Reddit, the social news and discussion platform, now has more NFT wallets than OpenSea – the world’s leading NFT marketplace. Over 3 million Reddit NFT wallets have been created since the American social media company launched its NFT-based marketplace in July. 2.5 million of these wallets have been used to buy NFT avatars, some of which have become popular, making it to OpenSea’s top 10 lists.
NFTs Are Dead, But The Reddit NFT Market Is Alive
Things have not been rosy in the NFT space in 2022. The crypto winter has led to poor NFTs prices, with some of the world’s top NFTs bought for hundreds of thousands of dollars having lost more than 99% of their value. There have been significant drops in NFT prices, sales, and transactions. For example, OpenSea has witnessed a 99% drop in daily trading volumes over the last 90 days.
As such, the general sentiment around NFTs indicates that investors may have lost interest in this digital asset class. But apparently, the opposite is the case for Reddit avatars. After joining the NFT bandwagon in July by creating an NFT-based marketplace that allows Redditors to buy avatars, Reddit has seen millions of users generate crypto wallets to store them.
Speaking during a TechCrunch Disrupt event, Pali Bhat, the Reddit Chief Product Officer (CPO), revealed that more than 3 million Reddit Vaul blockchain wallets had been created. Pali also disclosed that over 83% of the created wallets were active; 2.5 million wallets were used to purchase NFT avatars that can be used as profile pictures on Reddit.
Do you know what this means? Reddit now has more NFT owners than the biggest NFT marketplace, OpeaSea. To put this into context, data from Dune, a crypto analytics platform, reveals that OpenSea was hosting just over 2.3 million active wallets as of October 20. While it is difficult to put these figures into context since not all NFT exchanges make complete disclosures on such metrics. It would be safe to conclude that Reddit potentially has more active NFT wallets than OpenSea.
Reddit’s NFT Journey
Reddit’s foray into the NFT space began by partnering with about 30 digital artists to create around 40,000 NFT avatars immediately after the launch. Reddit users could buy the NFT avatars from the Reddit mobile app, with prices ranging from $9.99 to $99.99. It is worth noting that the Avatars were sold out immediately after release.
Those lucky to get their hands on some limited-edition NFTs received licensing rights to use them on and off Reddit as blockchain-based profile pictures. The license also allowed them to improve their appearance using in-built avatar builder tools.
The social media company has partnered with the Ethereum-enabled blockchain Polygon to mint NFTs. The Reddit Vault is a digital wallet that stores and manages avatars via the Reddit app.
Reddit’s entry into the NFT industry has also seen the platform allow its users to set NFTs as their profile pictures, following in Twitter’s footsteps. Before then, NFT avatars were only available to members of an exclusive r/CollectibleAvatars subreddit, which is only accessible through invitation.
Reddit NFT Success
Reddit has established members and communities, and NFT avatars are another way to ensure their communities remain engaged. With all the 40,000 avatars released in the first season being sold out, the success story of Reddit NFTs is just beginning.
Most Redditors have hailed the success of Polygon developer with the Twitter handle @sourcex44 sharing some of the data discussed above, saying:
“The adoption of @Reddit digital avatars (re: NFTs) is a good case study to see @0xPolygon is pushing mainstream users on-chain. 2.7M+ Polygon wallets created. 2.2M+ USD NFT volume. Two million seven hundred thousand new users were onboarded via @0xPolygon.”
Another Twitter user, @p_petertherock, also noted the increasing number of unique Reddit vault wallets asserting that social media platforms like Reddit will “be one of the main drivers of NFT adoption.”
Meanwhile, Reddit marketing leader Chris Sarandos shared the news of Reddit’s NFT success in a LinkedIn post, saying:
“It’s been exciting to see the Reddit community respond positively to our blockchain-based initiatives like collectible avatars and community points. The future of digital is all about users having ownership of their identity and communities. Blockchain technology makes it happen.”
The community awaits the second season of Reddit NFTs to be released soon. Will the Halloween-themed NFTs be as successful as the first ones?
