In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train and launched an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile photos for a flat rate. Given the general sentiment around NFTs today, you might assume — like me — that the experiment ended badly. But apparently the opposite is the case.
Today at a panel on londonbusinessblog.com Disrupt, Reddit Chief Product Officer Pali Bhat revealed that more than three million Redditors have used Reddit’s Vault blockchain wallet to create more than three million crypto wallets to date. Most of those — 2.5 million — were created to buy NFT profile pictures on the platform, he said.
Reddit teamed up with about 30 artists a few months ago to release about 40,000 NFT avatar designs, which could be purchased through the Reddit mobile app for prices ranging from $9.99 to $99.99. (They’re all sold out at this point.) Users who bought one of the limited-edition photos were given license rights to use it on Reddit and beyond as an avatar, and could mix and match the look of their avatar using a built-in avatar creation tool.
Reddit teamed up with Polygon, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain, to slap the avatars. (In blockchain jargon, “minting” refers to publishing a unique NFT so that it can be bought or sold.) Vault is used to store and manage NFTs through the Reddit app.
Reddit’s latest foray into the NFT space comes after the social network began allowing users to set any NFT as their profile picture, following Twitter’s lead.
In addition to NFTs, Reddit has branched out in a number of different directions in recent months in search of new revenue lines. The company has made several notable acquisitions, including buying content moderation startup Oterlu, natural language processing company MeaningCloud, machine learning platform Spell and contextualization company Spiketrap. Reddit has also launched a new developer portal to boost third-party apps and bots, and it has upgraded its live audio product, Reddit Talk, with new discovery features.