How to scale NFTs? Don't call them NFTs.

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For years our industry has been talking about how we can bring mass adoption to crypto. The proposed solution has always been the same – make great on-chain products that are so good that users don't even know they’re interacting with a blockchain.

And one company just did exactly that.

Since July, their users have created over three million wallets. And 2.5 million of which have completed purchases within the product.

That’s massive adoption. But who is it?

This company is Reddit, who recently partnered with 30 artists to release 40,000 NFTs. The digital art could be purchased using the Reddit app and can be used as avatars on your Reddit account profile. You can see the full collection on OpenSea.

The NFTs, which were originally priced from $9.99 to $99.99, are now going wild on the open market, selling for 18 ETH (over $24,000 at today’s prices.). The collection is completely sold out.

Wild.

There are also some cool crypto-people things to know about this project:

1. Reddit uses the Polygon blockchain to power this feature, meaning all NFT avatars are owned and transferred on-chain

2. The “Vault” feature, which is available in every Reddit account, is basically a crypto wallet

3. Every Vault has a public address and is Ethereum compatible

4. Each Vault is accessed using a password, and like other wallets, if you lose your password, you lose access to your Vault. Reddit cannot help you recover this access.

5. For the data-curious, there is a bunch of interesting on-chain analytics provided by Dune 

But for the average person, nothing on that list really matters. They just want something cool that works, and that’s what Reddit delivered. Steve Huffman, Reddit’s CEO, said their approach was “not use any crypto words” at all.

This strategy of not using crypto lingo extends through the UI – simple language, simple pricing, and some crypto links for those that are interested. That’s the sweet spot.

Let's contextualize this moment for a second. Reddit, the sixth most visited website in the world, has launched an integrated crypto product on their social network that has 430 million monthly active users. In the first 3~ months, roughly three million of those users have created crypto wallets. All of this without saying the words crypto, blockchain, or NFT once. That's really cool.

In the ten-or-so years that I’ve been in this space, Reddit is the first company to launch a crypto product that doesn’t have crypto as the marquee value proposition. People don’t want to use something because it uses a blockchain, they want to use something because it has utility to them. You could argue that crypto yield and P2P payment products fit in that utility box, but not even close to the same level of scale.

From a marketing perspective, with crypto and NFTs becoming negative-leaning memes in and of themselves, shifting away from crypto as a selling point is key. It’s more important than ever for builders to shift from the speculation products to crypto utility products. Say what you want about NFTs, but it’s arguably the first at-scale usage of blockchain technology to-date. The challenge now will be to take this lesson and apply it to other use-cases.

This strategic model is something worth keeping an eye on going forward.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

• Social Media Coordinator @ Ledn [APPLY]

• Creative Director @ Doodles [APPLY]

• Paid Social Specialist @ Kraken [APPLY]

• Global Product Marketing Manager @ Chainalysis [APPLY]

• Director, Product Marketing - Crypto @ Bakkt [APPLY]

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