RENGA: Enter the NFT project about anime and manga by Dirtyrobot

There are already hundreds of NFT collections on the market for all tastes, preferences and prices. But Japanese contemporary art is still in the trends, and is not going to leave the stage. The RENGA NFT collection is liked by all connoisseurs of Japanese culture, namely manga and anime fans. It has neither practical application nor privileges. There are only two things about this collection, that is, the art and the story of the character. However, the collection refers to the concept of Japanese Renga poetry, where the first author is followed by the second, and so on until the story is told.

And in this video review, we will introduce you to Japanese conceptual art in the NFT world, as well as tell you how this collection came to be and how it is connected with Yuga Labs.

RENGA Official Links

• Official site https://renga.app
• Twitter @renga_inc – over 69k followers,
• Discord @renga – over 24k participants,
• Instagram @renga_inc – over 1k subscribers.

What is RENGA?

Renga is an NFT collection consisting of 10,000 handmade characters. The collection is located on the Ethereum blockchain and has the ERC-721 token standard.

The way the NFT collection was distributed was quite interesting:

1. The project originally began with the mysterious Black Boxes that were delivered to 7,000 early owners of The Art of Seasons collection through the airdrop.
2. Subsequent distribution was done through the public sale of the Boxes.
3. The last 2,500 boxes were distributed by means of a whitelist which included users who had won the lottery. This method was not chosen by chance. In this way the organizers managed to avoid gas wars by distributing the minting evenly.
4. In order to get the RENGA NFT, owners of Black Boxes had to burn them. This opportunity did not appear until the end of the summer.

RENGA in numbers

• On the first day of summer, on June 1, 2022, as a result of the airdrop, about 7,000 holders of the ART of Seasons NFT collection received Black Boxes.
• Some Black Boxes were sold during the public sale at 0.47 ETH.
• As of today, more than 1,200 Boxes remain unopened, and, accordingly, there are about 8,800 Renga tokens on the market.
• The Boxes are also represented as a collection on OpenSea with a trading volume of more than 13k ETH.
• The project is ranked 50th among the best collections in terms of sales on Opensea, the largest NFT marketplace.
• The total volume of secondary sales exceeded 53k ETH (more than $87 million at the current exchange rate).
• Floor price is 0.2 ETH (about $300).
• Floor price of Black Boxes is 0.6 ETH (about $1k).
• Average sales range from 0.2 ETH to 2.5 ETH.
• The most expensive #7814 was sold on January 28, 2022 for 28 ETH ($ 44k at the time of sale).
• Total 3,016 unique holders (34%).
• Only about 4% of the collection (365 pieces out of 8,800) is for sale, among which the offers range from 0.2 ETH to 8 ETH. This shows that almost all of the holders see great investment prospects in the project and are in no hurry to part with their assets at a lower price.

Data (including exchange rates) are given at the time of  publication (September 21, 2023)

RENGA types and attributes

The anime-style сharacters, each with its own story, have a huge number of features and colors. Moreover, they are characterized by beautiful outlines of their costumes or robotic prosthetics. Some characters hold an object in their hand, such as a gun or a can of soda.

The NFT collection has more than 900 attributes divided into 36 categories. One of them is called Archetypes which includes 11 types of characters:

1. Motor Corp (1,371 pieces),
2. Delinquent (1,238 pieces),
3. Agent (1,075 pieces),
4. Robot (997 pieces),
5. Alchemist (794 pieces),
6. Samurai (707 pieces),
7. Golem (693 pieces),
8. Ninja (653 pieces),
9. 8-bit (497 pieces),
10. Cube (490 pieces),
11. 1/1 (38 pieces).

Who created RENGA?

The creators of the project are a team of 12 anonymous people:

1. Dirtyrobot @dirtyrobotWorks. A creator of worlds inspired by retro video games, kung fu movies, and life in general. His name is well-known in the NFT space. The artist’s real name is Daniel Isles. He began his journey in comic book creation when he was 9 years old. Daniel mostly works with ink and paper. It is in the RENGA NFT collection that he has put more than 20 years of experience into. Some of his work is featured on SuperRare. The most expensive was sold for 36 ETH. Notably, the artist only produces work related to Japanese comic book genres.
2. Tails @Probablytails. Defender of the Kingdom and the Oracle of the Team.
3. Myke Forte @MykeForte. He loves music and tea, and he’s a creative guy.
4. Steven @sbdesignworks. Graphic designer, illustrator, aspiring pixel artist.
5. Ben @Memebens03. He spends days to watch Formula 1, and he’s an extremely talented person.
6. Garr @garinwood. He is a very cool photographer.
7. Hockataro @handofcorum. A nerd who can write a fairy tale in a minute.
8. OCCIDIT @occinft. He loves tennis and goes to the gym; he was hired because of his athletic build.
9. Julian @juuliantwi. A talented bassist. If he’s not pretending to be Tony Hawk, this “legendary” uncle is gambling, trying not to lose to his nephew.
10. Alejandro @unaavezz. Longtime DirtyRobot enthusiast. He currently divides his time between college and fun.
11. Guesswork @justguesswork. A father. He loves to write something. He’s also a guest in flamingo zoo.
12. Ash @crypto_xxxx. He has been dragged into many anime black holes.

On the official website of the project, you can find a reference to Wenew Labs, the co-founders of which are Figge, Beeple and Guy Oseary. They are famous people in the NFT space. This company also stands behind the 10KTF top NFT collection. In November 2022, it was announced that the studio and the entire collection were acquired by the Web3.0 industry giant Yuga Labs that stands behind such projects as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Otherside Metaverse.

RENGA Idea

The purpose of the project was to present the comic form of Renga. In Japan, Renga is a form of printed graphic narrative. DirtyRobot, who drawed all 10,000 NFTs, is a Japanese and a fan of Japanese culture.

Moreover, the storyline of the collection began with The Art of Seasons, a collection about the seasons of the year. The airdrop of Black Boxes occurred on the first day of summer for the holders of The Art of Seasons NFTs. Thus, it can be assumed that Renga is a continuation of the history of the first collection by DirtyRobot. And the owners of the collection are the third authors of the Japanese concept of Japanese poetry.

The Renga NFT collection is a kind of digital comic book where there is a Japanese manga and a plot. Each character has its own story. All these stories make up a complete comic book in the Japanese anime, manga and Renga genre.

Why is RENGA popular?

The popularity of the project can be justified by the following reasons:

• NFTs have a reference to the Japanese genres of comics, such as manga, anime and Renga;
• The collection was drawn entirely by the rather famous Japanese artist in the NFT space, DirtyRobot, also known as Daniel Isles;
• Today, floor price is more than 1 ETH, and secondary sales volumes are impressive;
• Community interest in Black Boxes. They are both a subject of speculation in the market and some kind of mystery item. It is impossible to predict which NFT will fall out of the Box;
• Many holders are waiting for airdrops, as the collection was distributed in a rather unusual way, that is, through the unexpected airdrop of the Black Box NFT collection.

RENGA Roadmap

The project does not have a roadmap. And this is not an omission of the organizers, but a conscious step.

Inside each black box awaits a new character, a new part of the collection, and a new story to be told. These incredibly unique, handcrafted pieces of art will be used alongside your wildest imagination to build out the wonder that is the RENGA universe. This is what the creators say on their official website

DirtyRobot also argues that the roadmap hinders artists rather than helping them. It is impossible to predict what will be in demand in the future and what new trends everyone will have to adapt to.

RENGA Ecosystem

Ecosystem projects include Black Box, the primary NFT collection of Renga, which serves as the mint of the Renga project. That is, in order to mint a Renga NFT, you need to burn a Black Box. The price of the Box is dictated by the speculative nature of the market.

A few more words about Black Box:

• In total, there were initially 10,000 Boxes that were distributed through the airdrop to the holders of the Art of Seasons collection, as well as through public sale and via the whitelist.
• At the moment, floor price is above 2 ETH.
• The total volume of secondary sales is more than 10k ETH.
• There are more than 1,470 Boxes in the circulation. The burning of Black Box is produced by Renga token, so that the number of Boxes and NFTs of the main collection is correlated and interconnected.

How much does RENGA cost?

On the first day of summer, on June 1, 2022, about 7,000 holders of The Art of Seasons NFT collection received Black Boxes via the airdrop. After the airdrop and whitelist sale, a number of Black Boxes were sold in a public sale at 0.47 ETH. It wasn’t until late summer that it became possible to burn Boxes and get Renga NFTs. Sales jumped up then, and the project attracted many investors. And how are things now?

To show the price dynamics, we made a slice of the average price for 1 NFT:

• In October 2022: 1.7 ETH,
• In December 2022: 1.4 ETH,
• In February 2023: 1.3 ETH,
• In June 2023: 0.5 ETH.

Now (September 21, 2023) the minimum price is 0.2 ETH. On average, the latest sales range from 0.2 to 2.5 ETH. And the total volume of secondary sales amounted to more than 53k ETH (about $87 million).

The most expensive RENGA sales

The most expensive sales are led by the following NFT from the RENGA collection:

1. #7814 was sold on January 28, 2022 for 28 ETH ($44k at the time of sale),
2. #1710 was sold on October 3, 2022 for 22 ETH ($29k at the time of sale),
3. #5701 was sold on October 4, 2022 for 22 ETH ($29k at the time of sale),
4. #8294 was sold on October 2, 2022 for 20 ETH ($25k at the time of sale).

Where to buy RENGA?

Currently, Renga can only be purchased on the secondary market, on such marketplaces as:

• Opensea,
• X2Y2,
• LooksRare,
• Blur.

How to buy RENGA?

1. Remember that initially you need to connect your crypto wallet with self-storage to your chosen marketplace.
2. Next, find the official collection using the search bar on the trading platform.
3. Conduct an analysis and choose the NFT you want to buy, click on it and then on the “Buy” button.
4. Or you can bet on the token you like. Make sure that you have enough ETH for gas or transaction commissions. If the seller approves your bid, the deal goes through.

Should you invest in RENGA?

Although at this point the team has not announced the utility of RENGA NFT, the project has great potential. And there are some reasons why it would be worth investing in the collection:

• Floor price is around 1 ETH and has never fallen to 0.47 ETH, and the floor price of Boxes is even higher (it’s more than 2 ETH), due to the deficit;
• Not all Black Boxes are burned, which means that not all NFT appeared on the market;
• On the official website of the NFT collection there is a reference to WeNew Labs which stands behind the 10KTF top collection and has famous co-founders, namely Figge, Beeple and Guy Oseary. In November 2022, it became known about the acquisition of the studio and the entire collection by the giant of the Web3.0 industry Yuga Labs that stands behind such projects as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Otherside metaverse. This is a strong investment signal about the prospects of the project.
• It’s fueled by the Asian market which has some of the most devoted fans of Japanese culture;
• Possible airdrops of future collections from DirtyRobot and partners.

In any case, conduct your own deep analysis and research when investing in NFT, and then make your own decision.

Opinion of NFTMetria

It is safe to say that RENGA reflects Japanese culture in the NFT space. The project was created by the rather famous NFT artist DirtyRobot from Japan. By releasing this project to the public, he made no mistake. Black Boxes as a mint has only fueled the community’s interest. There are still about a thousand and a half Boxes in circulation, waiting to be burned. This project has the comic Japanese style of the concept of Renga poetry, which is like a TV series with a storyline. And its future potential lies in future airdrops, collaborations, ecosystem development, and a possible connection with WeNew Labs.