The popular social media platform Reddit has recently announced its plans to phase out and discontinue blockchain-based community point reward tokens, namely MOON and BRICK, by November. This decision was made due to resource constraints and regulatory risks, preventing the platform from scaling it broadly across the site. While Reddit recognizes future opportunities for Community Points, the current limitations hinder their implementation.
Impact on Reddit Ecosystem
Community Points have played a vital role in the Reddit ecosystem, serving as an incentivizing model to reward users for their high-quality contributions to the platform. These points allow Redditors to “own” a piece of their community and have significantly contributed to the growth of the platform by driving user engagement. However, starting from November 8, the reward program will be phased out, and users will no longer earn points in their Reddit vault.
About Community Points
Reddit’s Community Points are ERC-20 tokens that were initially launched in 2020. They were designed to reward users with points for positive engagement in specific subreddits, incentivizing the creation of high-quality content and fostering meaningful conversations. Once granted, these points cannot be revoked by either Reddit or moderators. Users can exchange these points for special features, such as memberships, unlocking unique badges and various perks on Reddit, including badges, emotes, GIFs, and other exclusive features.
“In 2022, Reddit encountered significant challenges when it came to scaling Community Points,” stated Tim Rathschmidt, Reddit’s Director of Consumer and Products Communications.
Initially utilizing the Ethereum network, Reddit faced difficulties due to high transaction fees. As a result, Reddit shifted to the layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum to improve scalability. This decision was a response to issues raised by the community, following sitewide protests against Reddit’s API changes, which resulted in a temporary blackout of over 8,000 subreddits.
Previously, Reddit had its own coin system, allowing users to purchase Gold and other forms of currency to reward fellow users. However, this system was discontinued in response to user backlash and dissatisfaction. Following this development, Reddit introduced the Contributor Program as an alternative, offering unique tokens for each subreddit, such as MOON for the r/CryptoCurrency community and BRICK for the r/FortNiteBR subreddit.
Recent developments have had a significant impact on the value and utility of these tokens, as they are closely tied to the Community Points system. Consequently, token holders have been selling off their MOON and BRICK tokens, leading to a significant decline in their prices. As of now, MOON has seen an 84% drop, with a current price of $0.035, while BRICK has experienced a decline of approximately 59% over the past 24 hours, currently priced at $0.041 according to CoinGecko.
