Reddit is sunsetting its blockchain-based Community Points product, the company announced on Tuesday. A Reddit admin (employee) shared the announcement about Community Points, which uses the Ethereum blockchain, on a few subreddits, including r/CryptoCurrency (which had its own “moons” crypto token), r/FortniteBR (which had its own “bricks” token), and r/EthTrader (which had its own “donuts” token).
The value of those tokens has, predictably, fallen off of a cliff, as CoinDesk reports drops of between 60 and 90 percent.
And Crypto once again fails to be a solution for another application. What a shock.
“Solution” is a bit of a stretch don’t you think?
The “we’re not making enough money” solution.
The only actual solution crypto does have is, as one would guess, encrypted transactions.
Banks have a use for it, financial institutions who want to send money from A to B have a use for it. Countries in civil war and strife who need funds and are blocked on most other methods have a use for it.
I don’t get the “doesn’t have a purpose” meme when it’s written right on crypto’s sleeve, and it is used for those purposes, and does a good job of it.
If a website creates its own cryptocurrency that means they are in control of it. If Reddit, Plebbit, and Brave really gave any sort of a shit about crypto as it exists, they would’ve used LTC or BCH or something easily transferrable that can’t rug because it isn’t in their hands to rug it, but then that defeats the purpose of milking short-term gamblers of their funds, which was the entire point.
You guys know they had to retire this, right? It would compete with their new “I’m going to pay for content” model.
Wanna know how that new system will go? Check this thread you’re in now.
top zozzle, here’s hoping for a disastrous IPO
I hope reddit fails
I just don’t understand people still using it. My feed here is so much more entertaining.
Apart from the big subs, there are some specialized subs that have not yet found a way out to us, which is a reason for many to stay there.
And there are private subs. I’m a member of one of the small, long-running private subs for nearly a decade now, and it is the only reason why I still have my account over there.
The only community I still visit is /nfl
The level of engagement here can’t compare to Reddit, but I did stopped posting or commenting, I’m 100% lurking and deleted my 12yo account
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Though we saw some future opportunities for Community Points, the resourcing needed was unfortunately too high to justify,” Reddit’s director of consumer and product communications Tim Rathschmidt told TechCrunch.
First launched in 2020, Community Points were awarded to users who positively engaged in select subreddits in order to incentivize better content and conversation.
The points were essentially interchangeable Ethereum tokens stored in Reddit’s Vault, which operated as a cryptocurrency wallet.
Since the points were on the blockchain, the program aimed to allow users to display their “reputation” anywhere online, and could be embedded in other sites or apps.
“Putting all Reddit users on the main Ethereum network, for example, would be infeasible and prohibitively expensive,” the Community Points page said.
In the years since launching Community Points, Reddit has rolled out a number of community incentives like the moderator rewards program and the Contributor Program, which awards actual money by allowing eligible users to convert their Reddit gold and karma into cash.
The original article contains 738 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This launched in 2020? I thought they launched it in 2023 as a replacement to the awards system?
In another context this decision would be sensible, as Reddit is not in a position to make money out of this.
In this context however it sounds a lot like “wah, the admins took something else from us”.
lol oh no … so what are they gonna give me for my 400 odd Fortnite Bricks, then? 💸
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No it wasn’t. It’s been around for a few years.
Edited to add: literally in the article, they started in 2020.
And the crooks responsible for it will be laughing all the way to the bank.
