Reddit the only major tech company to ‘crack the NFT code’: Polygon co-founder

Polygon’s co-founder said the social media giant “cracked the code” for NFT adoption, during a recent AMA session on Reddit.

Besides sharing pro-crypto and Polygon views such as how Web3 will complement Web2 in areas such as finance, gaming and social media, the founder also explained how Reddit managed to win over the community with the launch of its digital collectibles.

The social media platform introduced NFTs as “Collectible Avatars” on Polygon in July 2022 via free airdrops and early sales of digital collectibles for up to $100. The early NFTs sold for hundreds of dollars on the secondary market.

Nailwal said that Reddit is “perhaps the only known Big Tech company that has cracked the NFT code, and they’re able to drive a lot of engagement with Reddit NFTs.”

Polygon represents a multi-chain ecosystem of side chains that leverage Ethereum’s security to provide a scalable application platform. Currently, it supports two public blockchains: Polygon and Polygon zkEVM.

Reddit was responsible for adding 3 million crypto users in the first three months of its NFT launch. Over the past ten months, the company has successfully added 9.7 million users to Reddit’s NFT platform, according to a Dune dashboard.

“I guess a couple of things like having a secondary marketplace to trade these NFTs, having a launch platform for artists to launch their collections […] could be some great additions to take Reddit NFTs to the next level,” he said.

Place Polygon as a business team

Nailwal also said that no other blockchain ecosystem is “fully decentralized,” apart from Bitcoin and Ethereum.

“It is also not necessary to be completely decentralized from day zero [in my opinion]what we need is progressive decentralization of protocols and applications as they gain greater and greater importance,” hinted at his plans to run Polygon.

He added that the long-term vision of Polygon is to become the “value layer of the internet,” acting as the “business or application layer for crypto.”

In addition to Reddit, Polygon has also collaborated with brands such as Nike, Starbucks and Sotheby’s.

The earliest collection of Starbucks NFTs fetched around $2,000 each to users who created free NFTs.

According to a Dune dashboard of brands using NFTs, the brand ranks first with $92.9 million earned in revenue. Notably, the early Nike NFT collections were launched on Ethereum and not on Polygon.