The popular forum and news aggregation web portal Reddit has revealed the firm’s Community Points beta program where Reddit users can “own a piece” of their community with “custom tokens” for subreddits.
In late July, Reddit announced that the platform’s community point system would take advantage of the Layer 2 (L2) Arbitrum protocol. This week, Reddit unveiled a new website that showcases the Community Points beta program, which says Reddit customers will be able to take advantage of native crypto assets attached to unique subreddits. At the time of writing, there is a waiting list and users can sign up through a created Reddit form.
“Community Points are the first step towards a different future for online communities,” Reddit’s description of the new beta program notes. “These tokens live on the blockchain, which means they are truly owned by the community. Over time, your community will benefit from even greater control and independence… on and off of Reddit.”
Reddit says that users can “earn something valuable for every hour you spend in your community, [and] unlock special features. Redditors can “purchase community features with community points, such as memberships and special rewards, [and] encourage better content and better conversation, ”the company explains. Additionally, Redditors can use polls and systems to understand the community point distribution process. Reddit’s website adds:
Each subreddit creates its own Community Points token, with a custom name and symbol.
Cryptocurrency Subreddit likes the concept of community points, the most popular Bitcoin subreddit may not like Ethereum-based Subreddit tokens too much
In addition, Reddit says that people can “own” their reputation as the points system will be a “measure of reputation” in a certain community. “In the subreddit, they are displayed next to usernames, so the biggest contributors stand out from the crowd,” Reddit explains. Community Points have been discussed in specific forums like the subreddit r/cryptocurrency and a great number of the subreddit’s subscribers liked the idea.
It will be interesting to see whether or not r / bitcoin implements a community points token, as discussions of alternative crypto assets are banned from this subreddit. Additionally, many r / bitcoin subscribers are not too keen on the Ethereum blockchain, so using it for a community point system could be seen as hypocritical. It’s safe to say that many other crypto and non-crypto related forums on Reddit will likely have no problem using the Ethereum-based community points program.
