Again in 2020, Reddit introduced Neighborhood Issues, an initiative that rewarded top quality posters by means of giving them Ethereum-based tokens that may be spent on badges and emojis at the platform.

On the time, the experiment appeared a laugh and allowed customers of the platform to blow their own horns their aptitude in some way that proved that they’d earned it.

Then again, the website online’s management has known as it quits, bringing up a loss of scalability – or somewhat, a ticket too prime for the volume of scalability they would want. The FAQ web page referring to those rewards has since long past darkish.

Having a look For Choices

Tim Rathschmidt – Reddit’s director of client and product communications – introduced that this system would finish by means of early November and said that the price of preserving the device are living exceeded its advantages.

In line with Rathschmidt, just a few subreddits could be significantly suffering from the verdict. The unique mission – which was once to position each and every person on Reddit in contact with blockchain – could be prohibitively pricey.

“You’d have the ability to rely the subreddits on one hand and feature a finger or two left over. Hanging all Reddit customers at the primary Ethereum community, for instance, could be infeasible and prohibitively pricey. Due to this fact, we have now researched closely into answers which might be decentralized, safe and but extremely scalable.”

In 2022, Reddit attempted to chop prices by means of shifting the mission to Arbitrum Nova. Then again, even Layer-2 answers proved to be too pricey.

Because of this, Reddit’s management has determined to finish this system and search for different ways of rewarding its customers.

Unsure Legislation Contributed To The Determination

Any other nail within the Neighborhood Issues coffin was once the unsure regulatory atmosphere surrounding cryptocurrencies, consistent with Rathschmidt.

“Despite the fact that we noticed some long run alternatives for Neighborhood Issues, the resourcing wanted was once sadly too prime to justify. The regulatory atmosphere has since added to that effort. Despite the fact that the moderators and communities that supported Neighborhood Issues were unbelievable companions — because it’s advanced, the product is not set as much as scale.”

Even though it’s not likely that the SEC would have determined to take goal at Reddit of all platforms, the perceived unpredictability of the regulator nonetheless gave the management pause.

For the reason that information broke, cryptocurrency tokens affiliated with Reddit – comparable to r/CryptoCurrencies MOON token – have plunged. MOON, for example, is down 86.4% on the time of writing, consistent with CoinGecko. DONUT, the EthTrader subreddit’s neighborhood issues token, has additionally plunged by means of over 50%.