Reddit launches its Community Points tokens

Reddit has launched Community Points, ERC20 tokens based on Ethereum that offer users a way to earn money. 

The official presentation published on their website begins by saying that at first, the Internet was a free frontier, a land of openness, creativity and possibilities, where the first users joined in free and open communities, which were later replaced by platforms loaded with advertising, which spy, manipulate and censor. 

Community Points as a new frontier for Reddit

According to Reddit, this formerly free frontier is now in ruins, and the Internet is dominated by closed platforms that trap people and monitor them. 

The question Reddit is asking is: 

“Is this how the Internet ends? Or will people find a way to take back control?” 

The answer to this question is that, with the right tools, people can break free from these boundaries, claim legitimate ownership of this environment and rebuild stronger, more independent communities, even more so than before, where they can express themselves freely, collaborate in decisions and determine their own future.

The dream, therefore, is to bring back the times of the free frontier, with different, prosperous and independent online communities. In short, a new dawn for the Internet, which can return to being free. 

The first step that Reddit takes in this direction is these Community Points, tokens created specifically to encourage the creation of quality posts and comments. 

How do Community Points work

These points can be used to pay for premium features or as a measure of reputation within the community and will be distributed as a reward to users based on their contribution to their favourite channels, in amounts decided by the community itself. 

They may also be transferred to other users’ Vaults, or to any Ethereum wallet.

Community Points are managed by a suite of smart contracts and transactions between wallets require gas payment. Since most users currently do not have ETH, for the time being, Reddit will cover this cost on the internal Vault.  

Testing has actually already started on two specific communities, r/Cryptocurrency and r/FortNiteBR, so it’s already possible to create a Vault, the local non-custodial wallet on Reddit. 

The tokens of these two communities have been called moons and bricks respectively.

At the moment it’s not yet possible to see the balances of tokens held by other users, but Reddit plans to make the process more transparent by adding the total balance displayed next to each user’s name.