Reddit has announced the discontinuation of its blockchain-based rewards system, known as “Community Points.” In a statement made on October 17 in the r/CryptoCurrency subreddit, a Reddit team member explained that while they acknowledged potential opportunities for Community Points, they saw no viable path to scale the system across the platform.
The Community Points service, which includes a special membership feature, is set to shut down on November 8. Consequently, users will no longer see Points in their Reddit Vault, and they will cease earning Points in their communities.
Launched in May 2020, the community points feature rewarded users with points for positive engagement in specific subreddits. Its primary purpose was to incentivize the creation of 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.” Although initially launched on the Ethereum network, the points service later migrated to the layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum to address scalability issues.
Each subreddit had its unique token, such as Moons (MOON) for the r/CryptoCurrency board and Bricks (BRICK) for the r/FortNiteBR subreddit. Users could use these points to purchase badges and exclusive items for their avatars.
In response to Reddit’s decision, the r/CryptoCurrency moderator “CryptoMods” clarified that users’ Moons were not going to be burned, and the transfer functionality in the smart contract would not be disabled. Reddit was relinquishing control over the contract.
Following this news, the value of Reddit tokens MOON and BRICK experienced a significant decline, prompting disappointment and frustration among Reddit users and crypto enthusiasts. Pseudonymous trader Byzantine General expressed Reddit’s decision as essentially “rugging” their community, showcasing a screenshot of MOON’s price, which had plummeted by approximately 90%.
One Reddit user, u/Bunker_Beans, expressed strong dissatisfaction with the decision, stating, “Reddit essentially f—ed over every r/cc user in hours. I’ve canceled my special membership. I’ll never use this f—ing platform again. I hope whoever runs this cesspool rots in hell. What a f—ing joke.”
