We got all hyped and psyched over Reddit Gen 3 dropping the biggest NFT supply ever till everything burned in flames. Why? The mint process was plagued by botting claims, and it’s not a rumor because Reddit officially confirmed it. Yes, bots managed to snatch the most precious and rare NFTs from the Gen 3 drop. Redditors are furious, the community is enraged, and NFT haters continue to justify their hate. Some channeled their anger at Reddit for being a “billion-dollar company” that couldn’t control the involvement of bots. Will this bot attack be the last straw for Reddit Digital Collectibles? Let’s go over what went down.
Reddit Gen 3 Avatars: Future Realities
Reddit Digital Collectibles earned their spot in the NFT space last year, that’s why the expectations for Reddit Gen 3 were way over the roof.
- Gen 1 drop took a month to sell out in the midst of a bear market.
- Gen 2 Spooky Season sold out within 24 hours
- Reddit x Superbowl NFTs were given for FREE
At the beginning of April, Reddit announced that over 100 artists will participate in the Gen 3 drop. Unlike the previous two drops where only 32 artists were involved. People did their digging and pulled up the NFT avatars from smart contracts before they were open for mint! The enthusiasm was real, already covered it here.
The Gen 3 collections vary according to supply and fall into four categories:
- Up to 250
- Up to 1000
- Up to 2500
- Uo to 5000
The less the supply, the more rare and expensive, and the bigger supply are more affordable. The price ranges between $4.99 and $199.99, not that impossible to get. Also, for an NFT collector $200 is VERY affordable – trust me.
Backlash: Did Reddit Gen 3 Drop Fail?
The Reddit Gen 3 mint opened on April 12, and it was a disastrous nightmare. For context, let’s get familiar with the process to get any Reddit Digital Collectible:
- You should first have a Reddit account.
- Then, go to “style avatar” near your profile tab.
- Click on “Shop” where you can browse through all the Reddit Digital Collectible Avatars.
- After browsing, to buy an Avatar just press the one you like and Reddit will help you set up a vault wallet in simple steps.
Obviously, everyone was excited about the Reddit Gen 3 drop, and some more than others with malicious intentions. With no bot prevention tactics or basic CAPTCHA measures, bots crowded the system and ruined the experience for minters:
- Every rare NFT got botted (according to Reddit less than 1% of the Gen 3 supply)
- Mint numbers got surpassed (over minting)
- Some collections were overpriced and/or too large in number
- The shop got shut down for several hours
- The Reddit Gen 3 collections aren’t verified on Secondary markets like OpenSea
- Some users are still waiting to know if they’ll get a refund.
One of the botters was even gloating about snatching the Reddit Gen 3 supply on Twitter.
Even though the site completely died we managed to hit a good amount before the hour thanks to our custom Reddit monitor by our member @CheekyZoot
No need to guess links 🧑🎨
Checkouts thanks to our bot partners @orcarobot and @MinTechBots
Pastel on top 🫡 pic.twitter.com/vVd45om8ZW
— Pastel Alpha (@PastelAlpha) April 11, 2023
On the second day, Reddit posted a long message apologizing for the way the mint went down and gave further explanations, you can check it here. But long story short, they acknowledged the involvement of bots and tried to justify not using basic CAPTCHA because bots can easily surpass them. And the most important solution for bot prevention on Reddit’s shop is that they disabled the Shop experience on the website and kept it exclusive to mobile.
You Can Still Mint Gen 3 Avatars
With 100 talented involved, each having a supply that varies from 250 to 5000 the Reddit Gen 3 Digital Collectible supply was more than plenty. According to AvatarDegen, the total supply of this drop is 372,679 NFTs with only 120,079 sold so this means there are 252,600 NFTs left for you to mint right now. At the time of writing, you can only mint a Reddit NFT from the mobile app. It’s very simple just sign in from your phone, sync your wallet and you’re all set. BUT keep in mind that, apparently, the sale will end on April 29, 2023. Wonder why they decided to put a time limit…
Gen 3 will stop selling on 29 April 2023 even if some collections have not sold out yet?
See the Reddit avatar store ad with the "end date".
Interesting…#RedditAvatars #RedditCollectibles #RedditNFTs @r_avatartrading pic.twitter.com/PBMupg6iei
— mvea (@u_mvea) April 16, 2023
ALSO, something quite doesn’t add up because Dune records 475,148 Gen 3 Reddit avatars minted. So how is AvatarDegen documenting only 120,079 mints? We could assume that AvatarDegen didn’t record the number of over-minted NFTs, but if you check out their website you notice that they did!
Is This the End for Reddit Digital Collectibles?
It indeed sparks up controversy that a platform like Reddit could mess up this badly. To a point that some speculate they did this on purpose, with some ulterior motives. Reddit Gen 3 is indeed a very ambitious NFT collection with over 300K supply, it’s officially the first NFT collection to have this huge cap.
You may wonder why Reddit went huge with the supply, here are a couple of reasons:
- More artists → more audience → onboard newbies
- Huge supply → affordable NFTs ( $4.99) → low to enter → Reddit ecosystem grows
So yes this Reddit collection did not sell out and obviously, this was not the intention. Despite the ambition, this drop was taken advantage of by bots. Also, secondary market sales are discouraging because of the whole “not verified” dilemma. That’s basically because Gen 1 and 2 on OpenSea were under a single Reddit account. However, with Gen 3 every OpenSea collection is under every individual artist’s account, so they have to get verified individually by themselves. According to Dune, 9,154 Gen 3 sales took place with a $1,324,865 volume in just a week and that’s very impressive for a “disastrous” drop. I don’t think the community will fade Reddit, but no one can be blamed for fudding out of future Reddit drops. We’ll just have to wait and see how Reddit Gen 4 performs because rumor has it, there will be another drop!