Reddit Launches More Polygon NFTs—After Already Minting 18 Million Avatars

Online discussion platform Reddit has quickly become one of the biggest brands tied to NFTs, with more than 18 million of its Polygon-based Collectible Avatars minted over the last year—and now it has dropped another huge set of options.

Reddit’s Collectible Avatars Gen 4 drop, titled “Retro Reimagined,” launched today, pulling together an array of artistic riffs on the site’s iconic “Snoo” alien mascot from dozens of creators.

In addition to artists who were featured in previous drops and others from the Reddit community, the drop includes NFTs based on the Cool Cats profile picture (PFP) project, as well as artist Micah Johnson’s Aku NFT character.

All of the NFT avatars launched in this collection are limited edition releases, with hundreds or in some cases thousands of editions available for each tokenized avatar. The prices range from $2.49 to $199.99 apiece, and many of the avatars are already sold out as of this writing.

For the latest drop, Reddit has also instituted a few changes to the approach. Namely, for the first day of the sale, Reddit will limit purchases based on “account age and other metrics,” so that newly-created accounts can’t buy NFTs in large quantities for flipping. Reddit has also implemented a CAPTCHA verification system to ward off automated bots.

Reddit first launched Collectible Avatars last summer via Polygon, an Ethereum scaling network that enables cheaper and faster transactions for large-scale projects and mints.

In addition to premium avatars, which cost money and have traded hands on secondary markets for thousands of dollars apiece, Reddit has also given away millions of avatars over the last year. The free giveaways represent the largest chunk of NFTs minted by Reddit, and have pushed the project toward a massive overall tally.

So far, nearly 18.2 million of the Polygon NFTs have been minted to date, per public blockchain data curated by Dune, with some 14.25 million unique wallets holding the avatars.

Some $33.6 million worth of the avatars have been traded on secondary markets, although resale demand was largely limited to a brief window of hype last fall when the Reddit NFTs were first taking off. Broadly, the project is seen as an example of how brands can onboard users into NFTs and blockchain via accessible platforms and free giveaways.