Reddit has decided to discontinue its ‘Community Points’ initiative, which it launched in 2020 for its crypto-friendly users. Citing stability issues, the feature let Reddit users earn Ethereum rewards based on the votes they received when contributing to a subreddit with insightful content or by volunteering to moderate the community. In an official announcement on October 17, the social networking platform informed its users that the Community Points program will end on November 8.
“Part of the reason we’re phasing out Community Points is so we can scale different products that achieve what the Community Points program was trying to achieve while being easier to adopt and understand. While we saw some future potential for Community Points, there was no way to scale it broadly across the platform,” Reddit’s official post said.
The Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens, which were rewarded to eligible Redditors, were extracted from the ‘Reddit Vault’, the platform’s native crypto wallet service.
Reddit’s crypto tokens MOON and BRICK have seen a sharp price drop since news of the community points withdrawal appeared on his blog. Meanwhile, a debate has started among community members about X over Reddit’s decision.
While some people on
What the fuck, Reddit (yes actually the Reddit company) just harassed its users by “shutting down” their own cryptocurrency.
-90% exactly like that. pic.twitter.com/lzuqs1KNsX
— Byzantine General (@ByzGeneral) October 17, 2023
So when a company starts a feature, it generally has to continue in perpetuity?
— Pratik (@Pratik_in_Web3) October 17, 2023
Reddit has not addressed these claims yet.
“We still love the idea that inspired Community Points. In particular, finding better ways to improve community governance and empower communities and contributions. While the moderators and communities that supported Community Points have been great partners, as the product has evolved it is no longer suitable for scale,” the announcement said.