What Are Reddit’s Blockchain-Based Community Points?

The ultra-popular social media platform, Reddit, is currently doing all kinds of experiments with Community Points. The Community Points provides the power users of Reddit with additional perks and benefits. Reddit is planning to use the ERC-20 token standard of Ethereum for storing the information related to the Community Points. The spokesperson of Reddit said that the experimentation seeks to provide more support to the communities of Reddit. The Community Points will be used as an estimation of the contribution and reputation of the members of the Reddit community.

What Are Community Points?

Reddit announced the introduction of Community Points. As explained by a Reddit spokesperson & ETH News, Community Points permit users to collect points through their contribution to the Reddit community. Users can earn Community points by posting quality content and comments.

This system of Community Points might sound like the existing system of Karma points, but it is not so. The incorporation of the ERC-20 token of the Ethereum Blockchain makes it different.The Community Points system is constructed on the Blockchain network of Ethereum. These points are electronically represented in the form of tokens on the Blockchain.

The Distribution and Collection of Community Points

  • The distribution shall commence with 50M Points and in the next year there will be another distribution of 50M Points.
  • The distribution will reduce with every cycle until the maximum cap stands at 250M.
  • The users will earn Points once in every four weeks on the basis of their contributions through posts and comments.
  • During the distribution 10% of the Points shall be reserved for the Mods, 20% for the overall Reddit community, and 20% for the core community of Reddit.

The Expenditure of Community Points

  • The users can spend the Points on badges, animated emojis, stickers, and more. They can also use the Points to buy special memberships.
  • The users who fail to collect the Points can pay in dollars to purchase Community Points.
  • The users will be able to earn Karma Points as well through up-votes in weighted polls.
  • These Community Points can be redeemed by users for voting at polls, purchasing memberships, and more. The updated balance of Community Points will be visible right next to the username for everyone to view.

Reddit Is Experimenting With Recording Points and Perks on a Blockchain

The Reddit users will be able to get access to their share of Community Points by using Reddit’s mobile app. The app has a wallet that displays the total balance of Community Points. The wallet is, in fact, a mode of accessing the Ethereum Blockchain. The creation of the wallet of Community Points generates a private key and a public address that belong to a Reddit user. The private key remains solely with the user of the app, and Reddit recommends to every user to prepare a backup of the keys or create a cold storage to keep the private key safe.

Reddit supervises the allotment of the Karma Points but the Community Points are powered by ERC-20 tokens which means that Reddit cannot control the allocation of Community Points. The Reddit users can purchase the Special Memberships like rights to post GIFs and emoticons while commenting or participating in weighted polls.

Vitalik Tweet

Vitalik Buterin tweeted that Reddit has to provide permission to the subreddits for the establishment of random smart contract addresses in the form of a moderator. The arbitrary smart contract address shall allow unrestricted experimentation of the policies of moderation.

  • Vitalik tweeted again that the social media platform is all set to roll out the feature of Community Points.

Reasons Why Reddit May Use Ethereum

Reddit wants to harness Ethereum Blockchain’s advanced technology for the following reasons:

  • Ethereum is immutable which means that the data that has been written cannot be modified or deleted.
  • Ethereum Blockchain’s consensus mechanism is decentralized which means that no intermediary is needed to confirm the validity of transactions.

Conclusion

Ethereum Blockchain will revolutionize Reddit and will be able to draw in more users to the platform. It will not only make the platform more secure but will also help to curb hefty fees posed by other cryptos like Bitcoin. If you want to know more about Ethereum news, live Ethereum price or Ethereum Price Forecast then please visit our other pages.

Alan Steck: Alan Steck is journalist and analyst with background in finance. He holds double degree in journalism and literature. From the begining of his career, he is fond of stock market and hence, he started working as a financial news reporter. Currently, he contribute latest news updates of finance industry to team regularly. He is also passionate about machine learning and social media.