Earlier this week, Jason Citron, the founder, and leader of Discord, tweeted a mockup of what he believes is the next step of Discord. It showed a potential integration with NFTs and other cryptocurrencies alongside Youtube and Twitch as well as other services that are already integrated into the Discord app. It didn’t take too long for the internet to voice out their disapproval of Citron’s plans.
Thankfully, Citron isn’t the kind of founder not to listen to the people. Just days after tweeting the mockup, Citron has confirmed that Discord is backing away from its crypto dreams.
User backlash puts a stop to Discord’s NFT integration plans
Thanks for all the perspectives everyone. 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. More soon.
— Jason Citron (@jasoncitron) November 11, 2021
Before Citron’s initial tweet, there were rumors about Discord integrating NFTs into the platform. It didn’t help when multiple Discord users reported receiving older surveys regarding NFT-integration in Discord. However, it appears that the internet eventually won. After making his tweet public, the next few days were filled with statements from discontent users who effectively let Citron know that they’d leave Discord if it implemented NFT-integration features.
It also looks like users weren’t the only ones against the move either. Several employees who are currently working over at Discord also expressed their thoughts and let users know that not everyone at Discord agrees with the cryptocurrency integration.
I hope leaders can humbly listen the chorus of vehement moral disgust this teaser has already invited. this sincerely does not have to happen.
https://t.co/JZZBI2npVs— Kevin Tang / @ktang.bsky.social (@Yolo_Tengo) November 9, 2021
TLDR; Discord isn’t getting into cryptocurrency anytime soon.
Unfortunately, Discord is just a small player in the grand scheme of things. Even if Citron says no to cryptocurrency integration, for now, this doesn’t guarantee anything. Discord could still very well integrate NFTs and crypto in the next few years if not months. The silver lining here is that Citron knows that Discord just can’t add such a feature without backlash, both from users and even from its staff.
In other crypto news, other companies have already expressed their interest in getting into the cryptocurrency space. EA, for example, believes that crypto and NFTs are the future of gaming. Meanwhile, Ubisoft just confirmed that it plans on making blockchain games. There’ve also been rumors of former Halo and Call of Duty devs working on a NFT-based free-to-play AAA shooter title.
