Reddit, the world’s largest social media platform, is headquartered in San Francisco. It announced Thursday that it launched an NFT-based avatar marketplace, which allows users to purchase profile pictures based on blockchain technology at a fixed price.
According to the company, you don’t have to own a crypto wallet in order to purchase digital photos. Reddit offers a wallet service that allows consumers to store digital assets.
In a statement, the company said: “Collectible avatars are backed by blockchain technology, giving purchasers rights (a license) to use the art – on and off Reddit.”
Reddit’s avatar maker allows users to create avatars by mixing and matching merch. The avatar will glow-like next to comments made by users in communities.
Reddit announced that it has partnered up with Polygon, an Ethereum-compatibles Blockchain, to create such avatars on-chain. Reddit’s crypto wallet, Vault is available on Reddit native app. This allows users to store NFTs and manage them. Vault allows users to earn community points that can be used to purchase special features like badges or animated emojis.
According to the firm, the NFT avatars would initially be available to invite-only members of the r/CollectibleAvatars subreddit. Reddit claims that NFT avatars come with a fixed price and are available through Reddit. fiat currencies like US dollars. These NFT avatars can be listed at prices of $9.99, $24.99 and $49.99 or $74.99 or $99.99.
Reddit announced that these collectable avatars will be available for sale on its avatar builder page to anyone who is not a member of the above community.
Social Media Companies Are Accepting NFTs
This is Reddit’s first NFT effort. The development is part of Reddit’s effort that started late last year. Reddit began testing a feature that allowed users to choose any Ethereum-based NFT for their profile picture in January. This was just days after Twitter released a similar feature that allowed users to set their NFTs to be profit photos. The photos provide information about the NFT and appear in hexagon-shaped images to distinguish them from the standard (standard) Twitter profile photo.
These social media firms know that such crypto-related features (NFT profile pictures) are in demand from users seeking to use them as a display of status – digital bling.
NFTs are being explored by many social media platforms. Instagram and YouTube recently declared that they are investigating NFTs. Meta Inc (previously Facebook) plans to create an entire NFT marketplace.
NFTs are sold primarily in bespoke markets (such as SuperRare and Decentraland), Opensea among others, but social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter are also looking to launch their own NFTs site. NFTs are mostly used to certify digital arts. They are used by celebrities and digital collectors to showcase their digital art. Social media is the perfect place to do this, since these platforms and their algorithms are optimized for virality.
Source: Shutterstock
