Reddit to the Rescue?

 

For those that have never heard of Reddit, it is arguably the most popular online chat community, their threads are called subreddits and are user created forums covering any topic of life.  Reddit has been around since 2005 and have over 430 million monthly active users, I repeat over 430 MILLION users.  Surprisingly, when Reddit announced they were going to enter the web3 space and release digital avatars on the blockchain, many people dismissed their effort and even laughed them off saying it would never work - the verdict is far from over but so far, Reddit is maneuvering their web3 transition flawlessly.   This article will shed some light on Reddit’s future web3 plans and how they will continue to shake up the NFT world.

 

As stated in the above paragraph, Reddit has been a household name in the forum world for quite some time and currently has over 1.5 billion registered users, yes that is not a typo b for billions.  Since their inaugural digital avatar project was released, they have on boarded over 3 million new crypto wallets - more than OpenSea’s total wallet count, an extremely impressive feat.  What's even more impressive is that of the 3 million wallets created, nearly 2.5 million used this wallet or vault to purchase a digital avatar.  Not only were users interested in exploring the web3 space, but when they did, a good majority decided to move forward and purchase/invest into these Reddit NFTs.  

 

Reddit announced they would be releasing their digital avatar project on the blockchain back in July, which were marketed as limited edition versions of its mascot Snoo, created by various artists that could be bought by their loving fans.  After the announcement, Reddit slowly rolled out airdropping their top users a free collectible avatar, an effective way to get more eyes on the project and get people talking about Reddit entering the space.  In the upcoming weeks Reddit NFTs were auctioned off on OpenSea through the Polygon Chain, over 40,000 collectibles were minted out with the rest airdropped.  

 

The Vault

Reddit was able to simplify this process in a quick and easy way - Users must create a “vault”  in order to check out and purchase an NFT. This vault is really their wallet where the NFT will be stored, and they made creating a wallet  as easy as entering an email and creating a password.  Also, Reddit only accepts card payments through Stripe, which avoids new users trying to add crypto to a wallet.

Here is a sample of what it looks like once a user has purchased their collectible avatar and created their account:

 

Users began to use their free airdropped NFTs as their profile picture, and the word got out in no time once the first Reddit collection sold out in early October. With increased popularity of Reddit’s digital avatars, also came the birth of the popular subreddit thread r/avatartrading, which in early October had roughly 4,000 members and as of early November have over 12 thousand members.

 

Once these digital avatars were no longer available to bid/buy on OS, the volume on the secondary market rocketed.  After the first generations sold out on October 3rd the collection hit over $1 million in sales, up from $40 thousands the prior month!

 

Even with the sellout and massive spike of volume in early October, it was not until their second generation collection sold out on October 20th that Reddit NFTs really took off.  Reddit’s second collection, Spooky Season (Halloween themed digital avatar collections from a variety of different artists) consists of over 14 thousand digital avatars created by 27 different artists.  The Spooky Season collection sold out in minutes and as of Halloween totaled over $10 million in sales in just 2 weeks and boasted a market cap of $100 million.  Currently, the cheapest entry into the spooky season collection is the Conall-in-Space collection with a .037 floor.  However, certain collections are worth more, like the poieeeyee collection which is the extremely rare gold avatar and has traded for over 100 Ethereum!  

 

 

As of now, there are over 2.9 million Reddit collectible avatars that have been claimed or sold across 61 different collections (34 Gen 1 and 27 Gen 2). There are currently 2.84 million holders for those avatars, with only 3,650 of those wallets have transacted.  OpenSea has seen a 75% increase in new users on Polygon since Reddit’s Oct. 20 drop, with Reddit bringing in nearly three times more new users than any other project in the past six months. Moreover, 20% of Reddit NFT owners who made a transaction on OpenSea have gone on to purchase another NFT on the platform.

 

Why should you care?

Reddit has shown the blueprint for what major web2 companies need to do if they want to be a presence in web3:

 

Keep 

It 

Simple

Stupid

 

By dumbing down the barrier to entry and creating the wallets for their users, instead of asking the users to create it on their own, they were able to onboard an insanely large number of users in a very short time.  Reddit removed the exhausting new user onboarding process usually required to enter crypto or web3, and at the same time rewarded their extremely loyal fanbase and users by airdropping them a free NFT - if it's free, it's for me!

              

 

The full list of all Reddit Collectible Avatars can be found here: https://opensea.io/category/reddit-collectible-avatars