TL; DR
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Bad news: Reddit is ending its Community Points program starting November 8.
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Good news: This is completely separate from Reddit’s collectible NFT avatar program, which is still supported.
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Here’s where Reddit could have done better: It seems like the only thing you can do with Community Points tokens now is sell them – which has caused several community tokens to drop in price.
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With that in mind…Reddit took a risk when it (as a mainstream Web2 platform) embraced blockchain technology — a risk that only grew as the company continued to build during the bear market.
Full story
Bad news: Reddit is ending its Community Points program starting November 8.
(Community Points are crypto tokens that you can earn and use to redeem perks such as memberships, unique badges, or animated emojis).
Good news: This is completely separate from Reddit’s collectible NFT avatar program, which is still supported.
So why have Community Points gone ‘kaput’?
There were 2.5 main reasons…
1. The total cost was too high to justify
2. The US Regulatory Environment Isn’t Exactly ‘Crypto-Token Friendly’
2.5. We don’t know this for sure, but a little bird told us that Reddit is planning to go public soon. It makes sense to do whatever they can to help their public image (and in a bear market, crypto doesn’t really help with that).
So Reddit decided to focus its energy on projects that do what the Community Points program aimed to do, but in a more user-friendly/less cryptocentric way.
And we get it; sometimes simplicity is the name of the game.
That said, here’s where Reddit could have done better:
It seems like the only thing you can do with Community Points tokens now is sell them – which has caused several community tokens to drop in price.
Reddit has a non-crypto user rating system called ‘Karma’.
(Basically, if you reply often/get upvoted consistently/contribute positively to the platform overall, you’ll get Karma points in return).
It would have been nice to see Reddit allow Community Points holders to trade their points for Karma.
With all that in mind…
Reddit was still taking a risk when it (as a mainstream Web2 platform) embraced blockchain technology – a risk that only increased as the business continued to build during the bear market.
That’s why we still love them.
