Reddit Decides to Discontinue Blockchain Reward Tokens MOON and BRICK

The widely-used social media platform, Reddit, has declared its intentions to discontinue its blockchain-based community point reward tokens, MOON and BRICK, by the upcoming November.

A Reddit representative unveiled this move in the r/CryptoCurrency subreddit on October 17, explaining that while Community Points had potential, scaling it extensively on the platform became unviable due to limited resources and regulatory challenges.

Reddit had incorporated Community Points as a core component, aiming to incentivize users through rewards for valuable contributions. These rewards offered users a sense of ownership in their respective communities.

The tokens, initially introduced in 2020 as ERC-20 tokens, boosted the platform’s growth and played a significant role in enhancing user interaction. However, the rewards will come to a halt by November 8, terminating point earnings in the Reddit vault.

For users, these points could be exchanged for exclusive Reddit features, like badges, emotes, and GIFs. Alternatively, they could be converted to Ethereum tokens within Reddit’s Vault, its proprietary crypto wallet.

Tim Rathschmidt, Reddit’s Director of Consumer and Products Communications, mentioned, “At that point, you’ll also no longer see Points in your Reddit Vault nor earn any more Points in your communities; the resourcing needed was unfortunately too high to justify. The regulatory environment has since added to that effort, though the moderators and communities that supported Community Points have been incredible partners—as it’s evolved, the product is no longer set up to scale.”

Reddit faced significant scalability hurdles in 2022 with the Community Points using the Ethereum network, notorious for its elevated transaction fees. This necessitated a transition to the layer-2 scaling solution, Arbitrum.

Earlier in the year, Reddit had already ceased its coin system, which allowed users to purchase Gold and similar rewards for others. This action came in the wake of API changes that sparked a 48-hour subreddit blackout and faced substantial backlash from the platform’s user base.

Subreddit-specific tokens, like Moons (MOON) for r/CryptoCurrency and Bricks (BRICK) for r/FortNiteBR, had allowed users to buy exclusive subreddit items. Nevertheless, the recent shifts have undermined the value of these tokens. As a consequence, many holders offloaded MOON and BRICK, leading to significant price drops. Current data from CoinGecko shows MOON’s price falling by 84% to $0.035, while BRICK experienced a 59% drop in the last day, now valued at $0.041.