Reddit has joined a growing list of companies testing NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. The company recently launched a blockchain-backed avatar marketplace that lets buyers pay a fixed rate for profile pictures featuring NFTs. The new initiative is a major step in the company’s quest to build a sustainable, user-centric ecosystem for its NFTs.
The platform is also testing a new NFT profile picture feature that would allow users to set any NFT as their avatar and verify its ownership. Similar to Twitter’s recent rollout, verified NFT pfps would appear as hexagonal images that provide information about the NFT when clicked.
TechCrunch reported that the feature was still in testing, and no decisions have been made yet about expanding or rolling out the capability to all users. But if the test proves successful, it could lead to a significant boost in Reddit’s revenue.
CryptoSnoos Have Been Spent, But NFT Demand Is On The Rise
The crypto community has been buzzing over the launch of Reddit’s collectible NFT avatars. The company’s chief product officer Pali Bhat told a Techcrunch Disrupt panel that the latest avatars have already been purchased by 2.5 million users.
However, that number may be misleading, as some of the latest NFTs have fetched prices as high as 175 ether (or $435,000), according to statistics published by Dune Analytics. This is significantly more than what some of the most popular NFT collections are currently selling for, and it’s also significantly higher than the 2 ether price tag that certain tokens created by Reddit’s CryptoSnoos program were being sold for at the time.
NFTs have been a hot topic in the crypto community lately, with many companies exploring ways to use them to promote their products and services. While some projects have received a lot of backlash from the community, others have gotten a lot of support.
As of today, Reddit’s NFT collection has minted over 255,000 “avatars” in one day, which is an all-time minting record for the platform. The NFTs are designed as avatars for users to use on Reddit, and they are created by independent artists that use the social media platform.
The NFTs are based on the Polygon blockchain, and Reddit said that Polygon has low-cost transactions and sustainability commitments. That’s important to Baronchelli, as he wants to create an ecosystem that’s as easy to use as possible.
Earlier this year, Reddit started releasing limited NFT-based avatars called “CryptoSnoos” that are backed by the Polygon blockchain. They were designed to be simple, easy-to-use and affordable, Baronchelli said, as well as sustainable.
After a brief test period, Reddit decided to make the NFTs available for sale on its own token exchange. That’s a smart move, because it gives its users an easy way to purchase them while at the same time giving a small financial kickback to the artists who draw them.
That’s a strategy that’s worked for several other platforms, including Instagram and Twitter, which have both enabled NFT profile pictures in recent months.
