Azuki Launches Hilumia City to Commemorate First Anniversary

The blue-chip Non-fungible token (NFT) project Azuki announced the launch of a virtual city dubbed Hilumia in commemoration of its first anniversary. This metaverse city portrays a physical representation of Azuki’s past, present, and future events all in one place. Markedly, Hilumia is a new strategy to engage Azuki community members and give them a glance at the future.

Hilumia metaverse city includes a romance competition called Love Island, a toy store, an arcade centre as well as a gym. Some key locations in the city are Slowpoke’s Toy Haven, Ember Square, Golden Skate Park, and Garden Express, all supported with sound effects. With all of these features, community members are guaranteed an immersive experience.

“Hilumia is an interactive virtual city that is shaped by the community and will expand over time.” Speaking of its native Physical Backed Token (PBT), “PBT will also play a part in how Azuki bridges digital and physical. For example, the owners of the physical golden skateboard, upon scanning the PBT, will be enshrined in the Ruins.”

According to NFT data tracker CryptoSlam, the news of the Hilumia metaverse city influenced an 86% spike in the trading volume of the project. Hilumia is open to contributions from artists, developers, and Web3.0 enthusiasts who intend to create the future of the “growing city shaped and built by the community.” 

Azuki Gain Traction in the Industry

The blue-chip Azuki project began in January 2022 by introducing a collection of 10,000 avatar NFTs. Chiru Labs launched it and most of its NFTs were Japanese anime-themed avatars. They possessed several distinct traits ranging from hairstyles, clothing, gender, makeup, and accessories. Within this one year of its launch, Azuki has gained traction in the metaverse ecosystem.

By May 2022 when Azuki was trading at its peak, the blue-chip project pulled in $120.99 million. In October, Azuki auctioned the most expensive golden skateboards in history. The eight golden skateboards cost between 200 Ethereum (ETH) for the lowest and  309 ETH for the highest which was $265,880.00 and $410,784.60 respectively at the time. 

Each of the skateboards was gold-plated with 24-karat gold, weighing around 45 pounds making it impossible for their holders to ride in them as they were redeemable for real-life gold skateboards.