"Absolutely no to NFT integration on Discord."
"I'll straight up leave and use Slack if you integrate NFTs."
"Will be leaving Discord if you bring NTFs or crypto to the platform."
This is just a small sampling of the deluge of comments being left on Discord's website after the company's founder and CEO hinted that it would be integrating NFTs into the community chat platform.
On Monday, Discord's founder and CEO Jason Citron responded via Twitter to a newsletter written by entrepreneur Packy McCormick. The piece basically looks at Discord's potential as a future leader in the Web3 space.
Web3 basically is the hot terminology right now being used by people in the cryptocurrency and NFT space to push the idea that the next iteration of the internet after the social media era (aka Web 2.0) is a decentralized one. Web3 is basically a version of the internet where everything is run on the blockchain. One can see why crypto and non-fungible token (NFT) evangelists would be bullish on this, being that it would cement everything that they're investing into now as the future.
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Many cryptocurrency and NFT supporters believe the billion dollar video game market is the killer industry where their Web3 dreams will come true. And, of course, Discord is hugely popular with gamers. They make up the vast majority of its user base.
Citron replied to McCormick's Twitter post about the piece with two simple words and a screenshot.
"Probably nothing," tweeted Discord's founder alongside an image of an unreleased Discord feature that integrates a user's Ethereum wallet with their Discord account.
The feature hinted by Citron looks similar to the NFT verification feature that Twitter has been working on. Basically, a user can connect their crypto wallets to the platform in order to automatically populate their account with the NFTs they own in order to showcase them publicly.
The Twitter reply quickly spread and the sentiment has been negative to say the least.
On Discord's customer support page for Nitro, its paid subscription product, dozens of new comments are being posted every few minutes from users voicing their disapproval with the potential NFT move. Some users say they have even cancelled their paid Nitro subscriptions due to the upcoming feature as well.
"I've been using Discord all day, every day for years but I will drop it in a hot second if it starts integrating this pyramid scheme money laundering planet destroying evil inc. bullshit," read one of the many comments on Discord's Nitro support site. "Literally what are you thinking?"
The majority of the anti-NFTs sentiment is focused on a few major factors. Some users are sharing complaints concerning the vast number of cryptocurrency-related scams that already permeate across Discord channels. In their view, integrating a crypto wallet would only legitimize the scammers.
Others are focusing on the fact that NFTs are bad for the environment. NFTs are traded on the Ethereum blockchain. According to a Fortune piece published in July, "a single Ethereum transaction consumes as much electricity as an average U.S. household uses in a workweek."
However, for gamers specifically, there's something even more to their opposition to NFTs. To get a better understanding, just take a look at this recent Bloomberg piece that imagines where NFTs and crypto are going.
One real-life example in the piece looks at a former Goldman Sachs employee who is now building a business off of a NFT-based game called Axie Infinity. In order to play the game, one needs to have at least one of its NFTs, which costs hundreds of dollars. The former Wall Street worker tells Bloomberg that he buys the NFTs and then offers a "scholarship" to those who can't afford them. Basically, they get to play the game using his NFTs but they have to split all of their in-game cryptocurrency earnings with him.
Another example from the Bloomberg article involves a hypothetical scenario where NFT buyers can own Mario Kart characters so that no other game could play as them.
Oh, just one rich guy being able to play as Mario in an entire video game series doesn't sound like fun to you? Many gamers are still deeply opposed to microtransactions within video games. NFTs may not just make gamers' hobby much more expensive, but it has the potential to completely shut them out of certain experiences due to the exclusivity that NFTs provide for those who can afford it.
Discord's not the only platform to receive backlash over planned integrations with NFTs and crypto this past week either.
A Reddit engineer recently posted a tweet thread detailing how the popular platform would soon integrate cryptocurrency features into the platform.
The reaction from Reddit users was so vehemently against the move that the Reddit employee deleted all of his tweets about the project soon after.
Mashable has reached out to both Discord and Reddit for more about its cryptocurrency and NFTs plans, as well as comment on its users' reactions. We will update this piece when we hear back.
Web3 advocates can spin things as they'd like, but what Web3 really seems to be to most web users is an effort to commodify everything in the digital space. That beloved video game that you play to wind down after a long day is now an asset like a stock. Your favorite memes are no longer for sharing far and wide, it's about who doled out the most crypto cash to claim ownership over it.
It was only a little over a decade ago that social news platform Digg reigned supreme in the online space. Then Digg forced a redesign on its users, sending even its most hardcore fanbase packing for a then-young startup known as Reddit.
History has a tendency of repeating itself. Platforms like Reddit and Discord would be wise to pay attention to what their users are saying.
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