Reddit is killing blockchain-based Community Points
techcrunch.com
Reddit is killing blockchain-based Community Points::Citing scaling issues, Reddit is shutting down its blockchain-based Community Points in favor of prioritizing other rewards programs.
Who could have known by 2020 that Blockchain is shitty tech that doesn’t scale well?
That’s not why Reddit is ending it. Reddit is copying Twitter and Musk with a “creator fund” revenue sharing scheme. That pivots around paying for subscriptions with real fiat money to have the chance to earn a fraction of the value you to contribute to the site.
And Reddit absolutely will not tolerate a competitor that they run themselves. People were earning hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of moons every month if their contributions really popped off on the CryptoCurrency subreddit.
I had about $600-$800 worth of Moons just from shitposting and trolling and asking clarifying questions. I never made it a priority to engage; it just happened organically.
So naturally Reddit is going to expunge the better version of what they want to implement because they can’t control it.
They’re both fucking awful. The everything-is-hustle angle is garbage.
I don’t want people trying to figure out the optimal ratio of low but not too low effort posts to get paid turning everyone into a shill. Chasing karma was bad enough. People chasing money will be worse and less valuable.
Just like Twitter, when everyone is monetizing their posts everything will go to shit.
What are "Moons"?
The version of Community Points used on r/CryptoCurrency
Blockchain is useful, but not in every domain.
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.
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After like what, 3 months of A/B testing in one country? Sinking ship gonna sink.