Author: TPAN Source: substack Translation: Shan Ouba, Jinse Finance
A few weeks ago, Bobu (a character from the Azuki universe) announced that he would be live streaming on Youtube.
This is something I wouldn’t normally notice, but it becomes much more interesting if you know who/what Bobu is.
Who is Bobu?
Bobu was Azuki #40, but was split into 50,000 tokens in March 2022. Bobu originally started as an experiment to allow many people to own part of Azuki instead of one owner, while exploring decentralized governance using Bobu's IP.
Today, Bobu has its own moderation forum, fan art, merchandise, and plays a major role in different community events and experiments like Bobu Chat.
So when Bobu announced that he would be appearing on YouTube, it caught my attention. The title was "Bobu the Engagement Farmer," which piqued my curiosity.
Bobu the Engagement Farmer: Becoming an Influencer
The 50-minute livestream brought the Bobu character and NFT to life. Throughout the livestream, Bobu participated in the chat like a real livestream influencer, calling out users by name and responding to their comments.
How did this all work? Luckily, the Azuki team shared some details on how it all came together:
Azuki partners with Hallway, an AI startup that brings characters to life
Bobu has no script, but instead has the legends of Azuki and Bobu pre-loaded into his personality. From there, Bobu can pull context from the live chat and respond in a way that introduces historical context, much like ChatGPT’s memory feature.
The details of the bedroom scene and Bobu character design in the live broadcast were created by the team to make the overall environment more realistic.
On-site co-creation
Towards the end of the livestream, Bobu collected merch suggestions (starting at about 42:30). As the chat became more active, the Azuki team also designed a t-shirt to commemorate the livestream.
After the livestream, viewers were directed to BobuFans.com to claim their exclusive t-shirt. While some felt the shirt was poorly designed, it aptly reflects the spontaneity, delightful chaos, and protagonist that many in the Azuki community know and love.
Bringing character IP to life
Leading NFT projects are bringing their lore, characters, and world building to life in a variety of ways. Here are some recent examples:
This weekend, Yuga will be conducting its first playtest of Project Dragon, a team-based shooter that brings in multiple series in its ecosystem.
Pudgy Penguins partners with VanEck to promote its Ethereum ETF. To be honest, if Pudgy Penguins appeared in a cult recruitment video, I would consider joining.
Doodles will premiere Dullesville and the World of Doodles at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
In addition to this, we are also working on many other things at the same time, including but not limited to social media, events, and product updates.
Bobu can bring community members’ Azuki or Beanz NFTs to the stage as special guests. Or even bring characters from their anime anthology series to the stage.
Doodles can create an experience where fans can interact with the protagonist and further explore the Doodleverse
Pudgy Penguins can create a personalized, interactive onboarding experience for Pudgy World based on how the user accessed the site or what’s in their wallet
These are large projects with a lot of factors to consider, but the possibility of this happening is not as far-fetched as it sounds.
Expanding the concept of character IP
Applying Hallway's AI technology makes the most sense for today's characters or human streamers, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Memecoin
As memecoin continues its erratic pump-and-dump cycle, teams continue to outdo each other with ridiculous names, unique campaigns, and loud influencers. Will any team bring their memecoin to life with something like Hallway?
Prediction Market
As I reported earlier this week, Polymarket brings a new dimension to the prediction market space. What would happen if Polymarket created a character that users could interact with and hear live commentary about various prediction markets, just like we do with sports games, markets on business shows, or journalists?
If/when Polymarket users create their own prediction markets, could creating an AI-enhanced character draw more eyes to the market, and thus attract more attention and betting volume?
My bigger question about Future State is what happens when tokens and markets become anthropomorphic? What is ridiculous today and reasonable tomorrow?
Regardless, it’s always fun to see teams like Azuki experiment and create new ways to engage the community and spark enthusiasm. I hope they continue to explore the possibilities of Hallway.
