Keep in mind NFTs? They’re “right here to remain,” Reddit stated in a 2021 report on the Subsequent Massive Factor, the yr earlier than it launched its NFT-based market that enabled redditors to earn or buy their very own customizable avatars for the platform. Three years later, the scenario has modified considerably, and at the very least so far as Reddit’s involved, effectively, NFTs are going away.
Reddit really introduced the top of this system in August, speaking about how great and “extraordinary” the entire thing was—”You remodeled Reddit by displaying what was doable when creators have been empowered to create, play, and showcase excellence”—whereas concurrently giving everybody who owns them till January 1, 2026 to export their “Vault” to a third-party pockets or service. Miss that deadline, and “you will be unable to switch or promote your Collectible Avatars off-platform, and in any other case unable to entry your Vault’s underlying blockchain pockets for any goal.”
With lower than a month left to go earlier than these here-to-stay tokens are, effectively, not right here anymore, Reddit has put out one other discover reminding homeowners that when the clock hits zero, they will be out of luck. They’ll nonetheless use the pictures in fact—simply right-click and “save picture as,” growth, there you go—however the non-fungible token that claims the picture is yours and yours alone would be the proverbial tears in rain: One other damaged sufferer of humanity’s relentless, unthinking, and essentially merciless drive for revenue, heedless of the long-term price to our souls.
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Some Reddit NFT holders are portraying the change as no large deal: The tokens nonetheless exist, they will simply should be accessed in a different way after the top of the yr. That is true so far as it goes, however it fails to handle what the change means in a wider context. Reddit clearly had main expectations for NFTs, however all of that—not simply on Reddit, however in every single place—has gone up in smoke.
NFTs are nonetheless on the market, as are true believers, however the dogged insistence that they’ll change the world? Identical to the proverbial apes, that is all gone, child: A 2024 report by crypto evaluation agency NFT Night discovered that 96% of NFTs “are lifeless,” whereas a Yahoo Finance report from 2025 says “flooring costs have collapsed, buying and selling volumes have plunged, and the NFT market is now a shadow of its former self.”
I suppose the brilliant facet for individuals who do not export their Vaults earlier than the deadline is that at the very least they don’t seem to be shedding a lot. And hey—the apes could also be gone, however we’ll at all times have this very particular second. Yeah, even again then, we knew.
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