Reddit Now Has More NFT Wallets Than the OpenSea Marketplace

Reddit, an American social news aggregation, content, and discussion website, seems to be innovating its way forward. The site is both popular and notorious, at least some parts of it, called subreddits. In July 2022, the firm managed to jump in on the NFT craze in a very quiet and subversive way. The marketplace was launched with the idea that users would purchase blockchain-based profile pictures known as avatars.

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Reddit NFT Wallets

Illustration: Milica Mijajlovic

How Reddit Has Onboarded Millions Into NFTs Without Them Knowing 

During a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt, Pali Bhat chief product officer at Reddit, shared with the panelists that 3 million Redditors (Reddit users) used the firm’s blockchain wallet called Vault to create 3 million crypto wallets. According to Bhat’s estimate, 2.5 million were created to buy NFT avatars. For comparison purposes, OpenSea hosted 1 million wallets in January 2022, while the popular crypto wallet MetaMask had 30 million wallets as of March 2022.  

OpenSea is by far the most popular NFT platform for buying, trading and selling NFTs across the Metaverse. On the other hand MetaMask is possibly one of the most popular wallets for DeFi and Web3 Dapps.  

While NFT trading plunged by 97% from its peak in January 2022, Reddit’s success seems much more astonishing. One of the reasons the avatars took off is Reddit dumping free avatars into the vaults of high-profile Redditors to push users to open new accounts or simply to get an avatar of their own.     

Avatar holders volume. Source: Dune.com

Procenat vlasnika avatara. Izvor: Dune.com

About Reddit NFT wallet users 

These avatars were created with the cooperation of 30 artists, and 40,000 NFT avatar designs can be bought through the Reddit app for $9.99 to $99.99. Needless to say, they were all sold out fairly quickly. Limited-edition NFTs allowed users to use the avatar outside of Reddit to remix it using the builder tool on the site and boast to other users that they possess a limited-edition avatar.  

The entire minting process, a blockchain term for creating and publishing a unique NFT, occurred on the Polygon chain, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain project, while Vault was used for storing and managing the NFT avatars.   

Delving Into The Blockchain 

Equally important, Polygon as a chain was chosen by Reddit for its low transaction fees and sustainability commitments, according to Reddit. Blockchain, as a technology that was used in the background of this entire process, is pertinent since it allows users sole ownership over a given avatar, and on the flip side, it allows artists to get compensated for their work through future sales of their avatars.  

While Reddit boasts of being a decentralized forum where communities govern themselves and create content for themselves, the ploy with the avatars was to take that concept a bit further. Blockchain as a technology has empowerment built into its structure to give its users a model of decentralization. Therefore, Reddit users can probably expect more such projects to come in the near future.   

Reddit avatars. Source: Reddit help

Reddit avatari. Izvor: Reddit help

What are Collectible Avatars? 

According to Reddit’s definition, a collectible avatar is: “a limited-edition, blockchain-backed avatar.” In essence, users own a bundle of rights to display a virtual representation of themselves on and off Reddit, along with the rights to purchase new avatar additions and remix them with the originally bought avatar.  

As the rights are licensed to users that own the avatar, the right of ownership and transfer of said ownership is equally included.  

The Reddit Avatars boom 

The success of Reddit’s avatar could be attributed to the success of similar NFT projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. Namely, the avatars themselves are visible, letting users show off their wealth and online credibility/status. Another reason that avatars soared in popularity is the ability to customize your avatar’s appearance, akin to in-game skins where users spend real money to have a unique gun color in Counter Strike or the appearance of their character in League of Legends.  

Finally, Reddit’s user base counts millions, meaning that the very high reach of Reddit’s NFT project, compared to other projects, is another major success factor.  

Prodajni rezultati avatara. Izvor: Dune.com

Prodajni rezultati avatara. Izvor: Dune.com

What comes next? 

Love them or hate them, avatars are here to stay on Reddit, indicating that simplifying a complex technology, giving access to a large audience, and marketing it properly are solid ingredients for success.  

The successful implementation of the avatars project had an unintended positive effect on Polygon’s token MATIC. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe more such projects from other companies, pushed by crypto projects, could emerge. Reddit will build towards more decentralization and make money in the process. Only time will tell whether more companies will follow suit. 

Dino Kurbegović is a project coordinator and an investor and technology enthusiast with years of experience in managing complex projects. His journey into content writing began in 2014, covering finance, investing, crypto, technology and complex technical topics.

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