NFT marketplace

Reddit NFT avatars selling for a premium on OpenSea

Reddit’s launch of limited edition NFT avatars has led to a large premium on secondary sales on OpenSea.

Sales of recently launched Reddit blockchain-based avatars are rising on nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, outperforming the platform’s proprietary store.

Reddit, the “front page” of the internet, plugged into the burgeoning world of NFTs with the announcement of collectible avatars in July 2022. The avatars became available to users in August and are already generating thousands of dollars in sales for artists.

Reddit users are able to purchase a variety of avatars for their profiles using Vault, Reddit’s cryptocurrency wallet, with credit and debit cards accepted to make payments for the blockchain-based NFTs.

Reddit Avatars are created by a number of independent artists that use the platform and are minted on purchase on the Polygon blockchain. Given that OpenSea features cross-blockchain support across Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn and Solana blockchains, Reddit NFTs are now being sold at a premium on the popular NFT marketplace.

NFTs currently available for purchase on the Reddit Avatar store page range from $5.00 to $49, while the NFTs that were listed for $50 or more are now sold out. These more expensive avatars are still available on OpenSea, albeit for price ranges significantly higher than their original listings on Reddit.

Two specific collections, The Senses x Reddit Collectible Avatars and Foustlings x Reddit Collectible Avatars, are prominent Reddit Avatar compilations that are featured on OpenSea.

Around 1,300 The Senses NFTs are listed on the marketplace and have generated a total of 15 Ether (ETH) on Polygon, or $25,000, in sales since Aug. 20. The Mouths #12 is the most expensive NFT sold in the collection to date, sold for 1.377 Polygon-bridged ETH, or $333, on Sept. 3.

There are some 1,800 Foustlings NFTs listed on OpenSea, with sales volume totaling 9.6 Polygon-bridged ETH at the time of writing. Rainbow Foustling #373 fetched 0.348 Polygon-bridged ETH, or $577 on Sunday and currently ranks as the most expensive NFT sold from the specific collection.

The Natsukashii, Celestial Assembly and Wearing Your Emotions collections are slowly seeing trading action, accounting for 3.7 ETH, 2.4 ETH and 1.5 ETH in Polygon-bridged sales, respectively.

Reddit’s initial NFT announcement indicated that the launch of avatars would primarily empower artists to create and sell NFTs through its store and on secondary marketplaces.

Ethereum domain names top Bored Apes on OpenSea’s weekly chart

Ahead of the upcoming Merge, ENS domains have reached the top of OpenSea’s seven-day chart in trading volume.

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain names have surpassed Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) as the most traded asset on nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea over the last seven days — seemingly ahead of the Ethereum Merge.

According to OpenSea data, the weekly volume of the Ethereum domain NFTs eclipsed 2,249 Ether (ETH) at the time of writing, beating out RTFKT Clone X at 1,992 ETH and Bored Ape Yacht Club at 1,777 ETH.

ENS domains are a distributed, open and expandable naming system on the Ethereum blockchain that allows users to turn a long string of keys for a crypto address into a single ENS domain such as “vitalik.eth.”

This simplifies the complexity of copying and pasting a lengthy wallet address to send and receive crypto, as users only need to share their domain name like any other ordinary address.

These domain names can be bought, sold and traded between users in the form of NFTs.

The recent spike in ENS trading volume has seen the average price of ENS items increase 167% to 0.3895 ETH, or $641 at the time of writing, while daily volume has risen from 120.7 ETH to 1044.6 ETH.

There are now over 2 million ENS items on OpenSea spread among more than 508,000 owners, with total sales now sitting at 2,682 ENS domains sold.

*60-Day Average Price Change For ENS on OpenSea. Source: OpenSea.*

According to OpenSea, some of the most expensive ENS domain names are 000.eth, which was bought for 300 ETH and is on sale for 5,000 ETH, along with opensea.eth, crypto.eth, google.eth and nike.eth.

The strong start in September follows an impressive ENS sales month in August, which saw more than 300,000 new “.eth” registrations and monthly revenue of 2,744 ETH, the third-highest month since ENS was founded in 2018.

August 2022 stats for ENS

– 301K new .eth registrations (total 2.17m names)
– $4.7m in protocol revenue (all goes to the @ENS_DAO)
– 2,744 ETH in revenue (3rd highest month)
– 34K new eth accounts w/ at least 1 ENS name (total 540k)
– >99% of OpenSea domain vol pic.twitter.com/utU8i4cBMT

— ens.eth (@ensdomains) September 1, 2022

The spike in ENS domain name demand comes a little over a week before the scheduled date of the Ethereum Merge, which is scheduled for around Sept. 15.

On Sunday, Vitalik Buterin asked his 4.2 million followers what price tag a five-letter ENS domain name should hold over a 100-year period:

What is a fair price that someone should have to pay to register and unconditionally guarantee ownership of a 5-letter .eth domain for 100 years?

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 4, 2022

The poll found that 49.8% of the 91,130 voters went with “Under $100,” while 18.9% of voters thought “$10,000 or more” could be considered a fair price.

According to OpenSea, the average price of an ENS domain is 0.3207 ETH, or $533.71.