Azuki DAO, a community-led decentralized autonomous organization associated with the Azuki non-fungible token (NFT) series, has recently announced its transformation into "Bean." This rebranding coincides with the decision to abandon a planned lawsuit against Zagabond, the creator of the Azuki NFT collection, concerning a controversial $39 million NFT minting event.

According to a communication shared with Cointelegraph, the Azuki development team revealed that the DAO is transitioning into a memecoin venture. This new direction will integrate Bean into the Ethereum layer-2 Blast ecosystem. The developers also mentioned that Bean has attracted $10 million in funding from notable investors to support its growth and integration within the Blast framework.

The Bean memecoin is set to have a total circulation of 1 billion tokens. The distribution plan includes allocating 40% to the project's treasury, 50% to members of the Azuki DAO, and the remaining 10% to Zagabond, the original creator of the Azuki NFTs. Minting of these tokens is exclusive to Azuki NFT holders, who must complete the process within 24 hours of the token launch to avoid their tokens being burned.

The Azuki NFT collection is known for its 10,000 anime-style profile pictures (PFPs). In June, a second set of 10,000 PFPs, named “Elementals,” was introduced by Zagabond. However, the community quickly noticed a striking similarity between the Elemental and original Azuki PFPs, leading to a perceived devaluation of the latter due to an increased overall supply.

Following the release of the Elementals series, the value of Azuki NFTs reportedly dropped by 44%. This significant price drop prompted the Azuki DAO to consider a lawsuit against Zagabond. However, with the recent rebranding and strategic shift, further details about the project's financing and future development plans are expected to be released soon.