Reddit NFTs increase as polygon-based avatars reach millions of new users

The online message board community Reddit has proven to be a significant force for NFT adoption, as one leader revealed last week that users created over 3 million Polygon wallets for them – with almost three million of the NFT avatars in circulation. Now sales are increasing as collectors see Reddit’s NFTs as a great trading opportunity.

Secondary market sale of Reddit’s Collectible Avatars NFTs – which are minted on Polygonone Ethereum scaling network—ha topped $1.88 million so far today, a 799% increase from Sunday. That’s according to public blockchain data collected by Dune user polygon_analytics. Sales volume has risen for five straight days, according to the dashboard.

In the last 24 hours in total, the Reddit avatar NFTs have generated around $1.95 million in sales on over 4,700 transacted NFTs. All told, 17 of the top 20 individual Reddit Collectible Avatar sales happened today, including the top sale – a Spooky seasonal avatar by pseudonymous artist poieeeeeee which sold for 18 ETH, or about $24,150.

At TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference last week, Reddit Chief Product Officer Pali Bhat revealed that more than 3 million polygon-based Reddit Vault wallets have been created by users to collect and trade their NFT avatars. According to the Dune dashboard, more than 2.9 million of the avatars are now in circulation.

Some of these avatars were premium NFTs purchased from the site, with initial fixed price points ranging from $10 to $100 apiece. Based on data from Reddit flooraround 86,000 NFTs were sold to users and they now have a total market capitalization (or value) of around $100 million.

However, many more Reddit NFTs were also given awayor sent free to some of the site’s most devoted users across more than 100,000 active communities (or subreddits), introducing many people to NFTs for the first time.

Reddit NFTs from Meme Team, The singularity, Aww friendsand Drip layer collections were offered free of charge to eligible users. According to OpenSea’s marketplace, there are over 2.8 million of these NFTs on the market, although they are trading for much lower prices than the NFTs originally sold by Reddit.

Decrypt reached out to Reddit and Polygon representatives to clarify how many of the Polygon NFTs are currently on the market and how they were released, but did not immediately hear back.

Each avatar is based on Snoo, the Reddit alien mascot, albeit with different visual styles contributed by a variety of artists. Some of the most popular and valuable collections in the Reddit project include The Senses by pseudonymous artist Rojom, Foustlings by Tyler Foustand a Spooky Season Collection by poieeeeeee.

An NFT is a blockchain token that represents ownership of a unique item, such as avatars or profile pictures (PFPs), digital art, and video game items. The NFT market increased to $25 billion in trading volume in 2021 and continued the violent pace early in 2022but has seen falling prices and sales volume in recent months amid a ongoing decline in the crypto market.

NFT traders were buzzing about the Reddit avatars all weekend, with some praising the collection for promoting NFT adoption, as well as the streamlined interface Reddit used to sell them. Buying NFTs from Reddit did not require the use of cryptocurrency, nor the platform refer to its Collectible Avatars as NFTs.

Others saw the project – with its many stylized sub-collections – as a significant trading opportunity, and prices on the secondary market have grown along with the increasing number of sales. The cheapest listed NFT from a Spooky Season collaboration with pseudonymous artist Sys32Template, for example, is 2.7 ETH (over $3600) on OpenSea right now.

Polygon’s MATIC token saw a notable price increase on Sunday that matched growing hype around the Reddit NFTs. MATIC is now up 6% in the last 24 hours at a current price of almost $0.90, per data from CoinGecko.