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Polygon’s co-founder said the social media giant “cracked the code” for NFT adoption, during a recent AMA session on Reddit.
Besides sharing pro-crypto and Polygon views like how Web3 will complement Web2 in areas like finance, gaming, and social media, the founder also explained how Reddit managed to win over its community with the launch of its digital collectibles.
The social media platform introduced NFTs as “Collectible Avatars” on Polygon in July 2022 via free airdrops and early sales of digital collectibles for up to $100. The early NFTs went on to sell for hundreds of dollars on the secondary market.
Nailwal said that Reddit "is perhaps the only well-known Big Tech company who has cracked the NFT code and they are able to drive a lot of engagement with Reddit NFTs."
Polygon represents a multi-chain ecosystem of sidechains that leverage Ethereum's security to provide a scalable application platform. Currently, it supports two public blockchains: Polygon and Polygon zkEVM.
Reddit was responsible for adding 3 million crypto users in the first three months following its NFT launch. Over the last ten months, the company has successfully onboarded 9.7 million users to Reddit’s NFT platform, according to a Dune dashboard.
"I guess a few things like having a secondary marketplace to trade those NFTs, having a launchpad for artists to launch their collections [...] could be some great additions to take Reddit NFTs to the next level," he said.
Positioning Polygon as a business layer
Nailwal also said that no other blockchain ecosystems are “fully decentralized,” except Bitcoin and Ethereum.
“It's not needed also to be fully decentralized from day zero [in my opinion], what we need is progressive decentralization of protocols and applications as they achieve larger and larger significance,” hinting at his plans to steer Polygon.
He added that the long-term vision of Polygon is to become "the value layer of the internet," acting as the "business or application layer for crypto."
Beyond Reddit, Polygon has also partnered with brands like Nike, Starbucks, and Sotheby’s.
The earliest collection of Starbucks NFTs fetched around $2,000 each to users who minted the free NFTs.
According to a Dune dashboard of brands using NFTs, the brand ranks first with $92.9 million earned in revenue. Notably, the early Nike NFT collections were launched on Ethereum and not on Polygon.