Reddit Is Shutting Down Its Blockchain-Based Community Points Program

Reddit will be sunsetting its blockchain-based Community Points program, according to an official announcement posted in r/ethereum on Oct.17.

Community Points, which operated on the Ethereum blockchain, initially launched in May 2020, awarding users who chose to engage positively in certain subreddits to better streamline content quality control. By earning tokens, users were incentivized to participate within specific subreddits to engage in positive conversation.

The decision by Reddit to shut down the program seems to stem from the challenging regulatory environment we have been watching unfold among the SEC, CFTC, and our legal court system. However, Reddit didn’t cite any particular regulation that was a cause for concern.

“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. “The regulatory environment has since added to that effort. Though the moderators and communities that supported Community Points have been incredible partners — as it’s evolved, the product is no longer set up to scale.”

The admin also noted that Community Points would not seamlessly transition to the updated reddit.com experience without a significant commitment of resources.“Putting all Reddit users on the main Ethereum network, for example, would be infeasible and prohibitively expensive,” the Community Points page said at the time. “Therefore, we have researched heavily into solutions that are decentralized, secure, and yet highly scalable.

“Putting all Reddit users on the main Ethereum network, for example, would be infeasible and prohibitively expensive,” the Community Points page said at the time. “Therefore, we have researched heavily into solutions that are decentralized, secure and yet highly scalable.”

Some moderators from r/CryptoCurrency appeared caught off guard by the announcement, telling Blockworks that they were “…very disappointed in Reddit’s decision” and that they were only made aware of the decision one hour after the announcement went out.

Reddit has also reportedly been working on a “fully P2P Reddit alternative” for two years that also uses Ethereum for community names and usernames.

The shutdown of Community Points is scheduled for November 8th, as stated in the announcement by a Reddit admin on various subreddits, including r/CryptoCurrency, r/FortniteBR, and r/EthTrader. Starting next month, Community Points will no longer appear in users’ Vaults on the Reddit app.

Editor’s note: This article was written by an nft now staff member in collaboration with OpenAI’s GPT-4.