The social media and discussion website Reddit has announced the launch of blockchain-backed collectible avatars. The collectible avatars are stored via the Polygon blockchain as the chain was chosen for its “low-cost transactions and sustainability commitments.”
Reddit’s Polygon-backed digital avatars will soon be available to the general public
On July 7, 2022, Reddit staff announced the launch of blockchain-based Reddit avatars which are stored on the Polygon network. This isn’t Reddit’s first rodeo with blockchain technology, as the social media and chat platform worked with Arbitrum’s layer two (L2) technology with ETH-based community points tokens. in July 2021. The following October, Reddit was looking for a lead engineer for a platform that features “NFT-backed digital goods.” In January 2022, it was reported that Reddit was allegedly testing NFT profile picture functions.
The new Polygon-issued collectible avatars are available for purchase and the artists who created them will receive royalties. The purchase gives the owner rights to the art on and off the platform, Reddit’s announcement details. “You do not need cryptocurrency to purchase these avatars, nor are they being put up for auction,” Reddit explained on Thursday. “Each avatar has been priced at a fixed amount and is purchasable with fiat (government-issued) 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 reads. “If someone sets their collectible avatar as an avatar on Reddit, they can mix and match the avatar gear with other Reddit avatar gear and accessories, and their profile picture in the comments sections will have a glow effect.”
Reddit adds:
Blockchain-backed Collectible Avatars are one of the early steps we’re taking to test out the potential benefits of this concept on Reddit.
R/collectibleavatars subscribers can get early access, NFTs stored in Reddit’s Vault wallets
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 buy collectible avatars, create wallets to store them, and get to know our artists with behind-the-scenes posts, AMAs, and more,” notes the Reddit blog.
Additionally, Reddit detailed that the avatar NFTs will be stored in the Reddit-produced wallet called Vault, which is where community points are stored as well. Vault works with Ethereum-compatible blockchains like Polygon. While some of the artists that contributed to Reddit’s blockchain-backed collectible avatars were found in different subreddits, some artists participated in a Reddit-related art project for the first time.
“A lot of the artists we worked with for this first series came from popular creative communities like r/comics,” Reddit concluded. “Some have cultivated the skills they used for this program in subreddits like r/procreate or r/adobeillustrator. We’ve also worked with artists from our networks who are bringing their work to Reddit for the first time.”
