ADA Ninjaz are an established project in the CNFT space and already have one sizeable mint under their belts. We caught up with co-founders @TB_BladeZ and @zushanhashmi to find out more about the team behind the project and what lies ahead for the ADA Ninjaz.
If you have missed any of our previous interviews, you can find them all here.
For anyone not familiar with the project, why don’t you give us a little info into ADA Ninjaz.
ADA Ninjaz is an entertainment company, with a doxxed team, that is delivering a variety of products under its brand, most notably NFTs on Cardano and a manga series.
Our aim at ADA Ninjaz is to integrate NFTs with beautiful stories alongside community-influenced manga, whereby ADA Ninjaz NFT holders get to drive the story via voting rights. We have the ultimate vision of also turning our manga into an anime (animated web series).
Imagine if you were a fan of Dragon Ball Z growing up, and you had a chance to influence the story direction or decision-making of Son Goku. That’s what ADA Ninjaz is all about.
We have 3 seasons of NFTs, manga, music, a merchandise store (with clothing worn by our NFTs), and a few other surprises over our one-year developmental roadmap.
With the music, we are releasing an OST, which includes singles and a feature-length album.
What about the team behind the project, what can you tell us? What lead the team to this project?
We’re quite fortunate in that we have a very large team with diverse skill sets and abilities who are able to manage the various elements of ADA Ninjaz.
Almost everyone is doxxed in the team, including myself (Zushan) and Tommy, both of us are the founders of ADA Ninjaz and the COO, and CEO, respectively. Our skills vary in that we have experience running businesses, project management, community-building and marketing. The key focus for us has been to bring on the right people to work with us and grow the vision we have for ADA Ninjaz.
That’s where Ignacio came in. Ignacio is also part-owner of ADA Ninjaz the brand, and the head of story and creatives. He is the one who is writing and leading the development front of our story and manga. With a background in film and screenwriting, it’s his magic that is bringing this to life.
Alongside him, we have Ardee who is the maestro behind all the manga art and designs. He has a long background in illustrating and creating manga and is an absolute beast.
All of us at ADA Ninjaz have also been very lucky to partner with some of the best in the business, including Kristian Portz & Tobias Steffen of LE4F Agency and the Godfather of Cardano, Patrick Tobler of NFT Maker Pro. They manage the front and backend development side of our project.
Then of course there is Mirai Music, with Riccardo Lovatto and Jacopo Mazza who are leading the music front, have years of experience in music composition working with several huge artists and more.
We also have Daria Krauzowicz leading our marketing team and EJ Boac as our head of operations.
This makes up the bulk of our management staff, alongside V, who is our NFT designer, but has chosen not to doxx for personal reasons.
A special shout out to everyone else on the team as well, including our Twitter managers, community admins, personal assistant, assistant writer and others!
It’s great to have a team spread across 4 continents and 8 timezones, the diversity really feeds into what we do at ADA Ninjaz.
Coming to the idea of the project, Tommy and I had been exploring the NFT space for a while, and we were looking for what seemed to be missing. Both of us grew up as anime/manga fans and we didn’t come across any quality projects or many at all, particularly in the Ethereum NFT space (where we started off), that focused on anime and/or manga. With our experience in running businesses and being friends, we thought about giving it a go.
We picked Cardano for various reasons, including its eco-friendly nature, minimal dust fees, the sort of support/love within the community, our own investments in cryptocurrency and most importantly, giving the everyday person a shot at buying into ADA Ninjaz. This is something that is not easy in the more expensive NFT blockchains.
The first season was sold out, was that 8,888 NFTs? How did you find the first drop?
Yes, S1 was the drop of our first clan, the Aramar clan (one of the three clans that make up Ninava’s Ninjaz) and sold out in approximately 30 minutes. It was a very exciting, stressful and humbling time.
The team went through a range of emotions all at once. You might have heard that we made a mistake during our drop where we accidentally posted the wrong sale wallet address on our website.
Luckily for us, that was one of our own wallet addresses. We took action immediately and refunded 177,000 ADA in under 24 hours to everyone.
To be very honest, Tommy and I had been awake for almost 36 hours prior, and we made a team decision to open up a voice chat on our discord, with almost 1500 people listening in. We took on board everyone’s feedback and carried out the appropriate lessons learned processes, then created action steps to move forward. It was incredible to see the ADA Ninjaz community showing their support and sticking by us, and they continue to do so.
At the time it was tough, but we compensated everyone who made a claim with a free “The Forgotten Spirit” NFT and also gave them a whitelist spot for S2 along with the chance to buy a limited edition wrong-wallet hoodie, which will be coming soon.
All in all, we learnt a lot, grew from it, and can look back at it and smile as we look to the future.
This is more a comment than a question, I love the NFT page on your website, how it builds an NFT in front of you as you scroll down. Very cool.
Thank you! Education is important to the project, and we strongly believe in explaining as many processes as we can to our holders, future buyers and others within the CNFT space.
We thought about how we could do something cool while making it visually appealing to explain the way in which attribute layering works. That’s where the idea came from.
What does the future hold for ADA Ninjaz?
As mentioned previously, we have a lot coming up. We are nearing the official release of the Origin story manga chapter (this was previously released in light novel format and can be read on our website). Once this is out the community-driven element will come into action, driving the manga and picking what direction the story goes. Via our verification bot, only ADA Ninjaz NFT holders will be able to vote on the story.
The first official single of the ADA Ninjaz original soundtrack is due to be released shortly.
Season 2 NFTs, the Atsuko clan, is being worked on as we speak. We are involving the community in the design process, with community contests and voting input. Let’s just say they’re going to look amazing!
Our merch store is also live and over the coming months we will continue to seek community feedback on the types of merch that they would like to see.
Concurrently the team is hard at work building marketing partnerships, working with brands and collaborating with other projects down the line. I’ll keep quiet on this front for now.
What have you got planned for current holders? Anything cool coming up you want to share?
We recently announced that Aramar (Season 1 NFTs) holders will be the only ones who can mint during the Atsuko (Season 2 NFTs) drop. If someone owns 1 Aramar, they can buy 1 Atsuko and so on.
The top 200 wallets will also receive a free Atsuko airdrop. Additionally, all holders will be in the running after every manga drop to win a manga page as an NFT, exclusively minted for them. This will be done on a raffle basis, with 1 NFT equalling 1 raffle entry.
Additionally, we will be dropping free merch to our holders regularly and also provide them with discounts to purchase ADA Ninjaz merch down the line.
We have a few really exciting things coming up that we cannot mention just yet, but will be announcing them soon, so stay tuned.
As project creators yourselves, how do you feel about the recent “rug pulls” or project abandonments?
There will always be “rug pulls” until legislation catches up. We believe doxxing is imperative, and more founders need to reveal their identities. Not only does this build trust but it also provides transparency which is much needed in this space.
Every rug pull hurts the overall perception of the NFT space and so it is sad to see. We sincerely hope rug pulls will become a thing of the past as the space continues to grow. Similar to the ICO craze back in 2017, we hope that NFT rug pulls become a thing of the past.
What advice would you give to genuine creators to set themselves apart and build trust in the community?
Transparency, accountability and honesty. This is what we strive for and why our amazing community has put so much faith in us. Whether you are right or wrong, share it with your community members. If you are honest they will understand. This space moves so quickly that a correct decision made today may be the incorrect decision tomorrow.
Be ready to accept your mistakes and learn from them.
We believe doxxing is imperative, and more founders need to reveal their identities. Not only does this build trust but it also provides transparency which is much needed in this space.
How do you see the NFT space evolving over the next few months?
The NFT space has so much potential and the possibilities for growth are endless. This is very much the dot com boom of this decade. Utility will become important. Adoption from large corporations is already taking place, but this will accelerate. The community will increase the standards of what will be considered a ‘good’ project and lesser projects with inexperienced teams will enter the space, and hopefully this means less rug pulls too.
For us, we are very excited to see more and more people from the wider NFT space move into the CNFT space. With all the reasons I previously cited, and with smart contracts, more quality projects and a better ecosystem, this will happen eventually.
What project would you like to collab with if you could?
We are always keen to engage with Cardano NFT projects and would love to collaborate with projects that share a larger vision, like our own, and are coming up with innovative ideas. This is not to say that we won’t collaborate with art-focused projects, after all, that is the very core of this space.
We are also interested in cross-blockchain collaborations and have been working hard to engage with developers/creators of projects on other blockchains that align with what we do. This will be a great way to cross-pollinate communities and obviously introduce more people to the CNFT space.
ADA Ninjaz is also focused on engaging with a lot of projects outside of the NFT space, particularly anime and manga projects.
Do you guys collect NFT’s too? What are your favourite?
Both of us dabbled in Ethereum NFTs initially (without much knowledge and luck I must say), and at the moment we’ve been so focussed on delivering upon our roadmap that we’ve almost forgotten about why we got into NFTs in the first place, because of incredible art!
There are several projects we really like in the CNFT space, and continue to support and also collaborate with (which you can see on our socials).
Our Discord community is starting an art council that will scout new and existing purchases so we may tag along and make some purchases too!
Many thanks to the guys for taking the time to give us such an in-depth interview, we hope you enjoyed it.
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