Social media site Reddit is abandoning its Collectible Expressions feature, which created animations based on users’ Collectible Avatars NFTs.
The news was revealed on a Reddit help page, which carries a message stating that “As of August 5, 2024, Collectible Expressions will no longer be supported on Reddit. In some instances, you might be able to view them on past comments, but they can’t be used on comments moving forward.”
Collectible Expressions build on Reddit’s Collectible Avatars, a series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Polygon blockchain. The NFTs were wildly popular when they launched. Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal even claimed they were evidence that Reddit had “cracked the NFT code.”
The Collectible Expressions introduced a selection of animated expressions that “bring your avatar to life using the animated expression as a comment,” and are available in a limited selection of subreddits at the discretion of the community moderators.
According to a Dune Analytics dashboard, over 33 million Collectible Avatars have been minted to date, with a market cap of $43 million. Collectible Avatars come in free and premium varieties, with the free variety accounting for the bulk of those minted.
Simultaneously, a newly appointed Collectible Avatars Lead announced that the r/CollectibleAvatars community would be restricted and become an official announncement channel, teasing “thrilling new updates and plans to share.”
The promised plans include “new community partnerships,” and “even more events and activities,” while the Collectible Avatars team stressed that the “collectible ecosystem is still going strong.”
Reddit has previously reined in some of its crypto-related projects, phasing out its “Community Points” reward tokens on the scaling network Arbitrum Nova in October 2023. At the time, Reddit cited concerns around resourcing and the “regulatory environment” as reasons for sunsetting the project, which was subsequently taken over by a decentralized group of Reddit users.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.