Reddit avatars are a hit, surpassing OpenSea in number of NFT wallets
Slowly but surely, Reddit Avatars fought their way to success. The initiative was initially mocked, but their second-generation 40K collection sold out in 24 hours, and the prices of the pieces are increasing on the secondary market. Don’t call them NFTs. The Reddit brand managed to achieve the impossible by avoiding crypto jargon in the project’s communications. Reddit avatars are “Blockchain-backed collectible avatars”, thank you very much.
The initiative is community-driven. The platform partnered with Reddit user artists, who earn a cut of each secondary sale just like Reddit does. The chips have a fixed cost that varies between $10 and $100, and the platform’s storefront accepts all kinds of fiat currencies, but not cryptocurrencies. “Collectible avatars” live on Polygon, the Ethereum-aligned layer 2 solution, so transactions are low-fee and gas fees are non-existent. In conclusion, they are NFTs, but don’t tell Reddit users.
On October 21st, the platform released the second generation of Reddit avatars and sold 40K pieces in less than 24 hours. Consider that generation one Reddit Avatars took months to sell out, and some of these are now selling for 50X the price on OpenSea. The company achieved all of this outside of the traditional crypto markets, leveraging its extremely loyal user base. In order for them to adopt the product, Reddit Avatars pushed the complexity to the background and made the whole process as simple as possible.
FAST FACTS
– 3m wallets (more than OpenSea)
– 86K+ NFTs
– 40,000 sold, non-resting airdrops
– Embossed on @0xPolygon
– Top avatars selling for 6.9E (highest 175E)
– Market value 100 million dollars
– 24-hour volume $235k (rising)h/t Mando pic.twitter.com/xNjdkmZfJB
— Robin 🇨🇭 (OneTruth / Blokssom) 🦇🔊 (@robinkunz_) 24 October 2022
This is quite an achievement, considering that the Reddit community has been notoriously anti-NFT from day one. Apparently that stopped once people received free Reddit avatars right in the “Vault”. In Reddit-land, wallets are called vaults. That leads us to today’s headline, because there are reportedly more Reddit Avatars vaults than OpenSea accounts.
By The Numbers: Reddit avatars
The project’s statistics as web3 founder Robin provides is quite impressive:
– 3m wallets (more than OpenSea)
– 86K+ NFTs
– 40,000 sold, non-resting airdrops
– Embossed on polygon
– Top avatars selling for 6.9E (highest 175E)
– Market value 100 million dollars
– 24-hour volume $235k
Of course, most users opened these wallets to receive the Reddit avatars that were dropped. Surpassing the NFT giant that is OpenSea in the number of wallets is still an achievement of epic proportions. Additionally, with the move, Reddit rewarded its most active users. On October 18th, days before the second release, Reddit CPO Pali Bhat spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt and revealed that:
“Over three million Redditors have used Reddit’s Vault blockchain wallet to create over three million crypto wallets to date. Most of these – 2.5 million – were created to purchase NFT avatars to use as profile pictures on the platform, he said.
To open a Reddit Avatars vault, users simply had to generate a 12-word seed phrase and a password. As simple as it gets. When used as a profile picture, Reddit Avatars display the collection’s size and the piece’s zip code, proving authenticity. Most Reddit users don’t even know they own an NFT or participate in Web3. Reportedly, some of them get pretty pissed off when they find out what Reddit avatars really are. In general, however, the project has been a roaring success.
MATIC price chart on Gemini | Source: MATIC/USD on TradingView.com
The people against NFTs
In contrast to Reddit Avatar’s triumph, when Discord tried to introduce NFT avatars by actually calling them NFTs, the community reacted violently. The backlash saw many users cancel their Discord Nitro subscriptions and the company’s CEO apologizes and backing out of the entire operation.
“Discord fanatics spammed Citron’s responses and canceled their subscriptions to their Nitro premium service. Discord’s own employees took to social media to express their displeasure. Video game culture influencers rallied the masses, amassing hundreds of Likes and Retweets. What were their reasons? Environmental concerns. And for them to consider NFTs a scam, that also somehow ruins video games.”
Although the Reddit Avatars project disavowed any crypto ties, the company’s PR people had ESG concerns at the forefront of their minds. IN a recent press releasethey clarify:
“Collectible avatars are currently stored on Polygon, a general purpose Ethereum-compatible blockchain. We chose Polygon due to its low-cost transactions and sustainability commitments.”
This is not the first time Bitcoinist has covered Reddit Avatars. A couple of months ago, before they became a phenomenon, we were already on their trail:
“Overall, Reddit NFTs haven’t done too badly for themselves, given that they are new. One of the most prominent NFT collections is The sensesa collection of 1300. One of the NFTs from this collection, titled The mouths #12, recently made history as one of the biggest sales of any Reddit NFT after seeing 1,377 of polygon-bridged ETH. At the time of sale it was worth about $333.”
What’s next for the fledgling collection with the giant community behind it? Stay tuned to Bitcoinist to find out the latest on Reddit Avatars.
Featured Image: Collectible Avatars, promotional image | Charts by TradingView
