Reddit prepares to drop Gen 4 collectible avatars on Polygon

Social media platform Reddit continues exploring digital collectibles despite a significant downturn in the non-fungible tokens (NFT) industry.

According to an official announcement on r/CollectibleAvatars, Reddit will drop its latest series of collectible avatars on July 26. According to social media reports, the new drop will be launched at 3:00 pm Eastern Time.

Titled “Retro Reimagined,” Reddit’s new collectibles drop will be the fourth generation of collectible avatars launched since the platform debuted the project in July 2022. Just like all previous generations, the latest drop will be issued on the Polygon blockchain and will be available for decentralized trading and third-party sales.

The new drop of Reddit’s collectible avatars brings fresh designs from new and existing creators, including recently-joined Cool_Cats_NFT and Micah Johnson.

Cool Cats is a major NFT project backed by the industry giant Animoca Brands. Cool Cats NFTs were launched in July 2021 and consist of 9,999 cartoon cat avatars. The Ethereum-based project has generated about $388 million worth of NFT sales volume to date, according to data from CryptoSlam.

In addition, Reddit has promised to introduce changes in its collectibles shop, which will be available directly in Reddit’s avatar editing section. At the time of writing, the shop features a number of Gen 3 avatars, many priced at $4.99. The Gen 3 series was launched in April 2023.

Artists like Ali Sabet, rojom, gasolyn, StutterVoid, Conall-in-Space, kristyglas and dashikka are also back to creating the Reddit avatars.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Reddit doesn’t view its Polygon-based avatar collections as proper NFTs because cryptocurrencies aren’t part of the process of buying or selling them.

Instead, collectibles’ owners have the ability to transfer their avatars to other Reddit accounts with its blockchain-based wallet Vault or to an external third-party crypto wallet. The platform doesn’t yet support secondary sales of collectible avatars though.

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Reddit’s ongoing NFT-like initiative comes despite the ongoing decline in the NFT industry. As of May 2023, investments in top NFT projects such as Doodles, Invisible Friends, Moonbirds and Goblintown lost up to 95% of their value in Ether (ETH) despite some bullish action on crypto markets.

The NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, originally purchased for $2.9 million in March 2021, has plummeted in value, attracting a best offer of no more than 2 ETH, or about $3,700, at the time of writing.

Despite difficulties in the NFT industry, Reddit appears to have increased the adoption of blockchain collectibles. In the 11 months after launching its collectibles project, Reddit was close to breaching 10 million holders of its collectible avatars as of May 2023.

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