Reddit’s NFTs are going viral. They have made it to OpenSea’s Top 10 list—even surpassing one of the top-rated Cryptopunks. A Halloween-themed collection, Spooky Season, has reached $1.7 million in trading volume on OpenSea within a few days of launch.
In total, Reddit’s collectible avatars project has generated a sales volume of close to $10 million thus far.
Why are these Polygon-based avatars suddenly surging in popularity? Let’s find out!
Reddit’s Strategy to Dominate the NFT World
Reddit’s “CryptoSnoos,” based on their alien mascot Snoo, had a quiet launch in July.
Yet, in an interesting development over the last few weeks, over 3 million Polygon wallets were created by users to mint NFTs. This surge was not driven by NFT enthusiasts—in fact, the NFT community was caught off guard by the trend. Adoption of these Snoos was driven by Redditors themselves.
So how did the social media platform get its community to rally behind the project? After all, Reddit forums are known to be mostly hostile to NFTs. The success of this NFT integration was aided by carefully referring to the avatars as “Digital Collectibles.” Per platform guidance, these collectibles are used as verifiable and customizable profile pictures; Reddit avoided the word “NFT” entirely.
The profile picture concept is already pretty familiar to Reddit's users. They can style their avatars in profile settings, giving them customizable headgear, clothes, accessories, and more. The link to purchase these collectibles is right in the "style avatar" section, making it easily discoverable.
The site collaborated with several independent artists to make different collectible series and also airdropped NFTs for free to its most active users. This introduced many Redditors to NFTs for the first time.
The strategy paid off.
Users reportedly created over 3 million Polygon wallets to scoop up the collectibles that are gamified and have tons of customization possibilities. Now sales are soaring as collectors see the avatars as a big trading opportunity.
What’s Next?
This is not the first time the Reddit community has been known to sway the markets. Last year, a popular subreddit, R/wallstreetbets, organized a short squeeze on GameStop’s stock, which took the stock market and media by storm.
The collectibles project is receiving massive love from the community and has become one of the first successful attempts to bring social media users into the NFT mainstream. The collectibles let Redditors expand their identity and ownership both within and beyond Reddit.
In the months ahead, Reddit will be adding new artist series collectibles to onboard the next several million collectors from its massive user base.
Also, don’t be surprised if other social media giants follow in Reddit’s footsteps soon!
