Reddit's Impact on NFTs

Reddit’s Impact on NFTs

Nov. 04, 2022

In October, 2021 Reddit posted a job opening for an engineer for a platform responsible for “millions of users to create, buy, sell and use NFT-backed digital goods.” After which speculation flew about whether they were building their own NFT marketplace. In July, 2022 Reddit announced the planned NFT marketplace would be powered by Polygon.

And now, about a year after the initial rumors spread their NFT marketplace is making waves. Over 3 million crypto wallets have been created since July 2022. That number is higher than the number of active wallets held on OpenSea, which is 2.3 million. Opensea is one of the most popular and largest NFT marketplace in the world and has been operating for nearly five years.

For those not familiar, Reddit is a social news website and forum where content is socially curated and promoted by site members through voting. Reddit member registration is free but users can upgrade to Reddit Gold for a monthly fee or yearly subscription. It has over 430 million active users per month. Features of Reddit Gold include access to members-only communities and the ability to turn off sidebar ads.

The site is composed of hundreds of subcommunities, known as subreddits. Each subreddit has a specific topic, such as technology, politics or music. Reddit’s homepage, or the front page, as it is often called, is composed of the most popular posts from each default subreddit.

Reddit’s journey into crypto dates back to 2013, when they began to accept Bitcoin as an alternative payment method for all in-app purchases on the Reddit platform. However, Reddit discontinued this payment option as a result of high transaction fees on Coinbase.

Two years later, Reddit launched the Reddit Community Points program which rewards redditors with cryptocurrency based on their contribution to a specific subreddit. The program is currently in beta testing.

What are Reddit NFTs?

A Reddit NFT is a type of Avatar that can be purchased on the Reddit avatar marketplace backed by the Polygon blockchain. This marketplace provides redditors with the opportunity to buy blockchain-based images for various prices.

Reddit released a report called The ABCs of NFTs in which they found that 70 percent of Reddit users were open to buying an NFT from their favorite brand. Reddit wanted to innovate and stop using old terms such as “crypto” and “NFT” as they currently have negative connotations. The company created Reddit Collectible Avatars with the idea of creating a more mainstream version of NFTs. Also, terms like “crypto wallet” has been replaced with “Reddit Vaults”. While it may seem like an insignificant change for those used to using crypto and trading NFTs, for the new users, it has made a huge difference in terms of accessibility.

The company hired independent artists and recognized talent within its own platform to make artistically unique digital avatars that grant owners specific utility on Reddit. Many NFT holders have created online identities around their artwork by using them as profile pictures (PFPs) on social media sites. Profile pictures, believe it or not, play an important role on social media. Owning a profile picture of an exclusive collection may open curiosity to other users which could lead to new connections and communities. Obviously, there are plenty of users who fake their profile picture representing NFTs they don’t own.

As we can observe on the chart below, the number of new wallets created had a huge increase in October. Historically Ethereum blockchain has dominated this category. We can see a large increase in new wallets for Polygon, especially in October and November.

Interestingly, this isn’t Reddit’s first foray into NFTs. In 2021 Reddit launched CryptoSnoos as its main and exclusive NFT collection. This is one of the more exclusive collections on Opensea as supply is very limited. CryptoSnoos was released on the Ethereum blockchain. The highest sale was around 175 ETH ($262,500). Every NFT within this collection comes with an image of Reddit’s alien mascot, known as Snoo. Since every NFT is unique, these images are available in a wide range of different styles. Most of these NFTs can be purchased on Reddit or OpenSea. Each collection has its own purpose and grants a different value for the user who owns the NFT.

Free Avatar Collections

There are different types of Avatar collections on Reddit including free and ones you’ll need to pay for. There were four interesting free collections minted in August 2022.

The Singularity
Aww Friends
Drip Squad
Meme Team

These four collections have their floor price sitting around 0.01 ETH and 0.03 ETH. That’s about $15 and $45. Although that might not sound like much, the volume traded has been steadily increasing. Drip Squad is the most popular free Reddit collection and its volume is 34 ETH ($51,000) as of this writing. On average, the volume of this collection increases 0.416 ETH ($624) per day. This is one of the best performances for free collections daily volume size on OpenSea.

Source

Trending Avatar Collections

Besides the free collections, there are plenty of other collections you can purchase on different marketplaces. At Redditfloor you can find all the various Avatar collections on the market. According to this website here are some top performing collections.

The Senses

The Senses x Reddit Collectible Avatars is one of two PFP NFT projects created by Redditor Rojom. The collection comprises three different horror-themed NFTs each portraying one of three human senses: taste, sight, and touch. It was released on July 7th 2022 with a limited supply of 1302 NFTs.

Currently there is only 7% of the collection listed on OpenSea. The floor price is sitting around 1.28 ETH ($1,900). There are 88% unique owners, one of the highest values in Reddit collections. The total volume traded is 831 ETH ($1,246,500) as of this writing.

Below you can find volume and floor pricing information per Opensea.

Foustlings

Foustlings x Reddit Collectible Avatars, similar to The Senses, is one of Reddit’s best-selling NFT collections. It was released on July 7th 2022 with a limited supply of 1,753 NFTs. The collection was created in collaboration with Redditor Tyler Foust.

Currently there is only 6% of the collection listed on OpenSea. The floor price is around 0.73 ETH ($1,095). Similar to the previous collection, there are 84% unique owners. The total volume traded was 668 ETH ($1,002,000) as of this writing.

Spooky season

Spooky Season x Reddit Collectible Avatars is a Halloween-themed collection released during the spooky season of 2022. Created by Redditor poieeeyee the single collection has become the biggest gainer out of all Reddit Avatars. Right after its release, the collection quickly secured the number-one spot on OpenSea’s Top 10 list by 24 hour trading volume, nearly double the sales volume of any other Reddit Avatars release. It was released on October 20, 2022 handling a limited supply of 1,814 NFTs.

The collection had the highest trading volume in comparison to all other Reddit collections. The floor price currently is sitting around 0.09 ETH ($135) and 14% of the collection is listed. There are 72% unique owners and the total volume traded is 1,097 ETH ($1,645,500) as of this writing. Spooky Season has had a big impact on the market and gave Reddit NFTs instant credibility, appearing on the home page of OpenSea as one of the most popular collections of the moment.