Reddit’s Collectible Avatars Surpass 10 Million Minted

On Monday, February 6th, Reddit announced that it had entered into a partnership with the NFL to release “Collectible Avatars” ahead of Super Bowl LVII. These avatars are a set of four caricatures of the website’s mascot, Snoo, representing the competing teams as well as the fandom. What makes these avatars a little special, however, is that users are able to mint them for free on the Polygon blockchain. Once game day arrived on Sunday, the number of minted avatars had surpassed 1.5 million, listed with almost as many unique wallets.

Launched back in July, 2022, Reddit’s Collectible Avatars provides the opportunity for content creators to submit designs for gear, accessories, and outfits that Reddit users can buy and customize their avatars with. Creators are able to make profit off of the purchase and secondary sales of their designs, either through the avatar marketplace or secondary markets like OpenSea. Users are then able to easily mint their avatars through Reddit by placing them in their “vaults,” which can then be transferred to an external wallet.

Analytics from Dune show that since the program’s launch, Reddit’s Collectible Avatars may very well be one of the largest and most accessible platforms for user onboarding into the world of Web3. The minting of over 1.5 million of the Super Bowl avatars may be impressive, but this number is only the latest contributor in a more grand statistic; the Collectible Avatars have just surpassed 10 million mints in total! 

Dune provides even further insight into the impressive figures of the collection. Unique wallets have more than doubled since November from just below 3 million to nearly 6.8 million today. Total market cap is listed at almost $32 million dollars, with a total sales volume of $13 million. The program shows no sign of slowing down either, with a sizable community of 24 thousand subscribers on the r/CollectibleAvatars subreddit.

Some may not find it too surprising that the official NFT collection of the world’s 19th most visited website has found success. What is surprising though is many communities on Reddit have been outspoken in their distaste for cryptocurrencies, and by extension, NFTs. Yet there does not appear to be a community outcry against these “digital Collectible Avatars.” Perhaps the ease of which a user can seamlessly be setup with a wallet helps? Or perhaps it’s the low price point (can’t beat some of them being free)?

The largest contributor in the positive reception of the NFT collection may be in how Reddit describes the program. Monikers like “digital collectibles” seem to help distance their avatars from the negative connotation broad descriptors like “NFT” seem to bring. “Digital collectibles” appears to be a popular way for large companies to refer to NFTs; Meta has used the same terminology when discussing their NFT integration.

Geoffrey Moore coined the term “crossing the chasm” in his 1991 book aptly named, Crossing the Chasm. The term describes how a new product has to find a way to cross the large divide between early adopters and the public in order to go mainstream. Perhaps it will not be large, grandiose NFT projects that promise utility that will accomplish this. Instead, it may just be the ability to easily place a funny hat on your profile picture.