Azuki Unveils 2026 Roadmap While Saga Protocol Suffers $7 Million Security Breach

Major Developments in NFT and Blockchain Space

The blockchain and NFT sectors experienced contrasting developments this week, with prominent NFT collection Azuki announcing ambitious expansion plans while Layer 1 protocol Saga grappled with a multi-million dollar security breach.

Azuki Announces 2026 Strategic Roadmap

Chiru Labs, the digital asset incubation studio behind the Azuki NFT collection, revealed its plans for 2026 on January 21, focusing on concrete product releases over conceptual initiatives ^[1]. The Los Angeles-based Web3 technology and art studio, established in 2021, operates the Azuki collection featuring 10,000 anime-themed NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain ^[1].

Founder Zagabond outlined the company's direction in a blog post, emphasizing Azuki's identity as an intellectual property company with trading card games serving as core products ^[1]. The roadmap includes continued production of trading card NFTs, which combine competitive, turn-based gameplay with collecting and trading elements ^[1].

A centerpiece of the 2026 plans involves launching an official Azuki manga, scheduled for summer 2026 ^[1]. "Azuki is an IP company, with the tcg being one of the core products. An IP needs story at its core, which is why we have the official Azuki manga in the works," Zagabond stated ^[1].

The announcement generated immediate market response, with the Azuki NFT floor price climbing 4.8% over 24 hours following the roadmap reveal ^[1]. The floor price increased from 0.74 ETH on January 22 to 0.78 ETH at the time of reporting, while the collection recorded 10.77 ETH in trading volume, placing it among the top 20 on NFT market rankings ^[1].

Saga Protocol Halts Operations Following Exploit

In a stark contrast to Azuki's positive developments, Layer 1 protocol Saga suffered a significant security breach on January 21, resulting in approximately $7 million in losses and forcing the project to suspend its SagaEVM chain ^[2].

On-chain analysis revealed that attackers minted Saga Dollar (D) tokens without proper collateral backing, then bridged these assets to Ethereum ^[2]. The stolen funds were converted into over 2,000 ETH valued at more than $6 million, with an additional $800,000 deployed into Uniswap V4 liquidity positions ^[2].

Saga immediately halted the SagaEVM chain upon discovering the incident and maintained the suspension "out of an abundance of caution" while conducting a comprehensive investigation ^[2]. "We're working with partners on remediation and will publish a post-mortem once findings are fully validated," the protocol stated ^[2].

The team emphasized that while halting the chain disrupts user activity, protecting community funds and protocol integrity remains the top priority ^[2]. A detailed technical post-mortem will be released following completion of remediation efforts and verification of findings ^[2].

Recovery Efforts and Broader Implications

Saga has identified the wallet receiving the extracted assets and is coordinating with exchanges and bridge operators to blacklist the attacker's address ^[2]. This effort aims to restrict movement of stolen funds and support potential recovery measures ^[2].

The protocol confirmed the breach did not affect its broader infrastructure, including the SSC mainnet or core consensus layer, with no evidence of validator compromise, consensus failure, or leaked signer keys ^[2]. Forensic analysis using archive data and execution traces is underway to reconstruct the complete attack path ^[2].

According to Chainalysis data referenced in the report, crypto exploits have resulted in losses exceeding $3.41 billion in 2025, highlighting ongoing security challenges facing the blockchain industry ^[2].