Reddit has announced that it will be discontinuing its blockchain-based rewards service known as Community Points due to scalability concerns. In an official statement on the r/CryptoCurrency subreddit on October 17. a Reddit team member expressed the platform's inability to scale the service widely. Consequently, Community Points services and special membership features will be terminated on November 8th. Users will no longer see points in the Reddit Vault, and they won't earn any more points within the community. Reddit's Community Points feature was initially introduced in May 2020 to reward users for active participation in specific subreddits, with the aim of incentivizing high-quality content creation.
These Community Points are ERC-20 tokens based on the Ethereum blockchain and are stored in Reddit's in-house crypto wallet service, known as the "Reddit Vault." While the feature was initially built on Ethereum, it was later migrated to Arbitrum, a layer 2 scaling solution, to enhance scalability. Each subreddit on Reddit had its own unique token, with Moons (MOON) native to the r/CryptoCurrency board and Bricks (BRICK) used in the r/FortNiteBR subreddit. Users could utilize these points to purchase badges and exclusive items for their avatars.
The decision to discontinue the service prompted disappointment and frustration from the Reddit community and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. In response to the announcement, a r/CryptoCurrency moderator explained that the Moons would not be burned, and Reddit was relinquishing control of the contract. The value of Reddit tokens MOON and BRICK witnessed a significant drop following the news, leading to numerous users expressing their discontent and anger about the decision on the platform.
