22 ms·

Reddit rolls out community currencies on Ethereum

276 points by lftherios 6y ago

sl1ck731 6y ago
Just what Reddit needs, an even better reason for bots and reposting. It will be interesting to watch this play out. With all of the changes in the past year or two of the Reddit team trying to monetize it in any way they can I've noticed I find less and less interesting content.
- leorio 6y ago
  You can watch it playing out on Steemit. Cross promoters and bots have taken over the platform.
- surround 6y ago
  “Useless internet points” are no more.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  Yeah, "we want to encourage positive behavior, so we added money" doesn't strike me as being realistic. I'm sure the real goal is to sell tokens and to shift to a microtransaction model where users have to pay for "premium" features. That's why there's a hard cap on tokens and they're consumed on use. Worse though, I think it might be an underhanded way to sell influence for money if it doesn't stay a closed system. While the users are distracted with "premium" stickers and emojis, bad actors will be paying real money to buy visibility and influence. For me, the appeal of Reddit is that I can jump in and participate and it's fairly democratic, at least in the smaller subreddits. As soon as they turn it into money = visibility = credibility it's ruined.
udia 6y ago
How on earth did people ever post quality content on the internet without it being monetized? /sarcasm Would this new feature would reward users any more than the existing karma/gilding mechanism? I am skeptical that the typical Reddit user would have even have a cryptocurrency wallet.
- lftherios 6y ago
  the reddit mobile app now comes with one.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Nobody has the secret to maintaining quality content and discussion at scale though. It’s the reason why the good content on Reddit is in super niche communities that have a high buy-in or some mechanism to maintain natural exclusivity. It’s the reason that the common advice on Reddit is to not even look at the default subs and to avoid posting your favorite subs in popular threads. It’s the reason that there’s so many migrations in the internet because every site’s content is constantly going downhill as it grows. It’s the reason that the comment section on small YouTube channels is amazing but “YouTube comments” are a meme for being vile. Kudos to Reddit for trying something novel here. I’m sure it will fail but it’s noble in the attempt. Having to work or pay to be part of good communities might be enough to keep them from eventually turning them south.
  - thinkmassive 6y ago
    I wonder if using an ERC-20 token increases the chances of being able to migrate reputation to another site. That was supposed to be one of the appeals of using non-fungible tokens (NFTs, like ERC-721) for e.g. collectible card games and other in-game items. I suspect there are gatekeepers, and this is decentralization theater, but I hope I’m wrong.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > I wonder if using an ERC-20 token increases the chances of being able to migrate reputation to another site. If it can be migrated, it's not really reputation. Reputation is not an e-points score.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
thinkmassive 6y ago
My first thought was whether this would require a browser with an Ethereum wallet (Status.im, Brave, Metamask, etc) to participate. It sounds like they're building this into the Reddit mobile app: > In order to start contributing, users need to sign up to the "Vault," Reddit's local blockchain wallet, accessed via scanning a QR code through the official Reddit app. It's not clear whether the Reddit mobile app is becoming a full web3 browser, but this makes it sound like there's a real wallet in there: > There is a warning though. A private key is provided once a user creates their Vault, which is stored locally on their smart device. Meaning if the user doesn't create a back up of their key and loses their phone, they will be unable to access their community points, with Reddit claiming even they will be unable to help. Cryptocurrency wallets are way too complicated for most people to use properly. It should be interesting to see if Reddit can raise the bar with an open solution. Hopefully it isn't some pointless proprietary implementation that actually uses a "proof of authority" network (aka shitty database).
- thinkmassive 6y ago
  Oh, I overlooked this tidbit that makes it sound like other web3 browsers should work: > Reddit has stated that since most users don't own any ETH, the social platform is ready to cover the cost of gas "for now," for those using its in-built Vault, but those using other Ethereum wallets may be required to pay for the cost of gas themselves.
  - flarex 6y ago
    They also encourage users to store private keys on reddit's servers, user password encrypted.
seibelj 6y ago
I think this definitely answers "what is blockchain good for". It will allow subreddits to monetize effectively and encourage users to post quality content using economic incentives.
- SigmundA 6y ago
  Not sure I see the need for a blockchain here, couldn't they just store points in their db and scale much better with less complexity? Whats the blockchain advantage here?
  - ikeyany 6y ago
    I imagine they're playing the long game and have future additions in mind.
  - Sargos 6y ago
    These BRICKS and MOONS are ERC20 tokens which means they can be traded with other users on things like Uniswap, used as collateral for loans on Compound, and integrated into games such as Cryptovoxels. Being a token enables a lot more use cases than simply being another number in their servers.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Hah! If the web and cryptos has taught us anything, this will be abused to hell with SEO content and all kinds of scummy techniques to get posts to the post. Expect allegations of mod power abuse, stolen content, shady cross subreddit "collaborations" and much more not that people can make money on their submissions.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    Yeah, this honestly feels far more likely to kill reddit than improve it.
    - lonelappde 6y ago
      That's quite a hair to split. Killing reddit may be the best improvement possible.
lftherios 6y ago
a more detailed post with product screenshots and economics can be found here https://medium.com/@adamscochran/reddit-jumps-into-loot-tokens-with-new-cryptocurrency-on-ethereum-3109a4b1eae4 https://medium.com/@adamscochran/reddit-jumps-into-loot-toke...
fouc 6y ago
Impressive, now there's finally a killer app for cyrptocurrency, and it looks like it's starting with reddit.
- Proven 6y ago
  Really?? Maybe you're new to this, but Steam and tipbots (the latter on Reddit as well) have been around for years. Didn't do that much for crypto.
- catalogia 6y ago
  By killer app, you mean something so egregiously bad it might finally kill reddit? We can only hope.
  - kylek 6y ago
    "Pulling a keybase"
gitgud 6y ago
So it's kind of like Reddit gold? but needlessly decentralised?
- cslarson 6y ago
  These points are awarded based on contribution to specific subs and can be used within the local economy of that sub as monetary unit as well as for influence in governance (original earned points matter here so influence isn't directly purchasable). This isn't like Reddit gold but more of a fundamental new tool for Reddit communities to experiment with.
ihuman 6y ago
Didn't reddit announce/kill something like this when bitcoin first got big? This page is giving me some deja vu.
- 333c 6y ago
  I also remember them making this announcement (and it wasn't Dogecoin, as the other commenter says). I can't seem to find an announcement about this though.
  - ihuman 6y ago
    I was able to find it. It was called "Reddit Notes" https://redditblog.com/2015/12/19/announcing-reddit-notes/ https://redditblog.com/2015/12/19/announcing-reddit-notes/ https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/3/7968397/reddit-backtracks-reddit-notes-cryptocurrency https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/3/7968397/reddit-backtracks-...
- michaelt 6y ago
  In ~2014 there was a brief craze for the spoof "Dogecoin" cryptocurrency, IIRC largely on reddit. It still exists, although it's far below its peak interest [1] - and of course dogetipbot went bankrupt after an insider spent the cold storage, as is traditional. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=dogecoin https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=dogecoin
ddevault 6y ago
If you didn't think Reddit hadn't already jumped the shark, this is definitive proof. And to pre-empt the replies: no, I don't want to hear a defense of whatever ponzi scheme you've sunk 10 grand into. Cryptocurrency is the MLM of tech.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  The crucial question is if subreddits will be able to completely keeps themselves out of this wild scheme, I don't think r/AskHistorians is going to appreciate getting this weird distortion imposed on their existing incentive structure for instance.
_curious_ 6y ago
"Users can hoard their points or spend them on unique features such as badges, custom emojis and GIFs in comments." GIFs...in...comments? That will quickly lead to a worsening user experience, who thought this was a good idea? "In the Reddit app your wallet is a full Ethereum wallet that has a private key and recovery phrase. You are able to use that wallet anywhere you would normally use an Ethereum wallet by exporting it." Does this mean it can be converted to (or spent like) cash?
- RandomBacon 6y ago
  Yes, and on reddit's Cryptocurrency sub, there are already people asking how to buy it.
  - _curious_ 6y ago
    That's interesting, and to be expected from that sub, but how is Reddit going to comply with KYC if this implementation is to scale and their currency can also be transferred/used as cash?
    - jedieaston 6y ago
      Do normal crypto exchanges have to do KYC, and if so, doesn't that take away the anonymity?
      - _curious_ 6y ago
        Yes and yes
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  I wonder how this will spell out for communities that already support images in comments. Are they now circumventing reddit's monetization scheme? For example, /r/anime has a bunch of images you can insert. Only works on the Old layout though, no apps and not the new layout.
c_prompt 6y ago
Not exactly the way I proposed it to Steve Huffman [1] but happy to see reddit experimenting with the idea of value for value. A few questions they hopefully will try to answer: 1. Does trading values (e.g., money for content) make for a more peaceful environment in social networks and other online communities? 2. Does allowing an easy and voluntary way to reward content creators improve the quality of the content (e.g., higher accuracy, fact-based arguments, better ideas, more toleration of different ideas)? 3. Can users make enough money from content creation without relying on advertising (thus disrupting journalism and even removing the draw for companies to sell private information)? 4. Will users start to think in terms of exchanging values and, if so, will these thoughts then spillover to other parts of their lives? [1] https://valme.io/c/journal/c_prompt/f5qqs/an-open-letter-to-steve-huffman-reddits-new-ceo-with-an-offer-to-exchange-values https://valme.io/c/journal/c_prompt/f5qqs/an-open-letter-to-...
- mdszy 6y ago
  Saying "I proposed it to Steve Huffman" when in fact it's just an open letter is pretty disingenuous.
floren 6y ago
Remember when Keybase rolled out free crypto for users, and it was immediately flooded by fake accounts, people were trying to hack github accounts to beef up their new Keybase user, etc? The Keybase community on reddit was overrun with idiots begging for help getting crypto, and whining that they weren't getting crypto. I'm sure there will be no negative repercussions when rolling out a system that gives you money for posting pun chains and XKCD links.
- lftherios 6y ago
  I think that you are confusing two things. An airdrop with "free money" and an actual experience with community points and collectibles (like badges) that you mainly earn.
  - floren 6y ago
    People currently pay Reddit real actual useful money (dirty fiat) for stupid shit... so if they instead say "You can buy these things for Posting Points, earned whenever you get t3h upd00ts", well, I expect people in poor countries to start posting like mad in the hopes of getting Posting Points which they can resell to Americans and other people with more money than sense.
    - nathancahill 6y ago
      I think I saw that episode of Black Mirror.
    - lobotryas 6y ago
      Sounds like gear and gold grinding services for popular games/MMOs in Asia in decades past.
      - dane-pgp 6y ago
        I wonder what happened to the people running those MMO gold farms...? https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-of-warcraft-gold-farming.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-o...
montenegrohugo 6y ago
I understand the need for rewarding valuable community contributors. Even if Reddit, Hackernews and other Forums have traditionally worked in a voluntary fashion. And this is certainly some cool tech and a showcase of how cryptocurrencies can be useful. That said, this measure will just lead to bots reposting (or in the near future generating GPT-2 like garbage) content in order to farm community points/ethereum. As soon as you add in a financial incentive the whole situation gets ugly.
- centimeter 6y ago
  There's already a financial incentive - controlling the narrative is valuable. There are already bots posting/generating content on Reddit and other social media sites.
- calmworm 6y ago
  This coupled with the recent thread will be interesting ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 There are multiple sub-reddits that are essentially just karma farms already. I'm curious how this will play out.
- helpimlost 6y ago
  Does that mean they shouldn’t even try?
deleted 6y ago
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jetrink 6y ago
This brings to mind Carmen Hermosillo's 1994 essay, Pandora's Vox: On Community in Cyberspace[1]. i have seen many people spill their guts on–line, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money–value. [...] i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul. 1. http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299 http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299
- soVeryTired 6y ago
  Em... aren’t we all doing that for ycombinator right now?
  - ses1984 6y ago
    They haven't tried to overtly, aggressively monetize hacker news. Also subjectively the quality of the comments is still pretty high compared to other similar sites.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      Hacker News is a marketing tool for Y Combinator and the companies they invest in - there’s a reason it’s on news.ycombinator.com and not e.g. hackernews.org, and a reason YC’s application periods and companies get hyped up on here. There’s a reason that pg’s writings get discussed ad infinitum. It is also, secondarily, basically the “social media” equivalent of a newspaper - a mechanism for YC to push their opinion of how the world should work and create a consensus around that ideology. Putting ads next to someone else’s content isn’t the only way you can make money off it.
      - mmm_grayons 6y ago
        All true, but there is also a lot of interesting stuff on the site, because there are a lot of interesting people. I don't really care if YC startups get to post at #6 on the front page occasionally. Plus, they're often interesting, so it's "targeted advertising" but done the right way.
127 6y ago
Why does it need to be decentralized? It's kind of stupid that just to avoid legal roadblocks like selling a security, Reddit will use a decentralized blockchain instead of just a database. There's no technical reason for it, just legal and political.
- dylkil 6y ago
  Seems like this is their first attempt at commoditising engagement. By using ethereum, the tokens are trade-able inside an already liquid system. It also removes trust from the equation.
- b_fiive 6y ago
  "just legal and political"
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    It doesn't look like anything with actual value is being traded? All I got from the story was that "political" means reddit admins can't take away someone's tokens.
- Sargos 6y ago
  If this was only run on Reddit servers then nothing interesting could be done with it. These BRICKS and MOONS are ERC20 tokens which means they can be traded with other users on things like Uniswap, used as collateral for loans on Compound, and integrated into games such as Cryptovoxels. Being a token enables a lot more use cases than simply being another number in their servers.
- carleverett 6y ago
  Decentralization isn't really the point - it's going from non-tradable Reddit karma to tradable ERC-20 tokens. Reddit definitely could have built a marketplace that let people trade karma from different subreddits, with a way to deposit and withdraw USD. Like you mentioned though there's the legal challenge of getting licensed as a money transmission service if you do that. But also, why do all that work when all that infrastructure already exists on Ethereum? Plus you get the added benefit that Reddit's tokens can be traded every other asset on Ethereum too.
corobo 6y ago
Bit late for an April Fools, reddit
robmerki 6y ago
Hopefully this can incentivize for better moderation. Many subreddits have become the empires of power hungry "volunteers" who carefully prune wrongthink content.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Hopefully this can incentivize for better moderation. Many subreddits have become the empires of power hungry "volunteers" who carefully prune wrongthink content. Wouldn't it make it worse? The more vigorously you ciclejerk, the more the jerk will reward you with a brand new kind of e-points. I think too many people but too much faith in quantified reward mechanisms.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    You're replying to an OP that doesn't care about circlejerking or communities maintaining values above allowing the free speech that they agree with.
  - robmerki 6y ago
    You are absolutely right, which is why I was "hoping". I just had an awful experience with a power tripping moderator on a mental health related subreddit. I have no recourse, I just had to move on.
caogecym 6y ago
Can people buy Reddit coin with US dollars? If so, it sounds like an alternative to invest in Reddit and share the success of the company.
flixic 6y ago
I've been part of r/EthTrader that is one of the subreddits that has this feature and had it for about 2 years now. Dynamics within subreddit members got so bad that the subreddit split, and now almost all the action happens in r/EthFinance that does not have any community currency. The main deterioration was actually corruption. Because "karma" had monetary values and "karma monetary policy" could be set by admins, there was massive concentration of wealth for mods, with no incentive to change the rules.
- cslarson 6y ago
  EthTrader now has 5% of distribution allocated to mods (changed by community vote). Initially it was 15% (I agree this was too high). These two new subs will be at 10% for the mods. Monetary policy was only influenced by mods for the initial distribution which was set at 15%. After that it required a vote and eventually it did get lowered.
- OGWhales 6y ago
  Oh is that what the silly bot was? I had no idea why I was collecting these donuts and ended up blocking the bot so I wouldn’t see its messages.
brodouevencode 6y ago
All this in the wake of: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/gitwbo/pointing_out_how_much_power_few_people_have_gets/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/gitwbo/p... https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/gjedc1/urootintootin_putin_exposes_moderator_monopoly_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/gjedc1/uroo... https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/gifi24/92_of_the_top_500_subs_are_controlled_by_the_same/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/gifi24/92_of_t... In reddit parlance: "tfw internet points becomes more of a real thing, also <something something political>"
- morgancmartin 6y ago
  I have long held the position that the role of subreddit moderator should be elected by their respective communities rather than handed over to the first person to grab the namespace. There's no reason this position couldn't be determined in real time either. If a moderator does something against the wishes of the majority of the subreddit members it should be possible for the community to immediately replace the moderator. Blockchain's propensity for governance makes all of this feasible but I highly doubt reddit will ever implement anything of the sort. Political and monetary incentives are already too deeply entrenched from the top down to ever allow the power balances to shift to something truly meritocratic.
  - cslarson 6y ago
    To accomplish this the community needs a sybil-resistant way to vote. This was a main, even primary, feature of community points in my opinion, and i hope experimentation in this regard can lead to a new relationship between mods and the communities they serve.
  - yreg 6y ago
    How do you decide who gets to vote? Anyone who subscribes to the sub?
    - morgancmartin 6y ago
Taylor_OD 6y ago
I talked to someone years ago who was brought on at Reddit to help do something similar but ran into issues with the coins potentially being construed as equity in the company. Looks like they figured it out.
Sargos 6y ago
/r/EthTrader tried this with Donuts a while ago and it led to a community split to /r/EthFinance from all of the drama. Adding a monetary reward for comments and posts really skews the incentives of the community members who choose to participate. When you tie things like this to governance (your coins affect your vote weight on the polls) it really creates a perverse incentive for commercial products to come in and create astroturfing content to farm coins. I think this is a neat experiment and it will be fun to watch what happens but I'm skeptical that this moves the subreddits in a positive direction.
- cslarson 6y ago
  It is worth seeing if these negatives outcomes actually occur and of so they are not counterable in some way. If these risks can be mitigated then what is left is perhaps quite a useful tool - a metric for community contribution that can be used to make sybil-resistant governance decisions and monetary reward within a local economy.
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    Historically society has not greatly benefited by coupling governance power to wealth, but sure, it’ll work this time...
    - cslarson 6y ago
      Yes, this is why governance in this system should be tied to your original earned points so it cannot, at least directly, be bought. The scheme that this system currently employs, for instance, is weight = min(earned_points, current_transferable_points).
      - SiempreViernes 6y ago
        So the only problem with a plutocratic system is that in real life the wrong people happen to be richest?
    - reidjs 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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uncletammy 6y ago
This isn't the first time Reddit has tried something like this. Back around 2015 they hired a dev called Ryan X Charles to build a Bitcoin based rewards system into Reddit. https://ryanxcharlestimes.com/fix-reddit-with-bitcoin-7da3f85fb9ba https://ryanxcharlestimes.com/fix-reddit-with-bitcoin-7da3f8... It proved to be a difficult task because it was right about the time that the Bitcoin core devs started actively discouraging Bitcoin's use in payments. This paired with a new investment round at Reddit resulted in the project being abandoned. I do believe if they had seen this project through, Reddit would be in a much more healthy state right now
jondubois 6y ago
I already know what's going to happen: 1. They will launch. 2. They will find out that Ethereum doesn't scale. 3. They will move to an off-chain solution. On the plus side, the extra demand generated by Reddit will boost Ethereum transaction fees to insane levels which is going to make the Ethereum price go up (because higher fees = more lucrative mining). Then the Ethereum/Reddit insiders who organized this elaborate corporate scam are going to cash out. I can't believe how quickly people forgot about CryptoKitties. Surely Reddit developers know about Ethereum's limits. It seems that we have entered into a new economic era. It's called "Let's use cryptocurrency as a way to collaboratively fool our corporate employers for personal profit". 1. Find a big corporation whose managers are naive enough to agree to participate in some hyped up and non-scalable blockchain project. 2. Convince your managers to start such a project and do it in such a way that this project is going to boost demand for cryptocurrency X. 3. Employees buy cryptocurrency X. 4. Project launches, cryptocurrency X struggles to handle the load and as a result, transaction fees skyrocket, sharply driving up the token price. 5. Employees sell their cryptocurrency X at the peak. 6. Users complain about high fees. Employer realizes that this is not going to work and abandons the project. 7. Price crashes back to what it was before. Corporate employees are pleased with their profits. Corporation has no clue that they've just been scammed by their own employees. End users of the service who had to actually pay for the transaction fees paid for most of the cost. Companies should be launching their own blockchains, not ERC-20 tokens; that only benefits Ethereum.
- cslarson 6y ago
  Ethereum can scale with off-chain/on-chain solutions like zk-rollups. With zk-rollups off-chain state can have the same integrity as being on-chain.
  - jondubois 6y ago
    I don't buy into these second layer solutions. They are still limited in terms of scalability (they just push the limit back a bit) and operational complexity tends to get out of control and that makes them much more vulnerable to exploits (especially DoS attacks which attempt to prevent or delay state changes and attacks which try to roll-back state changes).
MaximumMadness 6y ago
Does anyone have thoughts on why they included r/Fortnite in the initial beta? My best guess is that it sees such high traffic & is populated with non-crypto focused Reddit users. Let's the company get a big dataset with a group of consumers who aren't predisposed to Crypto. I reached out to Reddit for comment but they just gave me a classic canned response.
- lonelappde 6y ago
  It's targeted marketing for people with low wisdom and high interest in chasing trends and buying worthless charms.
- cslarson 6y ago
  This launch involves two subs, r/fortnitebr and r/cryptocurrency, and builds from an existing centralised version that r/fornitebr, among a few others, was already using. So this moves their points onto the Ethereum blockchain. It is indeed interesting to expose non-crypto users to the Ethereum version. For instance, of the two subs r/fortnitebr has so far 4x the number of transactions and new addresses despite being roughly comparable in subscriber size (it has more active visitors by roughly 2.5x). Personally i think that speaks commendably to the ux that Reddit has been able to achieve.
ComputerGuru 6y ago
I don’t understand where the money is coming from? Are VCs providing the initial pot of ETH that will be (re)distributed to power posters?
- tyrust 6y ago
  It's a token, not ETH. Basically it's a made up ledger that is stored in the Ethereum blockchain. The only way money comes into the picture is that moving tokens around in the ledger costs Gas (think of Gas like mining fees for BTC), which is paid for with ETH. As the article says, Reddit is paying Gas costs for now.
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    But I don’t see how any of this scales. How does it go from “VCs covering the tab for now” to something else?
    - tyrust 6y ago
      Neither do I, but does it have to? Like any business, Reddit has ways that it makes money and ways that it spends money. This could be considered valuable [0] enough to the site that they continue to cover the costs of running it. [0] - By driving more traffic, more engagement, better content, and/or other intangibles.
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burtonator 6y ago
Community currencies are REALLY interesting in that it allows for local inflation but also prevents currencies in one community from dominating opposing communities. For example, if there was a currency for 'coal' then the 'environmental' community could basically reject that currency. Right now if coal mining makes a ton of money that's all that matters. They can dominate the local economy.
- rewoi 6y ago
  Not really. Most 'green' cars are in fact burning coal.
goda90 6y ago
I think a big reason I use Reddit as much as I do, is the availability of two things. old.reddit.com, and third party mobile apps(I use an open source one that I've modified to my liking). This is yet another feature that won't ever work on those. I forget Reddit even has chat, which is available in old.reddit.com, but feels so disconnected from the experience that I don't even care.
- theocs 6y ago
  Given that these tokens follow the ERC 20 standard, I don't see why other clients can't just integrate support if they want.
Klonoar 6y ago
One thing I never see talked about with this kind of stuff is taxes. e.g, when Stellar was aidropped to Keybase users, that's... technically the start of a taxable chain of events. I donated mine to the Freedom of the Press foundation, and thus had to report it. I had a time of it back during the second crypto craze, which I'm thankfully out of. I know how to report this crap. I am not sure, to this day, whether joe schmoe average user even realizes they have to. So in this case my question becomes: is Reddit foisting a tax liability on their users without them understanding this? Does this ever come up in discussion and I've just missed it entirely?
- gjs278 6y ago
  no because nobody is going to make more than a few cents
- Sargos 6y ago
  This is probably one of the first instances that will trigger congress to fix the tax laws for crypto. There will be many more. The current tax code is written for corporate investors and foreign exchange traders, which have little bearing on game tokens, community tokens, and other use cases that will exist. These use cases are not going away and normal people are not going to suddenly file a few hundred pages of transactions on their capital gains forms just because they used some apps.
  - Klonoar 6y ago
    I think that's a very optimistic outlook, but I'm not sure it fits with a realistic viewpoint that they're taxed that way because people treat them like stocks, not cash. At any rate, I would like to see Reddit acknowledge this.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  I don't think anyone is getting in trouble with tax authorities for not reporting the loyalty points they receive in promotions. I think tax authorities target enforcement at revenue sources that make sense to tax, and don't pedantically go after people for these kinds of taxable events.
Mindwipe 6y ago
So Reddit will literally pay me to use their official app over a third party client? Yeah, still no deal.
aiyodev 6y ago
Why this is a recipe for disaster: 92 of the top 500 reddit subs are controlled by just 5 accounts. https://files.catbox.moe/q8f49d.png https://files.catbox.moe/q8f49d.png
solotronics 6y ago
I don't mind the little badge trinkets you get on reddit right now to pay for a reward for someones post you like. This isn't that at all this will suck. There will be a ridiculous amount of farming / shilling / astroturfing.
CM30 6y ago
This seems like a bad idea. Any kind of monetary reward for using a community site shifts the incentives of the people that post there, and encourages low quality posts on the off chance they'll get rich from them. Is it as bad as it could be? Depending on how it's implemented no; a system that just rewards points like this automatically is far worse than one that can be used to tip people for good work. But the incentive shifts it brings are similar, and can be very, very bad for the future of a community or social network. Just ask DigitalPoint. Ages ago they used to allow people to earn money from the ads displayed in topics they'd posted in via an adsense revenue sharing scheme. The end result? The site's post quality took a serious nosedive, as people from low income countries signed up en masse to try and earn what they saw as 'easy' money. People used meaningless one liners in every topic on the off chance they'd get ad revenue there, or posted new topics with thin content for the same reason. The site's reputation pretty much collapsed due to this, and even now it's not exactly seen as a place where meaningful discussions take place. Same sort of goes for Quora too. We all know they pay people for posting questions, so now we get a ton of pointless questions that no one actually cares about because there's money involved. So I'm not exactly thrilled by this announcement, nor about the effects it could have on Reddit as a whole if implemented site wide.
ilaksh 6y ago
You have to realize that there is a difference between popular posts and quality posts. For example, I am the main moderator on r/robots these days. When I came in, I got feedback from the users to clarify the content that belongs in the subreddit. They indicated that they wanted about equally to post about robotic art as well as real robots. Right now about 70% of posts are about real robots and 30% are about robot art or something called that. But my point is, the posts that get upvotes are generally not the quality posts. The things that determine upvotes are number one, how easy is it to consume? So if it's a GIF rather than a video, it is likely to receive at least 10 times as many upvotes. Maybe tied for number one, does it have some kind of base emotional effect? Most of the time means, is it sexual or vaguely sexual? Sometimes that means, does it look kind of like a cute baby robot? Another one is, is it reductionistic? In other words, headlines or overall posts that tend to over-simplify something tend to be more popular. Another one: randomness affects vote count significantly. Also, vote manipulation seems to be a factor. When we had some seemingly 'professional' redditors come in that really, really wanted to be mods and I let them for a couple of days, it seemed like they must have been willing to do anything to get their posts upvoted. And also to mod any and all subs that would let them. Which is why I kicked them out. But the point of this is that in-depth videos of real robots will get few upvotes just because they are longer, and the ones that do better may just have good thumbnails but aren't actually good videos. Which is to say that I have been watching the judgement of our community closely for months, and the posts that receive upvotes are absolutely not the best posts in general. I mean, sometimes good ones get upvotes. But sometimes they are ignored and utter trash gets upvoted. It's really changed my perspective on democracy. Sometimes I want to quit being a mod there, but I am not sure the other mods care enough to bother remove the ads and spam that pop up every week or so masquerading as normal posts.

276 points by lftherios 6y ago

Just what Reddit needs, an even better reason for bots and reposting. It will be interesting to watch this play out. With all of the changes in the past year or two of the Reddit team trying to monetize it in any way they can I've noticed I find less and less interesting content.

leorio 6y ago
You can watch it playing out on Steemit. Cross promoters and bots have taken over the platform.
surround 6y ago
“Useless internet points” are no more.
donmcronald 6y ago
Yeah, "we want to encourage positive behavior, so we added money" doesn't strike me as being realistic. I'm sure the real goal is to sell tokens and to shift to a microtransaction model where users have to pay for "premium" features. That's why there's a hard cap on tokens and they're consumed on use. Worse though, I think it might be an underhanded way to sell influence for money if it doesn't stay a closed system. While the users are distracted with "premium" stickers and emojis, bad actors will be paying real money to buy visibility and influence. For me, the appeal of Reddit is that I can jump in and participate and it's fairly democratic, at least in the smaller subreddits. As soon as they turn it into money = visibility = credibility it's ruined.

udia 6y ago

How on earth did people ever post quality content on the internet without it being monetized? /sarcasm Would this new feature would reward users any more than the existing karma/gilding mechanism? I am skeptical that the typical Reddit user would have even have a cryptocurrency wallet.

lftherios 6y ago
the reddit mobile app now comes with one.
Spivak 6y ago
Nobody has the secret to maintaining quality content and discussion at scale though. It’s the reason why the good content on Reddit is in super niche communities that have a high buy-in or some mechanism to maintain natural exclusivity. It’s the reason that the common advice on Reddit is to not even look at the default subs and to avoid posting your favorite subs in popular threads. It’s the reason that there’s so many migrations in the internet because every site’s content is constantly going downhill as it grows. It’s the reason that the comment section on small YouTube channels is amazing but “YouTube comments” are a meme for being vile. Kudos to Reddit for trying something novel here. I’m sure it will fail but it’s noble in the attempt. Having to work or pay to be part of good communities might be enough to keep them from eventually turning them south.
- thinkmassive 6y ago
  I wonder if using an ERC-20 token increases the chances of being able to migrate reputation to another site. That was supposed to be one of the appeals of using non-fungible tokens (NFTs, like ERC-721) for e.g. collectible card games and other in-game items. I suspect there are gatekeepers, and this is decentralization theater, but I hope I’m wrong.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > I wonder if using an ERC-20 token increases the chances of being able to migrate reputation to another site. If it can be migrated, it's not really reputation. Reputation is not an e-points score.
    - Karunamon 6y ago

thinkmassive 6y ago

My first thought was whether this would require a browser with an Ethereum wallet (Status.im, Brave, Metamask, etc) to participate. It sounds like they're building this into the Reddit mobile app: > In order to start contributing, users need to sign up to the "Vault," Reddit's local blockchain wallet, accessed via scanning a QR code through the official Reddit app. It's not clear whether the Reddit mobile app is becoming a full web3 browser, but this makes it sound like there's a real wallet in there: > There is a warning though. A private key is provided once a user creates their Vault, which is stored locally on their smart device. Meaning if the user doesn't create a back up of their key and loses their phone, they will be unable to access their community points, with Reddit claiming even they will be unable to help. Cryptocurrency wallets are way too complicated for most people to use properly. It should be interesting to see if Reddit can raise the bar with an open solution. Hopefully it isn't some pointless proprietary implementation that actually uses a "proof of authority" network (aka shitty database).

thinkmassive 6y ago
Oh, I overlooked this tidbit that makes it sound like other web3 browsers should work: > Reddit has stated that since most users don't own any ETH, the social platform is ready to cover the cost of gas "for now," for those using its in-built Vault, but those using other Ethereum wallets may be required to pay for the cost of gas themselves.
- flarex 6y ago
  They also encourage users to store private keys on reddit's servers, user password encrypted.

seibelj 6y ago

I think this definitely answers "what is blockchain good for". It will allow subreddits to monetize effectively and encourage users to post quality content using economic incentives.

SigmundA 6y ago
Not sure I see the need for a blockchain here, couldn't they just store points in their db and scale much better with less complexity? Whats the blockchain advantage here?
- ikeyany 6y ago
  I imagine they're playing the long game and have future additions in mind.
- Sargos 6y ago
  These BRICKS and MOONS are ERC20 tokens which means they can be traded with other users on things like Uniswap, used as collateral for loans on Compound, and integrated into games such as Cryptovoxels. Being a token enables a lot more use cases than simply being another number in their servers.
arkitaip 6y ago
Hah! If the web and cryptos has taught us anything, this will be abused to hell with SEO content and all kinds of scummy techniques to get posts to the post. Expect allegations of mod power abuse, stolen content, shady cross subreddit "collaborations" and much more not that people can make money on their submissions.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Yeah, this honestly feels far more likely to kill reddit than improve it.
  - lonelappde 6y ago
    That's quite a hair to split. Killing reddit may be the best improvement possible.

lftherios 6y ago

a more detailed post with product screenshots and economics can be found here https://medium.com/@adamscochran/reddit-jumps-into-loot-tokens-with-new-cryptocurrency-on-ethereum-3109a4b1eae4 https://medium.com/@adamscochran/reddit-jumps-into-loot-toke...

fouc 6y ago

Impressive, now there's finally a killer app for cyrptocurrency, and it looks like it's starting with reddit.

Proven 6y ago
Really?? Maybe you're new to this, but Steam and tipbots (the latter on Reddit as well) have been around for years. Didn't do that much for crypto.
catalogia 6y ago
By killer app, you mean something so egregiously bad it might finally kill reddit? We can only hope.
- kylek 6y ago
  "Pulling a keybase"

gitgud 6y ago

So it's kind of like Reddit gold? but needlessly decentralised?

cslarson 6y ago
These points are awarded based on contribution to specific subs and can be used within the local economy of that sub as monetary unit as well as for influence in governance (original earned points matter here so influence isn't directly purchasable). This isn't like Reddit gold but more of a fundamental new tool for Reddit communities to experiment with.

ihuman 6y ago

Didn't reddit announce/kill something like this when bitcoin first got big? This page is giving me some deja vu.

333c 6y ago
I also remember them making this announcement (and it wasn't Dogecoin, as the other commenter says). I can't seem to find an announcement about this though.
- ihuman 6y ago
  I was able to find it. It was called "Reddit Notes" https://redditblog.com/2015/12/19/announcing-reddit-notes/ https://redditblog.com/2015/12/19/announcing-reddit-notes/ https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/3/7968397/reddit-backtracks-reddit-notes-cryptocurrency https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/3/7968397/reddit-backtracks-...
michaelt 6y ago
In ~2014 there was a brief craze for the spoof "Dogecoin" cryptocurrency, IIRC largely on reddit. It still exists, although it's far below its peak interest [1] - and of course dogetipbot went bankrupt after an insider spent the cold storage, as is traditional. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=dogecoin https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=dogecoin

ddevault 6y ago

If you didn't think Reddit hadn't already jumped the shark, this is definitive proof. And to pre-empt the replies: no, I don't want to hear a defense of whatever ponzi scheme you've sunk 10 grand into. Cryptocurrency is the MLM of tech.

SiempreViernes 6y ago
The crucial question is if subreddits will be able to completely keeps themselves out of this wild scheme, I don't think r/AskHistorians is going to appreciate getting this weird distortion imposed on their existing incentive structure for instance.

_curious_ 6y ago

"Users can hoard their points or spend them on unique features such as badges, custom emojis and GIFs in comments." GIFs...in...comments? That will quickly lead to a worsening user experience, who thought this was a good idea? "In the Reddit app your wallet is a full Ethereum wallet that has a private key and recovery phrase. You are able to use that wallet anywhere you would normally use an Ethereum wallet by exporting it." Does this mean it can be converted to (or spent like) cash?

RandomBacon 6y ago
Yes, and on reddit's Cryptocurrency sub, there are already people asking how to buy it.
- _curious_ 6y ago
  That's interesting, and to be expected from that sub, but how is Reddit going to comply with KYC if this implementation is to scale and their currency can also be transferred/used as cash?
  - jedieaston 6y ago
    Do normal crypto exchanges have to do KYC, and if so, doesn't that take away the anonymity?
    - _curious_ 6y ago
      Yes and yes
jabroni_salad 6y ago
I wonder how this will spell out for communities that already support images in comments. Are they now circumventing reddit's monetization scheme? For example, /r/anime has a bunch of images you can insert. Only works on the Old layout though, no apps and not the new layout.

c_prompt 6y ago

Not exactly the way I proposed it to Steve Huffman [1] but happy to see reddit experimenting with the idea of value for value. A few questions they hopefully will try to answer: 1. Does trading values (e.g., money for content) make for a more peaceful environment in social networks and other online communities? 2. Does allowing an easy and voluntary way to reward content creators improve the quality of the content (e.g., higher accuracy, fact-based arguments, better ideas, more toleration of different ideas)? 3. Can users make enough money from content creation without relying on advertising (thus disrupting journalism and even removing the draw for companies to sell private information)? 4. Will users start to think in terms of exchanging values and, if so, will these thoughts then spillover to other parts of their lives? [1] https://valme.io/c/journal/c_prompt/f5qqs/an-open-letter-to-steve-huffman-reddits-new-ceo-with-an-offer-to-exchange-values https://valme.io/c/journal/c_prompt/f5qqs/an-open-letter-to-...

mdszy 6y ago
Saying "I proposed it to Steve Huffman" when in fact it's just an open letter is pretty disingenuous.

floren 6y ago

Remember when Keybase rolled out free crypto for users, and it was immediately flooded by fake accounts, people were trying to hack github accounts to beef up their new Keybase user, etc? The Keybase community on reddit was overrun with idiots begging for help getting crypto, and whining that they weren't getting crypto. I'm sure there will be no negative repercussions when rolling out a system that gives you money for posting pun chains and XKCD links.

lftherios 6y ago
I think that you are confusing two things. An airdrop with "free money" and an actual experience with community points and collectibles (like badges) that you mainly earn.
- floren 6y ago
  People currently pay Reddit real actual useful money (dirty fiat) for stupid shit... so if they instead say "You can buy these things for Posting Points, earned whenever you get t3h upd00ts", well, I expect people in poor countries to start posting like mad in the hopes of getting Posting Points which they can resell to Americans and other people with more money than sense.
  - nathancahill 6y ago
    I think I saw that episode of Black Mirror.
  - lobotryas 6y ago
    Sounds like gear and gold grinding services for popular games/MMOs in Asia in decades past.
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      I wonder what happened to the people running those MMO gold farms...? https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-of-warcraft-gold-farming.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-o...

montenegrohugo 6y ago

I understand the need for rewarding valuable community contributors. Even if Reddit, Hackernews and other Forums have traditionally worked in a voluntary fashion. And this is certainly some cool tech and a showcase of how cryptocurrencies can be useful. That said, this measure will just lead to bots reposting (or in the near future generating GPT-2 like garbage) content in order to farm community points/ethereum. As soon as you add in a financial incentive the whole situation gets ugly.

centimeter 6y ago
There's already a financial incentive - controlling the narrative is valuable. There are already bots posting/generating content on Reddit and other social media sites.
calmworm 6y ago
This coupled with the recent thread will be interesting ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 There are multiple sub-reddits that are essentially just karma farms already. I'm curious how this will play out.
helpimlost 6y ago
Does that mean they shouldn’t even try?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jetrink 6y ago

This brings to mind Carmen Hermosillo's 1994 essay, Pandora's Vox: On Community in Cyberspace[1]. i have seen many people spill their guts on–line, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money–value. [...] i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul. 1. http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299 http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299

soVeryTired 6y ago
Em... aren’t we all doing that for ycombinator right now?
- ses1984 6y ago
  They haven't tried to overtly, aggressively monetize hacker news. Also subjectively the quality of the comments is still pretty high compared to other similar sites.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    Hacker News is a marketing tool for Y Combinator and the companies they invest in - there’s a reason it’s on news.ycombinator.com and not e.g. hackernews.org, and a reason YC’s application periods and companies get hyped up on here. There’s a reason that pg’s writings get discussed ad infinitum. It is also, secondarily, basically the “social media” equivalent of a newspaper - a mechanism for YC to push their opinion of how the world should work and create a consensus around that ideology. Putting ads next to someone else’s content isn’t the only way you can make money off it.
    - mmm_grayons 6y ago
      All true, but there is also a lot of interesting stuff on the site, because there are a lot of interesting people. I don't really care if YC startups get to post at #6 on the front page occasionally. Plus, they're often interesting, so it's "targeted advertising" but done the right way.

127 6y ago

Why does it need to be decentralized? It's kind of stupid that just to avoid legal roadblocks like selling a security, Reddit will use a decentralized blockchain instead of just a database. There's no technical reason for it, just legal and political.

dylkil 6y ago
Seems like this is their first attempt at commoditising engagement. By using ethereum, the tokens are trade-able inside an already liquid system. It also removes trust from the equation.
b_fiive 6y ago
"just legal and political"
- dehrmann 6y ago
  It doesn't look like anything with actual value is being traded? All I got from the story was that "political" means reddit admins can't take away someone's tokens.
Sargos 6y ago
If this was only run on Reddit servers then nothing interesting could be done with it. These BRICKS and MOONS are ERC20 tokens which means they can be traded with other users on things like Uniswap, used as collateral for loans on Compound, and integrated into games such as Cryptovoxels. Being a token enables a lot more use cases than simply being another number in their servers.
carleverett 6y ago
Decentralization isn't really the point - it's going from non-tradable Reddit karma to tradable ERC-20 tokens. Reddit definitely could have built a marketplace that let people trade karma from different subreddits, with a way to deposit and withdraw USD. Like you mentioned though there's the legal challenge of getting licensed as a money transmission service if you do that. But also, why do all that work when all that infrastructure already exists on Ethereum? Plus you get the added benefit that Reddit's tokens can be traded every other asset on Ethereum too.

corobo 6y ago

Bit late for an April Fools, reddit

robmerki 6y ago

Hopefully this can incentivize for better moderation. Many subreddits have become the empires of power hungry "volunteers" who carefully prune wrongthink content.

ardy42 6y ago
> Hopefully this can incentivize for better moderation. Many subreddits have become the empires of power hungry "volunteers" who carefully prune wrongthink content. Wouldn't it make it worse? The more vigorously you ciclejerk, the more the jerk will reward you with a brand new kind of e-points. I think too many people but too much faith in quantified reward mechanisms.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  You're replying to an OP that doesn't care about circlejerking or communities maintaining values above allowing the free speech that they agree with.
- robmerki 6y ago
  You are absolutely right, which is why I was "hoping". I just had an awful experience with a power tripping moderator on a mental health related subreddit. I have no recourse, I just had to move on.

caogecym 6y ago

Can people buy Reddit coin with US dollars? If so, it sounds like an alternative to invest in Reddit and share the success of the company.

flixic 6y ago

I've been part of r/EthTrader that is one of the subreddits that has this feature and had it for about 2 years now. Dynamics within subreddit members got so bad that the subreddit split, and now almost all the action happens in r/EthFinance that does not have any community currency. The main deterioration was actually corruption. Because "karma" had monetary values and "karma monetary policy" could be set by admins, there was massive concentration of wealth for mods, with no incentive to change the rules.

cslarson 6y ago
EthTrader now has 5% of distribution allocated to mods (changed by community vote). Initially it was 15% (I agree this was too high). These two new subs will be at 10% for the mods. Monetary policy was only influenced by mods for the initial distribution which was set at 15%. After that it required a vote and eventually it did get lowered.
OGWhales 6y ago
Oh is that what the silly bot was? I had no idea why I was collecting these donuts and ended up blocking the bot so I wouldn’t see its messages.

brodouevencode 6y ago

All this in the wake of: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/gitwbo/pointing_out_how_much_power_few_people_have_gets/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/gitwbo/p... https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/gjedc1/urootintootin_putin_exposes_moderator_monopoly_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/gjedc1/uroo... https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/gifi24/92_of_the_top_500_subs_are_controlled_by_the_same/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/gifi24/92_of_t... In reddit parlance: "tfw internet points becomes more of a real thing, also <something something political>"

morgancmartin 6y ago
I have long held the position that the role of subreddit moderator should be elected by their respective communities rather than handed over to the first person to grab the namespace. There's no reason this position couldn't be determined in real time either. If a moderator does something against the wishes of the majority of the subreddit members it should be possible for the community to immediately replace the moderator. Blockchain's propensity for governance makes all of this feasible but I highly doubt reddit will ever implement anything of the sort. Political and monetary incentives are already too deeply entrenched from the top down to ever allow the power balances to shift to something truly meritocratic.
- cslarson 6y ago
  To accomplish this the community needs a sybil-resistant way to vote. This was a main, even primary, feature of community points in my opinion, and i hope experimentation in this regard can lead to a new relationship between mods and the communities they serve.
- yreg 6y ago
  How do you decide who gets to vote? Anyone who subscribes to the sub?
  - morgancmartin 6y ago

Taylor_OD 6y ago

I talked to someone years ago who was brought on at Reddit to help do something similar but ran into issues with the coins potentially being construed as equity in the company. Looks like they figured it out.

Sargos 6y ago

/r/EthTrader tried this with Donuts a while ago and it led to a community split to /r/EthFinance from all of the drama. Adding a monetary reward for comments and posts really skews the incentives of the community members who choose to participate. When you tie things like this to governance (your coins affect your vote weight on the polls) it really creates a perverse incentive for commercial products to come in and create astroturfing content to farm coins. I think this is a neat experiment and it will be fun to watch what happens but I'm skeptical that this moves the subreddits in a positive direction.

cslarson 6y ago
It is worth seeing if these negatives outcomes actually occur and of so they are not counterable in some way. If these risks can be mitigated then what is left is perhaps quite a useful tool - a metric for community contribution that can be used to make sybil-resistant governance decisions and monetary reward within a local economy.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  Historically society has not greatly benefited by coupling governance power to wealth, but sure, it’ll work this time...
  - cslarson 6y ago
    Yes, this is why governance in this system should be tied to your original earned points so it cannot, at least directly, be bought. The scheme that this system currently employs, for instance, is weight = min(earned_points, current_transferable_points).
    - SiempreViernes 6y ago
      So the only problem with a plutocratic system is that in real life the wrong people happen to be richest?
  - reidjs 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

uncletammy 6y ago

This isn't the first time Reddit has tried something like this. Back around 2015 they hired a dev called Ryan X Charles to build a Bitcoin based rewards system into Reddit. https://ryanxcharlestimes.com/fix-reddit-with-bitcoin-7da3f85fb9ba https://ryanxcharlestimes.com/fix-reddit-with-bitcoin-7da3f8... It proved to be a difficult task because it was right about the time that the Bitcoin core devs started actively discouraging Bitcoin's use in payments. This paired with a new investment round at Reddit resulted in the project being abandoned. I do believe if they had seen this project through, Reddit would be in a much more healthy state right now

jondubois 6y ago

I already know what's going to happen: 1. They will launch. 2. They will find out that Ethereum doesn't scale. 3. They will move to an off-chain solution. On the plus side, the extra demand generated by Reddit will boost Ethereum transaction fees to insane levels which is going to make the Ethereum price go up (because higher fees = more lucrative mining). Then the Ethereum/Reddit insiders who organized this elaborate corporate scam are going to cash out. I can't believe how quickly people forgot about CryptoKitties. Surely Reddit developers know about Ethereum's limits. It seems that we have entered into a new economic era. It's called "Let's use cryptocurrency as a way to collaboratively fool our corporate employers for personal profit". 1. Find a big corporation whose managers are naive enough to agree to participate in some hyped up and non-scalable blockchain project. 2. Convince your managers to start such a project and do it in such a way that this project is going to boost demand for cryptocurrency X. 3. Employees buy cryptocurrency X. 4. Project launches, cryptocurrency X struggles to handle the load and as a result, transaction fees skyrocket, sharply driving up the token price. 5. Employees sell their cryptocurrency X at the peak. 6. Users complain about high fees. Employer realizes that this is not going to work and abandons the project. 7. Price crashes back to what it was before. Corporate employees are pleased with their profits. Corporation has no clue that they've just been scammed by their own employees. End users of the service who had to actually pay for the transaction fees paid for most of the cost. Companies should be launching their own blockchains, not ERC-20 tokens; that only benefits Ethereum.

cslarson 6y ago
Ethereum can scale with off-chain/on-chain solutions like zk-rollups. With zk-rollups off-chain state can have the same integrity as being on-chain.
- jondubois 6y ago
  I don't buy into these second layer solutions. They are still limited in terms of scalability (they just push the limit back a bit) and operational complexity tends to get out of control and that makes them much more vulnerable to exploits (especially DoS attacks which attempt to prevent or delay state changes and attacks which try to roll-back state changes).

MaximumMadness 6y ago

Does anyone have thoughts on why they included r/Fortnite in the initial beta? My best guess is that it sees such high traffic & is populated with non-crypto focused Reddit users. Let's the company get a big dataset with a group of consumers who aren't predisposed to Crypto. I reached out to Reddit for comment but they just gave me a classic canned response.

lonelappde 6y ago
It's targeted marketing for people with low wisdom and high interest in chasing trends and buying worthless charms.
cslarson 6y ago
This launch involves two subs, r/fortnitebr and r/cryptocurrency, and builds from an existing centralised version that r/fornitebr, among a few others, was already using. So this moves their points onto the Ethereum blockchain. It is indeed interesting to expose non-crypto users to the Ethereum version. For instance, of the two subs r/fortnitebr has so far 4x the number of transactions and new addresses despite being roughly comparable in subscriber size (it has more active visitors by roughly 2.5x). Personally i think that speaks commendably to the ux that Reddit has been able to achieve.

ComputerGuru 6y ago

I don’t understand where the money is coming from? Are VCs providing the initial pot of ETH that will be (re)distributed to power posters?

tyrust 6y ago
It's a token, not ETH. Basically it's a made up ledger that is stored in the Ethereum blockchain. The only way money comes into the picture is that moving tokens around in the ledger costs Gas (think of Gas like mining fees for BTC), which is paid for with ETH. As the article says, Reddit is paying Gas costs for now.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  But I don’t see how any of this scales. How does it go from “VCs covering the tab for now” to something else?
  - tyrust 6y ago
    Neither do I, but does it have to? Like any business, Reddit has ways that it makes money and ways that it spends money. This could be considered valuable [0] enough to the site that they continue to cover the costs of running it. [0] - By driving more traffic, more engagement, better content, and/or other intangibles.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

burtonator 6y ago

Community currencies are REALLY interesting in that it allows for local inflation but also prevents currencies in one community from dominating opposing communities. For example, if there was a currency for 'coal' then the 'environmental' community could basically reject that currency. Right now if coal mining makes a ton of money that's all that matters. They can dominate the local economy.

rewoi 6y ago
Not really. Most 'green' cars are in fact burning coal.

goda90 6y ago

I think a big reason I use Reddit as much as I do, is the availability of two things. old.reddit.com, and third party mobile apps(I use an open source one that I've modified to my liking). This is yet another feature that won't ever work on those. I forget Reddit even has chat, which is available in old.reddit.com, but feels so disconnected from the experience that I don't even care.

theocs 6y ago
Given that these tokens follow the ERC 20 standard, I don't see why other clients can't just integrate support if they want.

Klonoar 6y ago

One thing I never see talked about with this kind of stuff is taxes. e.g, when Stellar was aidropped to Keybase users, that's... technically the start of a taxable chain of events. I donated mine to the Freedom of the Press foundation, and thus had to report it. I had a time of it back during the second crypto craze, which I'm thankfully out of. I know how to report this crap. I am not sure, to this day, whether joe schmoe average user even realizes they have to. So in this case my question becomes: is Reddit foisting a tax liability on their users without them understanding this? Does this ever come up in discussion and I've just missed it entirely?

gjs278 6y ago
no because nobody is going to make more than a few cents
Sargos 6y ago
This is probably one of the first instances that will trigger congress to fix the tax laws for crypto. There will be many more. The current tax code is written for corporate investors and foreign exchange traders, which have little bearing on game tokens, community tokens, and other use cases that will exist. These use cases are not going away and normal people are not going to suddenly file a few hundred pages of transactions on their capital gains forms just because they used some apps.
- Klonoar 6y ago
  I think that's a very optimistic outlook, but I'm not sure it fits with a realistic viewpoint that they're taxed that way because people treat them like stocks, not cash. At any rate, I would like to see Reddit acknowledge this.
CryptoPunk 6y ago
I don't think anyone is getting in trouble with tax authorities for not reporting the loyalty points they receive in promotions. I think tax authorities target enforcement at revenue sources that make sense to tax, and don't pedantically go after people for these kinds of taxable events.

Mindwipe 6y ago

So Reddit will literally pay me to use their official app over a third party client? Yeah, still no deal.

aiyodev 6y ago

Why this is a recipe for disaster: 92 of the top 500 reddit subs are controlled by just 5 accounts. https://files.catbox.moe/q8f49d.png https://files.catbox.moe/q8f49d.png

solotronics 6y ago

I don't mind the little badge trinkets you get on reddit right now to pay for a reward for someones post you like. This isn't that at all this will suck. There will be a ridiculous amount of farming / shilling / astroturfing.

CM30 6y ago

This seems like a bad idea. Any kind of monetary reward for using a community site shifts the incentives of the people that post there, and encourages low quality posts on the off chance they'll get rich from them. Is it as bad as it could be? Depending on how it's implemented no; a system that just rewards points like this automatically is far worse than one that can be used to tip people for good work. But the incentive shifts it brings are similar, and can be very, very bad for the future of a community or social network. Just ask DigitalPoint. Ages ago they used to allow people to earn money from the ads displayed in topics they'd posted in via an adsense revenue sharing scheme. The end result? The site's post quality took a serious nosedive, as people from low income countries signed up en masse to try and earn what they saw as 'easy' money. People used meaningless one liners in every topic on the off chance they'd get ad revenue there, or posted new topics with thin content for the same reason. The site's reputation pretty much collapsed due to this, and even now it's not exactly seen as a place where meaningful discussions take place. Same sort of goes for Quora too. We all know they pay people for posting questions, so now we get a ton of pointless questions that no one actually cares about because there's money involved. So I'm not exactly thrilled by this announcement, nor about the effects it could have on Reddit as a whole if implemented site wide.

ilaksh 6y ago

You have to realize that there is a difference between popular posts and quality posts. For example, I am the main moderator on r/robots these days. When I came in, I got feedback from the users to clarify the content that belongs in the subreddit. They indicated that they wanted about equally to post about robotic art as well as real robots. Right now about 70% of posts are about real robots and 30% are about robot art or something called that. But my point is, the posts that get upvotes are generally not the quality posts. The things that determine upvotes are number one, how easy is it to consume? So if it's a GIF rather than a video, it is likely to receive at least 10 times as many upvotes. Maybe tied for number one, does it have some kind of base emotional effect? Most of the time means, is it sexual or vaguely sexual? Sometimes that means, does it look kind of like a cute baby robot? Another one is, is it reductionistic? In other words, headlines or overall posts that tend to over-simplify something tend to be more popular. Another one: randomness affects vote count significantly. Also, vote manipulation seems to be a factor. When we had some seemingly 'professional' redditors come in that really, really wanted to be mods and I let them for a couple of days, it seemed like they must have been willing to do anything to get their posts upvoted. And also to mod any and all subs that would let them. Which is why I kicked them out. But the point of this is that in-depth videos of real robots will get few upvotes just because they are longer, and the ones that do better may just have good thumbnails but aren't actually good videos. Which is to say that I have been watching the judgement of our community closely for months, and the posts that receive upvotes are absolutely not the best posts in general. I mean, sometimes good ones get upvotes. But sometimes they are ignored and utter trash gets upvoted. It's really changed my perspective on democracy. Sometimes I want to quit being a mod there, but I am not sure the other mods care enough to bother remove the ads and spam that pop up every week or so masquerading as normal posts.