The Karafuru NFT is a successful project of tokenized psychedelic generative arts with an elaborate roadmap for future growth and a thriving Discord community of 122K.
The Karafuru NFT project offers colorful personas as collectibles, and they will function as the entry ticket into Karafuru city, a virtual experience. The city offers virtual fun activities, playgrounds, and the coolest crew in town.
So what’s all about this colorful Asian cartoon character-based NFT collection? What’s in it for you as an NFT investor or collector? Continue reading to deep dive into the world of Karafurus.
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What Are the Karafuru NFTs?
Karafuru NFT characters are a combination of Gacha games, generative art technology, psychedelic colors, and random personas. The entire project is a collection of 5,555 generative 2D (and soon 3D) NFTs that look like real-world toys. It’s inspired by Japanese pop-art culture.
More specifically, 12 2D characters exist within the collection, with thousands of possible trait combinations. These trait combinations were randomly injected into all the NFTs to make them unique and increase their rarity.
The NFT minting is only the first phase of the Karafuru project. The project comes with a detailed growth plan consisting of carnivals, 3D NFTs, physical toys, and so on.
The first phase started with the minting of 12 official Karafuru characters from the Karafuru virtual playground. The presale began on the evening of February 4, 2022, with a 12-hour window that ended in the early morning of February 5, 2022.
During the presale event, the mint price was 0.2 ETH. The minting quantity was limited to 1 NFT/Wallet to offer maximum transparency and a chance for all the whitelist participants to own at least one NFT.
The public sale started just after 12 hours of the whitelist sale, which was on the evening of February 5, 2022. Karafuru NFT mint price for the public sale was 0.5 ETH/NFT in the beginning. Then, the price reduced by 0.025 ETH every 10 minutes until the price hit 0.2 ETH/NFT. The floor price hit floor Eth over the course of several days.
Public sale participants could, however, mint 2 NFTs/Wallet. Thus, the lucky NFT collectors, who were both the whitelist and public sale participants, were able to collect 3 Karafuru NFTs.
In addition to the 5,555 Karafurus, there are Karafuru Honoraries of personalized personas on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. These honorary Karafurus will perform as the wardens of Karafuru city or the virtual playground.
With these personas, the Karafuru crew made these honorary Karafurus immortal. There are only 40 honorary Karafurus; 38 NFT collectors who own these special NFTs.
Who Created the Karafuru NFTs?
The idea for this NFT project originates from the Museum of Designer Toys in Indonesia, which houses collections from sought after toy creators around the world. The NFT team, Museum of Toys (MoT), then launched the Karafuru NFT project with creative art supervision from WD.Willy, a well-known Indonesian illustrator. He started his career back in 2015 with projects like illustrating artworks for board games, books, and brand merchandise.
In the past, he collaborated with top multinational and local brands like ASUS, Kompas Gramedia, I Love Indonesia, Teh Botol Sosro, The Executive, Janji Jiwa, and Damn.
Besides working as a creative illustrator, WD.Willy also works as the designer for Urban Toys, a line of premium toys produced by the Museum of Toys (MoT). The MoT cofounder Ando discussed with WD.Willy about his plan to launch an NFT project.
After the initial conversation with Ando, WD.Willy created various cartoon characters based on Japanese culture, Manga, and animation. Later on, MoT formed an all-star team, including Gradyedbert, Jejouw, Artnalyst, Rofe, and WD.Willy for the official Karafuru NFT project.
What Does Karafuru NFT Do?
In a nutshell, Karafuru NFTs are a part of the grand scale of activities within its parent project, The Playground, ultimately taking the shape of a metaverse.
Therefore, if you own a Karafuru NFT, you’ll have certain perks and rights yet to be finalized. Also, the Karafuru crew has publicly disclosed the ultimate goal of the project: to grant full commercial rights of every Karafuru NFT to the Furus, aka the NFT owners.
The Karafuru crew is actively working on terms and conditions for granting commercial rights to the NFT owners. They’re also working closely with their legal team to form a roadmap and policy to enable NFT owners to use Karafuru’s Intellectual Property (IP).
If you’re a Karafuru NFT holder, you can’t monetize your NFT artwork through merchandise sales. However, you can participate in Karafuru NFT community activities through Discord and Twitter.
Karufuru Carnival
A fun-based activity for all the NFT holders and enthusiasts was the Karafuru Carnival which took place from March 25, 2022, to April 3, 2022. It was an extravagant event aimed at brand partnerships, Karafuru NFT owners meet, activation of NFT enthusiasts, merchandise sales, and so on. The project claimed over 200,000 fans attended.
The carnival offered a lot of benefits to the Karafuru NFT holders. For example, you could have redeemed 1 merchandise voucher and 1 carnival voucher by using 1 Genesis Karafuru.
The merchandise voucher offered access to 1 free merchandise worth $25 to its holder. On the other hand, the carnival voucher provided 1 game pass of 3 carnival games, a snack box, a VIP pass card, and 1 meal voucher.
Karfuru Airdrops
The Karafuru crew is also planning for an upcoming NFT drop of 3D digital assets. It should be the most lucrative benefit for the genesis NFT holders. They will enjoy various preferences in the whitelist and presales.
For example, being an existing NFT holder, you’ll get a free Gachapon/Karafuru. You can burn a gachapon and exchange it for Karafuru x Hypebeast x Atmos 3D collection. Additionally, legendary owners will get 2 whitelist spots.
How to Buy Karafuru NFT
You could find it tempting to own a Karafuru NFT because of their vibrant color and beautiful personas. Though the presale and public sale of Karafuru NFTs have officially ended, you can still become a proud owner of a Karafuru by bidding or buying it from the secondary NFT marketplaces.
Karafuru NFT is available in popular NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, Rarible, and LooksRare. You’ll need a compatible cryptocurrency wallet to connect it as the NFT receiver and payment method. Additionally, you’ll need to load your wallet with ETH coins for bidding and paying for the Ethereum blockchain fee or NFT gas fees.
You need to research the project and find out if the NFTs are good whenever you decide to invest in NFTs. Also, take a look at the current floor price of the project, and make an informed decision to buy. For example, whether you want to buy the NFT right now or wait a bit longer.
The Future of Karafuru NFT
The future of Karafuru NFT looks promising since the project involves some well-known stakeholders like the Museum of Toys (MoT) and WD.Willy. Also, the project isn’t fully community-run, and some professionals actively manage the activities to achieve the project goals.
However, it’s expected that the community will also have their say in the project when the Karafuru crew has finalized the commercial rights policy.
According to the original roadmap document, the Karafuru NFT has successfully achieved the following goals:
- Minting and sale of 2D Karafuru NFTs
- A grand Karafuru carnival, including real-life events, partnerships, merch, games, and expert talks
The project is, however, yet to achieve the following goals in the upcoming days:
- The emergence, minting, and sale of 3D Karafuru NFTs
- Real-life physical toys
- Beyond Karafurus
The Karafuru crew has also announced the following roadmap updates:
- Activation of brand partnerships with big Japanese businesses like Hypebeast and Atmos
- The Karafuru Design Studio is working with Atmos and Hypebeast for the upcoming 3D NFT launch, ETA of April 2022
- The crew will soon set up a Karafuru shop to drop merch exclusively for the Karafuru NFT holders
To learn more about the Karfuru NFT project, keep an eye on its official Twitter handle or the Discord server.