Everyone remembers the 2017 movie Blade Runner 2049, for its action sequences and its depiction of a gritty lived in futuristic world. A dystopian world that is enriched with technological wonders that are beyond the reach of today’s technology but feels like it is just around the corner. Just a few more years of Moore’s law dictating the technological growth and we just might be able to see a self aware animatron taking a stroll in the park. Or perhaps a cyborg with enhanced VR integration.
But here’s my favorite moment from the movie the giant holographic girl played by Ana de Armas. Not real, but also not fake. There but not there. You see her, then you don’t. You get the gist.
Coming back to reality, we’re still far away from actual holograms even at 1/10th the scale of that holographic girl portrayed in the movie but what could be the next best thing? We’re already experimenting with AI that can think like humans and mimic human conversations. But is mimicry exactly what we want? What if we want something more animated? More fun to look at? A waifu?
What is waifu, you ask? Well colloquially we’d be talking about romantically attractive anime characters and Dictionary.com has the definition down pretty accurately.
But hey! this is thecoinmagazine.com why are we talking about holographic girls and waifus? Well we’re here to talk about the next best thing available in the crypto world to holographic girlfriends / wives.
Introducing WAIFU – NFT.WAIFUTOKEN.IO
WAIFU Token is the premier high-end anime-themed NFT project on the market today. Recent auction prices have topped 20 ETH for these limited animated illustrations minted to the Ethereum blockchain as a collectible token (see https://www.waifutoken.io).
Founded in August 2021, the WAIFU NFT platform allows users to either stake the $WAIF ERC-20 token with an equal part $ETH in their Uniswap liquidity pool or simply commit $WAIF by itself and earn a non-transferrable token to claim rare monthly drops of fewer than 100 units total. This staking system has helped grow their liquidity pool into the millions, with as much as $4.5M daily traded volume on the ERC-20 token alone.
WAIFU has a current market cap of roughly $25M fully diluted, with 90% of total tokens distributed in a fair launch pool with no presale or ICO. Their current OpenSea NFT collection’s growth in size is being outpaced by an explosion of volume from WAIFU NFT secondary sales and peer-to-peer trades — over 100 ETH in the past four weeks alone have been traded on a total of 329 items.
The average NFT cost in their HAREM collection is over 2 ETH per token. The team’s previous release was a collaboration with a 3D model and animation team which sold on Rarible in less than a minute: these NFTs were only available for two Ethereum blocks and generated 10.5 ETH in sales.
On Monday, March 15th at 2 PM EST WAIFU released their latest four NFTs in the HAREM series of collectible digital girlfriends. Initially these tokens are only available to platform users who have “farmed” $HAREM token by providing Uniswap liquidity or locking their ERC-20 tokens. After all items have been claimed they will be available for resale on the OpenSea marketplace.
If you ask me, my personal favorite NFT from their HAREM collection is the Ocean Mermaid. With only 7 owners so far and a list price of around 15 ETH.
Looks like I’m not the only one that admirer of these WAIFU NFTs huh?
The venture has been incubated and funded privately by two blockchain veterans with extensive experience in the world of liquidity mining, decentralized finance, Ethereum collectibles, and anime artwork commissions. Technical partners and close advisor The Arcadia Group has been working with WAIFU to develop a rewards-based staking system and has hinted that NFT 2.0 technology will be released soon. Arcadia is a top-5 blockchain auditing firm, working with clients such as BigDataProtocol (BDP), TOMO and other tier-1 projects. Other partnerships include backing by a private Hong Kong blockchain incubator known for launching high growth projects in the global cryptocurrency market.
The platform’s planned WAIFU update will allow any user to “collateralize” their collectible NFT and attach Liquidity Provider (LP) tokens which collect trading fees and reward the owner with passive yield. In addition to this, there are several platform improvements planned for the near future as well as a focused marketing campaign in Asia and North America.
