Online discussion platform Reddit announced that it is airdropping its Polygon-based collectible avatars to some of its top users who have earned enough karma.
Around the beginning of last month, popular online discussion platform Reddit announced that it is releasing the Reddit collectible avatars, a set of limited-edition artwork created by indie artists who are users of the platform, too. These avatars are based on Reddit’s Snoo character.
Reddit didn’t want to use the term NFT for these collectible avatars, although there were blatant similarities to other NFT projects. For example, these tokenized avatars are stored on the Polygon blockchain.
Moreover, only a limited number of Redditors were given first dibs to the collectible avatars, which they could access only through Vault, Reddit’s blockchain-powered wallet. These Reddit users could buy the avatars for anywhere between $9.99 and $99.99.
And like the widely popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project, any Redditor who purchased a collectible avatar will have the license “to use the art—on and off Reddit.” Hence, many users refer to these avatars as Reddit NFTs.
Reddit’s avoidance of the NFT terminology is reminiscent of the tactics that brands like Coca-Cola and e-sports team 100 thieves used. Apparently, NFTs tend to be divisive among some audiences, even drawing criticism due to the environmental impact of some networks like Ethereum. Moreover, NFTs have been susceptible to scams and much speculation from naysayers.
As mentioned in the get-go, the collectible avatars are minted on Polygon, a scaling network for Ethereum. Reddit chose it for its low-cost, faster, and more energy-efficient transactions than Ethereum’s mainnet.
Reddit offers these collectible avatars in four styles—Aww Friends, Drip Squad, Meme Team, and The Singularity.
Free Collectible Avatars for Top Users
As mentioned earlier, the collectible avatars were initially available to a limited number of Redditors who had to purchase them. Now, in addition to selling the tokenized avatars, Reddit is giving some of them to the platform’s most avid users.
A Reddit administrator recently announced that the platform would be airdropping free collectible avatars to top users who have scored a significant amount of karma points. Karma points refer to the overall score representing a user’s contributions to Reddit communities.
According to a recent post on Reddit, the collectible avatars would be awarded on a user-by-user basis and will not be limited to specific discussion communities.
Not Reddit’s First Rodeo
The collectible avatars are just one of the many times Reddit dipped its feet into the Web3 and NFT spaces. We mentioned at the start that Reddit had previously released a limited series of Ethereum-based CryptoSnoos NFTs.
A total of four NFTs comprised the project, which was released in June 2021. One of the NFTs sold for Ξ 175 at auction or more than $398,000 at the time. Over six months later, in February 2022, the same NFT was resold for a measly Ξ 42, which was about $117,000 then, or less than half its initial purchase price.
Reddit has been exploring blockchain technology for years, first rolling out a tokenized “Community Points” initiative before 2019 ended. In the years since, the platform has experimented with different scaling platforms in the hopes of bringing tokenized rewards to a much larger audience.
The platform settled for Arbitrum, an Ethereum scaling network from Offchain Labs. Then, this month, Reddit rolled out the initiative on the mainnet through the new Arbitrum Nova chain specifically designed for social and gaming apps.
Per Reddit, users can potentially use the tokenized Community Points within other Web3 apps. The platform also eventually plans to introduce the initiative to more of its communities. For now, only two of Reddit’s many communities—r/CryptoCurrency and r/FortNiteBR—offer the cryptocurrency reward tokens called Moons and Bricks, respectively.
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