Community Points allow members of Reddit communities to own a piece of their community, earn rewards for quality contributions, and unlock special features.
Read all about it at the above link. There’s way too much to process here. This is going to be wild.
I do not disagree with much of the criticism Reddit is getting right now, especially the action taken leading up to this being the reason many of us are here right now.
What I will say though is that this community points system is not brand new and has been operating in the big crypto subs like R/cryptocurrency for some time using MOONS.
Now this system does not prevent the over arching power Reddit can exert on its platform but what it has done is meant is moderators are paid, well paid actually from the one I know personally. The value is determined by market forces so Reddit has little to no control over this.
Also because the points are tokens on the Ethereum ecosystem users can move there points to another wallet that is not controlled/created under the Reddit vault system meaning they can’t just be taken away.
Again, this move far from fixes many of the problems with Reddit, causing us to move to the feddiverse but as far as the idea of “points” go it’s actually the best system yet.
What makes me laugh is what Reddit did recently forcing users to spend or lose the last iteration of points, this is the kind of thing the new system should protect against.
Do you expect to be buying a hot dog with your reddit gold? lol
After Reddit banned my account, I got some sucker give me 40-odd USDT for my MOONS tokens from r/cryptocurrency, then got some other sucker give me $40 for those.
I will try and watch this when I have time however I want to give some initial thoughts now. I am a techy amd have been in the cryptosphere for a long time so have a pretty good understanding of the current state of play.
NFTs are a great concept but have a number of potential draw backs. The biggest issue, the one that was the real issue during the NFT hype some years ago, is that without the correct implementation they are worthless. So the common NFT at that time was essentially a blockchain item that contained a url that linked to an image on a centralised server, the server goes down and then you have a digital item that holds a dead link. Now what NFTs have the potential for is to hold the data such as an image directly on chain (however this has some scaling related issues at this time) that would address this issue. And NFTs have much more potential than just images, in game items ate one that is touted often, but really the limits are endless. They could solve practical problems like virtualised receipts/ proof of authenticity for real world items, membership and account management for digital content or real world events are some of the examples that come to mind.
It’s important to note that NFTs (the ethereum ERC-721 standard) are not digital tokens (the ethereum ERC-20 standard) which is what the new reddit points are being implemented using. Tokens are inheritently on chain, they have there own potential draw backs and that entirely depends on the individual implementation of the token itself. They are programmable so the rules defined will outline if drawbacks exist.
The point of a toke is to create a medium of exchange within an ecosystem, the idea that each community has its own token is a great example of that. Yes the token will have little to no value to people outside the community but that is not to say it will have no value at all. The current test is r/cryptocurrency and the MOONs which have been in use for years now, this was the test bed for this system. Moderators and users receive MOONs and are able to trade them on an exchange to get ETH and then into cash of they desire. Its hard to argue it doesn’t add value to the R/Cryptocurrency ecosystem when it does by evidence.
Is it perfect? No. Does it excuse Reddits scummy actions up to now ? Hell no but it is not a bad move in and of itself.
The value is determined by market forces so Reddit has little to no control over this.
This token has no source of value except what Reddit allows it to be redeemed for within their platform.
they can’t just be taken away
I’d bet they implement the ability to blacklist or freeze tokens like the major stablecoins do. And either way if the utility of these tokens depends on their use within the centralized platform of Reddit, that’s a simple way to gate access and take them away effectively.
What makes me laugh is what Reddit did recently forcing users to spend or lose the last iteration of points, this is the kind of thing the new system should protect against.
There’s no way it does anything to protect against it. In fact it’s basically guaranteed to go the same way; people spending money on future false promises from Reddit, and getting rugged.
I’m actually pro-crypto in general, but token speculation as a tacked on business model trends towards being pretty scammy just because of the incentives and how crypto token value works, basically always goes badly. There is no reason to believe this is or will be the “best system yet”, it’s worse than the old points system because the people buying will have some expectation of profit.
This token has no source of value except what Reddit allows it to be redeemed for within their platform.
Well to am extent I agree with you, the ecosystem is the community and if reddit does not foster that it will be worthless. However the fact is MOONs as the example are traded on 3rd party exchanges with an ETH pairing.
I’d bet they implement the ability to blacklist or freeze tokens like the major stablecoins do. And either way if the utility of these tokens depends on their use within the centralized platform of Reddit, that’s a simple way to gate access and take them away effectively.
I agree this is a possibility, and it comes into what I have said in other comments about the token implementation. Though again with the example being MOONs I have not heard of this being an issue.
There’s no way it does anything to protect against it. In fact it’s basically guaranteed to go the same way; people spending money on future false promises from Reddit, and getting rugged.
It protects in the sense that I can trade my tokens with a 3rd part into another. However if Reddit kills tokens on the app then the value would be 0 making that void. I am not saying this is a perfect system, as with any crypto project the success comes from the developers and early users nurturing the ecosystem and driving the value.
I’m actually pro-crypto in general, but token speculation as a tacked on business model trends towards being pretty scammy just because of the incentives and how crypto token value works, basically always goes badly. There is no reason to believe this is or will be the “best system yet”, it’s worse than the old points system because the people buying will have some expectation of profit.
Me too, I’ve been in the space for a long time and seen my fair share of scams and BS, but through it all I still believe in the potential crypto has overall. Based of the MOONs this current system has legs in my opinion and can actually financially compensate otherwise unpaid moderators in popular subs for the hard work they do. As a concept this is good.
You scepticism is healthy, and more people need to have this attitude in crypto in general to stop the wild speculation you talk about however it doesn’t mean we should dismiss good concepts out of turn. Give it a chance, I’m not saying it will be the best system yet just that it has potential, I don’t want to let my overall feeling of what Reddit has done totally blind me to that.
Though again with the example being MOONs I have not heard of this being an issue.
From what I can see the source code for the contract is not published/verified. That is not a good sign in this regard.
I am not saying this is a perfect system, as with any crypto project the success comes from the developers and early users nurturing the ecosystem and driving the value.
Disagree. Long term success requires a sound value model, and aligned incentives. The concept needs to be solid, otherwise it is doomed regardless of developer and community efforts.
can actually financially compensate otherwise unpaid moderators in popular subs for the hard work they do. As a concept this is good.
Compensating content creators is potentially a fine concept and has worked for other platforms. But with what is a crucial part of the equation that can’t be overlooked. In this case the “with what” on the surface seems to be an implied promise from a soon-to-be corporation that the tokens will be redeemable for “community governance” and “premium features”. Both things Reddit has very recently been openly and explicitly scamming its users out of (protest crackdowns, deleting previously held stuff people paid for). They are obviously not good for it.
In the short term that probably won’t matter, because speculators will buy the token off of creators regardless of the strength or weakness of its fundamental value proposition, because it has brand strength, and that can drive price on its own. There’s probably manipulation going on as well to convince investors to buy just on the basis of what the chart is doing. But that stuff isn’t sustainable. So in the end what’s going to happen is you’re going to have a population of bagholders who have watched their investment decline over years, begging Reddit to do something to pump their bags, and Reddit will shrug, point to some fine print saying they don’t legally have to do anything, and redirect the systems that would have accrued value to token holders towards accruing value to investors in their actual stock. It would be incredibly naive to assume they will not do this. I believe that the idea here is to have a system to pay content creators for a little while, but where the money comes from the eventual losses of speculators and Reddit doesn’t have to actually spend its own money.
From what I can see the source code for the contract is not published/verified. That is not a good sign in this regard.
Agreed
Disagree. Long term success requires a sound value model, and aligned incentives. The concept needs to be solid, otherwise it is doomed regardless of developer and community efforts.
So initial concept is ofcourse the foundation but surly it’s the developer and user participation that drive value long term?
the tokens will be redeemable for “community governance” and “premium features”.
The tokens can be traded into ETH and cash, the ability to leave the ecosystem with value for what you have added is a good concept in my opinion.
I totally agree Reddit has been a scummy actor, especially in recent months but I feel if they had acted differently up to this point the reception of this change would be more welcomed.
For example if they had not killed 3rd party app and instead of just wiping the old point system clean they essentially air dropped an equivalent of the new token to users.
I’m no fool, I can see how reddit could use this as another log on the trash fire however I think the concept is good and I’m on the fence to see how it will go from here.
The tokens can be traded into ETH and cash, the ability to leave the ecosystem with value for what you have added is a good concept in my opinion.
I get that, but can you understand that this Eth and cash needs to come from someone? And that it will be someone who is only buying it because they believe they will be able to later sell those tokens for more? Does it simply not matter to you where that money comes from or whether someone is getting screwed over in the process? The ‘value’ created by interacting with Reddit is not magically transmuted into value for the token, you just happen to get the tokens after interacting with Reddit.
Without going into the technicals too much L2s address the some of the scaling issues of ethereum making transactions cheap. Combined with the POS system ethereum now uses, its the best choice. Cheap fees and it doesn’t kill the environment.
I do not disagree with much of the criticism Reddit is getting right now, especially the action taken leading up to this being the reason many of us are here right now.
What I will say though is that this community points system is not brand new and has been operating in the big crypto subs like R/cryptocurrency for some time using MOONS.
Now this system does not prevent the over arching power Reddit can exert on its platform but what it has done is meant is moderators are paid, well paid actually from the one I know personally. The value is determined by market forces so Reddit has little to no control over this.
Also because the points are tokens on the Ethereum ecosystem users can move there points to another wallet that is not controlled/created under the Reddit vault system meaning they can’t just be taken away.
Again, this move far from fixes many of the problems with Reddit, causing us to move to the feddiverse but as far as the idea of “points” go it’s actually the best system yet.
What makes me laugh is what Reddit did recently forcing users to spend or lose the last iteration of points, this is the kind of thing the new system should protect against.
The coins aren’t used anywhere else besides Reddit. Do you expect to be buying a hot dog with your reddit gold? lol
After Reddit banned my account, I got some sucker give me 40-odd USDT for my MOONS tokens from r/cryptocurrency, then got some other sucker give me $40 for those.
How many hot dogs is that?
The point of tokenisation is to create an ecosystem currency, it’s not for buying hotdogs with unless you’re using hotdog coin.
I’d invest in carne asada fries coin.
An investment for sure but how long could you hold on to them?
Hotdog coin would be the first stable coin as it’d actually be tied to a stable asset lol
When the world economies collapse and the people are trading in hotdogs atleast I know who to blame… or thank ?
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I will try and watch this when I have time however I want to give some initial thoughts now. I am a techy amd have been in the cryptosphere for a long time so have a pretty good understanding of the current state of play.
NFTs are a great concept but have a number of potential draw backs. The biggest issue, the one that was the real issue during the NFT hype some years ago, is that without the correct implementation they are worthless. So the common NFT at that time was essentially a blockchain item that contained a url that linked to an image on a centralised server, the server goes down and then you have a digital item that holds a dead link. Now what NFTs have the potential for is to hold the data such as an image directly on chain (however this has some scaling related issues at this time) that would address this issue. And NFTs have much more potential than just images, in game items ate one that is touted often, but really the limits are endless. They could solve practical problems like virtualised receipts/ proof of authenticity for real world items, membership and account management for digital content or real world events are some of the examples that come to mind.
It’s important to note that NFTs (the ethereum ERC-721 standard) are not digital tokens (the ethereum ERC-20 standard) which is what the new reddit points are being implemented using. Tokens are inheritently on chain, they have there own potential draw backs and that entirely depends on the individual implementation of the token itself. They are programmable so the rules defined will outline if drawbacks exist.
The point of a toke is to create a medium of exchange within an ecosystem, the idea that each community has its own token is a great example of that. Yes the token will have little to no value to people outside the community but that is not to say it will have no value at all. The current test is r/cryptocurrency and the MOONs which have been in use for years now, this was the test bed for this system. Moderators and users receive MOONs and are able to trade them on an exchange to get ETH and then into cash of they desire. Its hard to argue it doesn’t add value to the R/Cryptocurrency ecosystem when it does by evidence.
Is it perfect? No. Does it excuse Reddits scummy actions up to now ? Hell no but it is not a bad move in and of itself.
To those with the down doots, is there anything constructive you want add to the conversation ?
This token has no source of value except what Reddit allows it to be redeemed for within their platform.
I’d bet they implement the ability to blacklist or freeze tokens like the major stablecoins do. And either way if the utility of these tokens depends on their use within the centralized platform of Reddit, that’s a simple way to gate access and take them away effectively.
There’s no way it does anything to protect against it. In fact it’s basically guaranteed to go the same way; people spending money on future false promises from Reddit, and getting rugged.
I’m actually pro-crypto in general, but token speculation as a tacked on business model trends towards being pretty scammy just because of the incentives and how crypto token value works, basically always goes badly. There is no reason to believe this is or will be the “best system yet”, it’s worse than the old points system because the people buying will have some expectation of profit.
Well to am extent I agree with you, the ecosystem is the community and if reddit does not foster that it will be worthless. However the fact is MOONs as the example are traded on 3rd party exchanges with an ETH pairing.
I agree this is a possibility, and it comes into what I have said in other comments about the token implementation. Though again with the example being MOONs I have not heard of this being an issue.
It protects in the sense that I can trade my tokens with a 3rd part into another. However if Reddit kills tokens on the app then the value would be 0 making that void. I am not saying this is a perfect system, as with any crypto project the success comes from the developers and early users nurturing the ecosystem and driving the value.
Me too, I’ve been in the space for a long time and seen my fair share of scams and BS, but through it all I still believe in the potential crypto has overall. Based of the MOONs this current system has legs in my opinion and can actually financially compensate otherwise unpaid moderators in popular subs for the hard work they do. As a concept this is good.
You scepticism is healthy, and more people need to have this attitude in crypto in general to stop the wild speculation you talk about however it doesn’t mean we should dismiss good concepts out of turn. Give it a chance, I’m not saying it will be the best system yet just that it has potential, I don’t want to let my overall feeling of what Reddit has done totally blind me to that.
From what I can see the source code for the contract is not published/verified. That is not a good sign in this regard.
Disagree. Long term success requires a sound value model, and aligned incentives. The concept needs to be solid, otherwise it is doomed regardless of developer and community efforts.
Compensating content creators is potentially a fine concept and has worked for other platforms. But with what is a crucial part of the equation that can’t be overlooked. In this case the “with what” on the surface seems to be an implied promise from a soon-to-be corporation that the tokens will be redeemable for “community governance” and “premium features”. Both things Reddit has very recently been openly and explicitly scamming its users out of (protest crackdowns, deleting previously held stuff people paid for). They are obviously not good for it.
In the short term that probably won’t matter, because speculators will buy the token off of creators regardless of the strength or weakness of its fundamental value proposition, because it has brand strength, and that can drive price on its own. There’s probably manipulation going on as well to convince investors to buy just on the basis of what the chart is doing. But that stuff isn’t sustainable. So in the end what’s going to happen is you’re going to have a population of bagholders who have watched their investment decline over years, begging Reddit to do something to pump their bags, and Reddit will shrug, point to some fine print saying they don’t legally have to do anything, and redirect the systems that would have accrued value to token holders towards accruing value to investors in their actual stock. It would be incredibly naive to assume they will not do this. I believe that the idea here is to have a system to pay content creators for a little while, but where the money comes from the eventual losses of speculators and Reddit doesn’t have to actually spend its own money.
Agreed
So initial concept is ofcourse the foundation but surly it’s the developer and user participation that drive value long term?
The tokens can be traded into ETH and cash, the ability to leave the ecosystem with value for what you have added is a good concept in my opinion.
I totally agree Reddit has been a scummy actor, especially in recent months but I feel if they had acted differently up to this point the reception of this change would be more welcomed.
For example if they had not killed 3rd party app and instead of just wiping the old point system clean they essentially air dropped an equivalent of the new token to users.
I’m no fool, I can see how reddit could use this as another log on the trash fire however I think the concept is good and I’m on the fence to see how it will go from here.
I get that, but can you understand that this Eth and cash needs to come from someone? And that it will be someone who is only buying it because they believe they will be able to later sell those tokens for more? Does it simply not matter to you where that money comes from or whether someone is getting screwed over in the process? The ‘value’ created by interacting with Reddit is not magically transmuted into value for the token, you just happen to get the tokens after interacting with Reddit.
deleted by creator
Correct it’s built on an L2 of ethereum.
Without going into the technicals too much L2s address the some of the scaling issues of ethereum making transactions cheap. Combined with the POS system ethereum now uses, its the best choice. Cheap fees and it doesn’t kill the environment.