Discussion platform Reddit is offering collectible avatars powered by Blockchain to 52 million users

Social media and discussion site Reddit has announced the launch of collectible avatars powered by blockchain. The collectible avatars are stored via the Polygon blockchain as the chain was chosen for its “low-cost transactions and sustainability commitments.” On July 7, 2022, staff at Reddit announced the launch of blockchain-powered Reddit avatars that are stored on the Polygon network.

It's not Reddit's first rodeo with blockchain technology as the social media and discussion platform was working with Arbitrum's Layer 2 (L2) technology with ETH-based Community Points tokens in July 2021. The following October, Reddit was looking for a senior engineer for a platform featuring "NFT-backed digital goods." In January 2022, it was reported that Reddit was testing NFT profile picture functionality.

New collectible avatars released by Polygon are available for purchase and the artists who created them will receive royalties. Purchasing gives the owner rights to the art on and off the platform, Reddit announcement details. “You do not need cryptocurrency to purchase these avatars, and they are not put up for auction,” Reddit clarified on Thursday.

“Each avatar is priced at a fixed amount and can be purchased with (government-issued) fiat currencies.” “In this series, Collectible Avatars are limited-edition avatars created by independent artists, in partnership with Reddit, and provide owners with unique benefits on the Reddit platform,” the company’s blog post says. “If someone sets their collectible avatar as their Reddit avatar, they can mix and match their avatar's gear with other Reddit avatar's gear and accessories, and their profile picture in the comments sections will have a glow-like effect.” Reddit adds: Blockchain-powered collectible avatars are one of the early steps we're taking to test the potential benefits of this concept on Reddit. Reddit's new Polygon NFT avatars will be available to the public in "the coming weeks," but the company is looking for early access redditors to join the r/collectibleavatars community.

“In this community, people can learn more about how to purchase collectible avatars, set up wallets to store them, and get to know our artists through behind-the-scenes posts, AMAs, and more,” the Reddit blog post notes. In addition, Reddit explained that the token NFTs will be stored in a Reddit-produced wallet called Vault, where Community Points are also stored. Vault works with Ethereum-compatible blockchains like Polygon.

While some artists who have contributed to Reddit-powered collectible avatars are found in different subreddits, some artists have participated in a Reddit-related art project for the first time. “Many of the artists we worked with on this first series came from popular creative communities like r/comics,” the Redditor concluded. “Some have posted the skills they used for this software on subreddits like r/procreate or r/adobeillustrator.

We also worked with artists from our networks who are submitting their work to Reddit for the first time.”