founder, Zagabond. The lawsuit was related to a contentious $39 million NFT minting incident that occurred in June.
In a statement, Azuki developers revealed that the DAO is undergoing a rebranding to transform into a memecoin project and will be integrated into the Ethereum Layer-2 Blast ecosystem. Additionally, Bean has reportedly secured $10 million in funding from prominent investors to support its development within the Blast ecosystem.
The proposed Bean memecoin is set to have a total supply of 1 billion tokens. While the initial token distribution plan displayed on the website included allocations of 40% to the treasury, 50% to Azuki DAO members, and 10% to Azuki NFT creator Zagabond, a follow-up statement clarified that the displayed plan was outdated. The updated distribution indicates that 50% of the Bean tokens were allocated to the Azuki DAO community for the airdrop of Azuki series NFTs, which concluded four months ago. The remaining tokens are still held in the address. The Bean Treasury holds 40%, and Zagabond retains 10% of the tokens.
The Azuki NFT collection consists of 10,000 anime-themed profile pictures (PFPs), with the second series, called “Elementals,” released in June. However, controversy arose as the Elementals closely resembled the original Azuki PFPs, causing a dilution of the latter through an increased supply. This led to a community lawsuit proposal by Azuki DAO against Zagabond.
Developers emphasized that detailed information on financing and a roadmap for future developments would be disclosed shortly. The transition to Bean and its integration into the Blast ecosystem signals a strategic shift for the project, and the involvement of prominent investors suggests ongoing support and interest in the new direction.