Social media and discussion website Reddit has announced the launch of a blockchain-backed collectible avatar. Collectible Avatars are stored via the Polygon blockchain, as the chain was chosen for its “commitment to low-cost transactions and sustainability.”
Reddit’s Polygon-backed digital avatars will soon be available to the public.
On July 7, 2022, Reddit staffannounced the launch of Reddit avatarssupported by a blockchain stored on the Polygon network. This is not Reddit’s first rodeo with blockchain technology, as the social media and discussion platform was linked to Arbitrum’s layer 2 (L2) technology with an ETH-based community point token in July 2021. The following October, Reddit was looking for a senior engineer for a platform featuring “digital goods backed by NFT.”
In January 2022, it was reported that Reddit was allegedly testing NFT’s profile pic feature.
New polygon-issued collectible avatars are available for purchase, with royalties paid to the artists who create them. The purchase gives the owner the rights to the art both on and off the platform, the Reddit announcement detailed.” You don’t need cryptocurrency to purchase these avatars and they are being auctioned off,” Reddit explained Thursday.” Each avatar is priced at a fixed amount and can be purchased with Fiat (government-issued) currency.”
“In this series, Collectible Avatars are exclusive avatars created by independent artists in partnership with Reddit, offering owners unique perks on the Reddit platform,” the company’s blog post said. ” When someone sets up their Collectible Avatar as their Reddit avatar, they can mix and match with other Reddit avatar gear and accessories, and their profile image in the comments section will glow.”
and Reddit adds.
Collectible avatars backed by blockchain is one of the early steps Reddit is taking to test the potential benefits of this concept.
R/collectibleavatars Subscribers are Early Access, NFTs are 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 ther/collectibleavatars community. “In that community, people can learn more about how to buy Collectible Avatars, set up a wallet to store them, and get to know our artists with behind-the-scenes articles, AMAs, and more,” notes a Reddit blog post.
Additionally, Reddit details that avatar NFTs are stored in a Reddit-produced wallet called the Vault. This wallet also stores community points; the Vault is linked to an Ethereum-compatible blockchain such as Polygon; some of the artists who contributed to the collectible avatars backed by Reddit’s blockchain were another subreddits, but some artists are participating in Reddit-related art projects for the first time.
“Many of the artists I worked with on this first series came from popular creative communities liker/comics.” and Reddit concludes. “Some have cultivated the skills they used for this program on subreddits liker/procreate and r/adobeillustrator. We also worked with artists from our network who are bringing their work to Reddit for the first time.”
Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Reddit, Reddit artists, r/collectibleavatars,