Discord’s crypto and NFT integration won’t launch yet, CEO tells users following backlash

Discord’s Jason Citron posted what seemed like a teaser for an upcoming NFT and cryptocurrency integration on the platform. But he later assured users that the feature is not planned to launch anytime soon after his tweet was met with backlash and users threatening to cancel their Nitro subscriptions.

It all started when Citron responded to a blog post that said, “Discord has the chance to be the metaverse’s natural social infrastructure.” The Discord founder and CEO replied with what appeared to be a concept image where Discord accounts could be linked to MetaMask and WalletConnect. MetaMask is one of the most widely used cryptocurrency wallets, while WalletConnect allows mobile wallets to be linked to decentralized web applications.

The image was enough to hint that Discord may be working on integrating crypto and NFTs in its platform. But Citron seemed to have doubled down on the speculations by captioning his reply with, “Probably nothing.” The phrase is commonly used sarcastically on the internet to indicate that something is in the works.

Following the response Citron’s post got, the Discord CEO clarified, “We have no current plans to ship this internal concept. For now we're focused on protecting users from spam, scams and fraud. Web3 has lots of good but also lots of problems we need to work through at our scale.”

Hours before Citron’s post, though, Discord users were already discussing the chances of the platform using crypto and becoming a platform for NFT trades. An old survey simply titled “Discord & Web3” made the rounds on Twitter, with the first question asking respondents how familiar they are with NFTs. The Verge reports that the survey was originally distributed last August. Its cached version on Wayback Machine shows that more questions in the survey were designed more for people with knowledge or having been trading NFTs.

Many users on Twitter were not impressed with Citron’s “probably nothing” tweet. In the replies, several users pointed out the environmental impact of Ethereum transactions. Other responses were more direct, though. The post was shared in quote tweets more than 6,000 times and many of them had screenshot attachments showing Discord users canceling their Discord Nitro subscriptions, while others also shared a screenshot of Discord’s earlier post about protecting the environment.

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash