Reddit Stops Its Community Reward Program: It’s Token Price Drops Drastically

Reddit is stopping its Community Points program, a reward system based on blockchain. Tim Rathschmidt, a leader at Reddit, mentioned problems with growing the program and new crypto rules.

Started in 2020, Community Points were like prizes for active users in certain Reddit groups. These points were like special money, stored in a crypto storge called Reddit’s Vault. Once given, they couldn't be taken back.

Users could use these points for special rewards, like cool emojis and special badges. When used, these points were gone forever.

These points also showed how respected a user was in a group. Because they were on the blockchain, everyone online could see a user's points.

But, the program faced problems. It started on a system called Ethereum, but costs (Gas fees) were too high. Reddit tried another system, Arbitrum Nova, in 2022, but it didn’t work well either.

Rathschmidt explained: "The program needed too much effort and time, and new rules made it harder. It just can't grow anymore."

Reddit has tried other reward ideas before. One is the Contributor Program. Here, users with many points or a lot of good feedback could turn them into real money.

Earlier, Reddit had a gold system where users bought gold to give to others. It was stopped after users seemed uninterested. The Contributor Program started after that.

Rathschmidt said, "We want to make Reddit better. We are trying different things to reward users. But we are not replacing Community Points with the Contributor Program."

After this news, Reddit’s crypto tokens, MOON and BRICK, dropped a lot in price. MOON lost 84% of its value, and BRICK lost 59%.