Companies Behind Azuki NFTs and LINE FRIENDS Characters Team Up for Web3 Expansion

Chiru Labs, the Web3 company behind non-fungible token (NFT) collections Azuki and BENZ, and IPX, the parent company of the popular character collection LINE FRIENDS, have announced a strategic partnership today to create new opportunities for their brands and fans.

The two companies will collaborate on content, merchandise, retail distribution, real-life activations and immersive metaverse experiences, initially focusing on BEANZ NFTs and LINE FRIENDS characters.

IPX has grown from LINE FRIENDS, which originated as stickers in the LINE messaging app, into an innovative intellectual property (IP) brand and has partnered with companies such as Starbucks, Netflix and McDonalds as well as K-Pop band BTS. To celebrate the partnership, a billboard above the LINE FRIENDS store in Times Square will feature an animation of some of the LINE FRIENDS characters during NFT.NYC this week.

“We are excited to partner with IPX, a global leader in building innovative IP brands that are loved by millions of fans worldwide,” Zagabond, the pseudonymous founder and CEO of Chiru Labs, said in a press release . “IP is evolving and we see the web3 community as an integral part of this next wave. We look forward to bringing the world of BEANZ together with LINE FRIENDS.”

Chiru Labs is best known for its anime-inspired NFT collection Azuki, which has amassed 470,994 ETH (about $887,824,000 at the time of writing) in trading volume since its launch in January 2022, according to OpenSea. The company also made headlines for pioneering “physically backed tokens” (PBTs) as part of a sale of eight NFT-backed golden skateboards that raised $2.5 million.

“We plan to complement Chiru Labs’ IP with our multi-faceted IP business strategy,” said Logan Cho, Head of Metaverse Business at IPX, in the press release. “We are eager to unveil an expanded IP business that encompasses Web3, offering collaborative opportunities for both NFT holders and character IP enthusiasts.”

The Azuki brand has faced some bumps along its roadmap, notably when Zagabond admitted in May 2022 that it had abandoned previous NFT projects. While he credited Azuki’s success to learning from the other project’s mistakes, the floor price for the NFTs fell following the news. As recently as January 2023, Azuki’s main Twitter account was hacked to try to trick users into clicking on malicious links, which the team quickly notified their Discord community while fixing the issues.