Reddit Introduces ETH-Based Community Points Beta Program With Custom Tokens for Subreddits

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.

Blockchain-Backed Reddit Community Points: ‘The First Step Towards a Different Future for Online Communities’

At the end of July, Reddit announced that the platform’s Community Points system would leverage the Layer 2 (L2) protocol Arbitrum. This week, Reddit revealed a new website that features the Community Points beta program, which says that Reddit patrons will be able to leverage native crypto assets tethered to unique subreddits. At the time of writing, there is a waitlist and users can sign-up via a form Reddit created.

“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 all the hours you put into your community, [and] unlock special features.” Redditors can “buy community features with Community Points, like special memberships and awards, [and] encourage better content and conversation,” the company details. Furthermore, Redditors can use polls and systems to figure out the Community Points distribution process. Reddit’s website adds:

Each subreddit creates its own Community Points token, with a custom name and symbol.

Cryptocurrency Subreddit Likes the Community Points Concept, Most Popular Bitcoin Subreddit May Not Be Too Fond of Ethereum-Based Subreddit Tokens

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 that subreddit. Moreover, many r/bitcoin subscribers are not too fond of the blockchain Ethereum so using it for a Community Points system could be considered hypocritical. It’s safe to say that many other crypto and non-crypto-related forums on Reddit will likely have no issues using the Ethereum-based Community Points program.