The Story of 明日の風 - ASHITA NO KAZE
In this article, Josh Friedberg, Chief Product Officer at Kai Roses, shares the story of ASHITA NO KAZE – an interactive, collaborative, generative world-building project he developed to explore the possibilities of today’s AI and blockchain tools.
The Concept
ASHITA NO KAZE (ANK) is an exploration of interactive, collaborative, generative world-building on blockchain. Our goal was to push the boundaries of what was possible with today’s AI and blockchain tools by experimenting with:
Interactive storytelling through a RAG chatbot
On-demand creation of unique generative art pieces
Breaking down language barriers with AI-powered translation
Seamless preservation, attribution, and ownership of the generated art on blockchain
Ashita no Kaze invokes the phrase “明日は明日の風が吹く.” Literally, "tomorrow’s wind will blow tomorrow," it embodies the idea of letting go of today’s worries, trusting that tomorrow will bring its own solutions.
The first version of ASHITA NO KAZE launched on April 11 with a counterintuitive marketing approach: just 16 tweets on X, all in Japanese, aimed at a primarily non-Japanese-speaking audience. It was a completely new user experience; the project interaction was wholly contained in a Telegram chat, there was no app or website. The art was both unique to every interaction and generated on demand, but processed to maintain a cohesive and recognizable aesthetic.
Upon launch, the novel approach drove substantial attention in the web3 space, and the engagement quickly overwhelmed the delivery pipeline. The attention also brought out the opportunists, and the contract was compromised by bots (smart contracts that were able to circumvent the mint security). After being live for a few hours between April 11-13, the mint contract was paused with only 215 of the intended 1234 pieces of art preserved.
Although the pipeline failure and the stress test from bots could be seen as negatives, they actually confirmed strong product-market fit, so I set out to rebuild the infrastructure from scratch. The goal was to develop a production-grade version that could handle thousands of simultaneous user interactions and prevent bot intrusion in order to deliver on the collection as it was originally envisioned.
It took just under 3 months to complete the upgraded version. I integrated dozens of products and services into a robust tech stack, powering a reasonably frictionless user experience contained entirely within a Telegram chatbot.
The relaunch of the project, ANK Transmission 2, saw over 1,500 people engage our Japanese-speaking bot, generating nearly 10,000 pieces of art through over 50,000 Telegram interactions. When I closed the interface, we stood at 1,028 one-of-one art pieces that carry the lore of the ANK story, preserved on blockchain. Between the two collections, the project has done over $40,000 in trading volume and sales since launch.
To the best of our knowledge, this is a first-of-its-kind deep integration of a chatbot that can handle multimodal storytelling, story generation, and artwork preservation on blockchain – all without ever leaving the Telegram app.
The Story
After a cataclysmic earthquake, the Shinsai, a parallel Tokyo is transformed into a fractured world where aurora flares light the sky, portals link time and space, and mythical creatures roam the streets. Survivors divide life into “before” and “after,” with many lost or vanished. Among them is L, a nocturnal wanderer who lost their family and now thrives in the spectral ruins, exploring by night under the glow of the rift.
Hope emerges in two forms: communication through the glowing portals and an unexpected spark tied to skateboarding. L discovers a hidden warehouse filled with pristine skateboarding gear from the old world and begins secretly distributing boards to fellow survivors. Each skateboard becomes a symbol of freedom and resistance, igniting a quiet revolution known as ASHITA NO KAZE (“Tomorrow’s Wind”).
Meanwhile, dormant bots stir in the city’s shadows, signaling deeper conflicts between humans, machines, and the mysteries of the rift. As whispers of rebellion spread, L unknowingly sets in motion events that will ripple across realities, carving a path toward renewal in a city where the “after” is not an ending but the beginning of something new.
Guided by the RAG chatbot, users asked questions and contributed their imagination, generating over 1,000 unique images that visually represented the world of ASHITA NO KAZE. Below are some examples of the output. The Japanese description is baked into the metadata for each token and the English translation is provided for reference.
In the shadows of Tokyo's ruins, glowing portals appear beneath a vibrant aurora, radiating warmth and mystery, beckoning survivors with promises of connection and untapped power in a violently transformed world.