Reddit to Sunset Blockchain-Based Rewards Service ‘Community Points
Reddit has announced its plan to cease its long-standing blockchain-based rewards service known as ‘Community Points,’ citing concerns about scalability.
In an official announcement on October 17th, posted in the r/cryptocurrency subreddit, a Reddit team member stated that, although the platform saw ‘some future opportunities for Community Points,’ there was no feasible path to scale it across the entire platform.
The Community Points service, including the special membership feature, will be gradually phased out starting on November 8th. At that point, you will no longer see Points in your Reddit Vault, and you won’t earn any more Points within your communities, as explained by the Reddit team member.
Reddit’s Community Points will be deactivated on November 8th. Source: Reddit
Initially launched in May 2020, the community points feature rewarded users for positive engagement in specific subreddits, aiming to incentivize higher-quality content on the platform.
These points were Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens stored in Reddit’s in-house crypto wallet service known as the ‘Reddit Vault.’
While initially deployed on the Ethereum network, the points service later migrated to the layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum to enhance scalability.
Each subreddit had its unique token, with Moons (MOON) representing the native cryptocurrency of the r/cryptocurrency subreddit, and Bricks (BRICK) designated for the r/FortNiteBR subreddit. Users could spend these points on badges and exclusive items for their avatars.
In response to the initial announcement, the r/cryptocurrency moderator ‘CryptoMods’ explained that they had recently learned of the decision and expressed their disappointment.
Following this news, the value of Reddit tokens MOON and BRICK plummeted, leading to expressions of disappointment and frustration from Reddit users and cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
Pseudonymous trader Byzantine General informed his 163,000 Twitter followers that Reddit had essentially ‘abandoned’ their community, accompanied by a screenshot of MOON’s price, which had dropped by around 90%.
“What the heck, Reddit (yes, the actual Reddit company) just left its users high and dry by ‘discontinuing’ their native cryptocurrency. -90% just like that,” Byzantine General tweeted on October 17, 2023.
“Reddit essentially betrayed every r/cryptocurrency user within hours. I’ve canceled my special membership. I’ll never use this darn platform again. I hope whoever manages this ‘cesspool’ rots in hell. What a joke,” Reddit user ‘Bunker Beans’ responded to the original post on r/cryptocurrency.
