NFT market has a savior, and no it’s not ‘Apes’ or ‘Birds’ this time

The last few weeks have not only been a tough time for the crypto market, but also for the NFT market as a whole. With sales and floor prices plummeting to new lows, some of the best-performing NFT groups were at their lowest.

A sad sob story here?

In a strange turn of events, that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Reddit limited edition NFTs. Reddit’s NFTs are being sold across various marketplaces, such as OpenSea at a profit. People are purchasing these NFTs featuring the Reddit avatars.

Reddit marked its NFT debut with the announcement of CryptoSnoos in February 2022. Four months later, in July, Reddit came out with the blockchain-backed “collectible avatars” which were minted on the Polygon Network.

Additionally, all artwork was created by independent artists who were Reddit users as well. What made these NFTs different was that buyers could use fiat and cryptocurrencies to purchase these NFTs. 

As the sale of these NFTs began in August, the collectibles have been sold for thousands of dollars. Interestingly, sales on OpenSea have overtaken the sales on Reddit’s own marketplace.

One possible explanation for the increased sales and premiums on OpenSea can be its cross-blockchain support across the Polygon, Ethereum, Klaytn, and Solana blockchains.

Limited-edition NFTs

The NFTs listed on the Reddit Avatar Store is currently selling for anywhere between $5 to $49. The more expensive NFTs have sold out and are now popping up on OpenSea with a marked-up asking price.

The more popular ‘The Senses x Reddit Collectible Avatars’ and ‘Foustlings x Reddit Collectible Avatars’ have been performing relatively well.

Since 20 August, The Senses collection has brought in 15.3 ETH on Polygon ($25,000). The collection has a floor price of 0.36 ETH on the Polygon network.

The Foustlings collection on the other hand has around 1,800 art pieces on OpenSea and sales to date add up to 9.9 ETH on Polygon ($16,480). The floor price of this collection is 0.1 ETH on Polygon.

Not without its troubles 

The popularity of the Reddit NFT collection comes as a relief to digital art enthusiasts as just days ago, the NFT market was on the brink of a liquidation crisis.

Fears of an NFT bubble sparked by the debt crisis at lending platform BendDAO caused OpenSea’s daily volume to tank more than 98% towards the end of August. 

Furthermore, additional panic struck when a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT entered a liquidation auction on 18 August after its floor price fell 52%. This led to a bank run on BendDAO. Amid the debt crisis, BendDAO called an emergency vote to alter its protocol in order to improve NFT liquidity.