Reddit’s blockchain-based “Community Points” rewards crash after sunsetting

Comments

• givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  While most people likely never noticed the loss of their Community Points, some who actively acquired them, or even bought more on the blockchain, are reporting losses of thousands of dollars. Conspiratorial claims of Reddit having “rugged” the currencies—pulling money from the system before a sudden shutdown—floated on social media.

  I’m gonna laugh so hard if people get insider trading charges on shit coins because of this.

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  • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Someone spent thousands of dollars? Or many users collectively spent thousands of dollars?

    I’m not sure which is more believable.

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    • RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well, it is likely the same as with mobile gaming. A few whales spend thousands of dollarinos on a game because they just happen to be rich.

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• kescusay@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Who could possibly have predicted this?!?

  Oh. Yeah. Anyone with two working brain cells.

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  • Frozengyro@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That’s a high bar, I mean they are still on Reddit after all

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• Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This was obviously going to end up flat on its face, but still, seeing Reddit fail is some satisfying schadenfreude ngl.

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• uid0gid0@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  “take your reputation anywhere you want on the Internet.”

  How is this supposed to work exactly? Does any other site care about your reddit karma?

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  • micka190@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It doesn’t.

    Crypto bros are really fond of the whole “use the blockchain to take your assets from one platform to another” grift, but it:

    1. Doesn’t work if the other platform doesn’t support it
    2. Could be done without a blockchain if both platforms agree to share a database

    It’s like you said: Do any other websites care about your Reddit karma? No. Why would they? It’s only 2 uses are to make people addicted to Reddit through gamifying their opinions and filtering bot accounts by having a minimal karma threshold to post on subs.

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    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This is basically the issue of almost every hypothetical use of the blockchain that advocates throw around.

      “You could move all your skins from Counterstrike to Valorant?”

      OK. Putting aside the unbelievably complex technical and practical issues, why would either Valve or Riot want this? In this scenario Valve is making it easier for their customers to leave, and Riot is effectively giving you a bunch of cool skins for free.

      These people watched Ready Player One, totally ignored the part where the entire premise was “One single corporation controls basically all interactive media and that’s really bad” and decided that this sounded like a cool idea.

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  • Llamadramas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Anyone remember Klout, I think it was this but before blockchain.

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• Hildegarde@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  What could possibly be the point of a decentralized currency that is utterly dependent on a centralized system?

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  • ours@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Just another database posing as “blockchain” to sound hip.

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  • Asudox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Answer: no point.

    Probably to get the normie crypto people to use Reddit.

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    • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      “Normie crypto” sounds like an oxymoron

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• Number1SummerJam@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Classic investment scam- offer a valueless item at a price, get everyone hyped up about the new item which is supposed to gain value, get people to invest, let the insiders in the company know so they can sell off, then get rid of it altogether. I hope they get prosecuted for this.

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  • fubo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Did Reddit actually accept any money for these junk tokens? It kinda sounds like they didn’t, they just issued them and then decided to quit using them. If they did accept money for them, then yeah, sure sounds like securities fraud.

    In general, the cryptocurrency “industry” cannot exist without crime (ransomware, fraud, money laundering, etc.) – but this one just seems like a bad product that was cancelled. Most major cryptocurrencies should be considered to be backed by crime, in the same sense that dollars used to be backed by gold and silver: the underlying value of Bitcoin is that you can use it to pay criminal ransoms or acquire fentanyl. But this one just seems to have been backed by fake internet points.

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• MrNesser@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Why the hell did people buy this crap with real money

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  • StopSpazzing@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Because they didn’t accept monopoly money at the time?

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

  ---

  Reddit’s Community Points, a blockchain-based rewards system for quality posts, comments, and other contributions in a subset of subreddits, is going the way of many similar tokens launched during the crypto boom times: away.

  As of November 8, coins like the “MOON” that r/CryptoCurrency used for tips, premium features, and even voting shares will be removed from users’ Vaults.

  Shortly before 3 pm, MOON had dropped just below $0.02, a loss of more than 85 percent, with fellow Reddit currencies BRICK (r/FortNiteBR) and DONUT (r/EthTrader) seeing similarly precipitous plunges.

  Conspiratorial claims of Reddit having “rugged” the currencies—pulling money from the system before a sudden shutdown—floated on social media.

  Its newer Contributor Program, which rewards users with actual money from the Reddit gold and karma they accrue, is one such example.

  With a certain number of Community Points, moderators could offer “Special Memberships,” which would allow for badges, GIF embeds, animated emojis, or other upgrades.

  ---

  The original article contains 538 words, the summary contains 154 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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• unsignedint@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Is it … solar powered?

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• ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It’s indisputable they failed to think this through, but did Reddit make any money off the attempt alone?

  Is this entire switch to blockchain and then abruptly stopping it a net loss, or a minor, short-term net gain?

  Serious question, because while I have a general understanding of what blockchain is, the whole who benefits/who loses and how that happens thing has become far too complex for me to really follow, so I’m hoping someone here can tell me.

  Net loss? Net gain? Neutral? What’s your best guess, and why?

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  • Eiim@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Likely only Reddit can say. I don’t think Reddit was ever trying to make money off Community Points directly (in contrast to their NFTs), but rather to boost engagement. Whether or not it did, and by enough to offset the costs of starting and maintaining the system, we’ll likely never know.

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    • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You’re probably right on all counts, but thank you for your response. Anymore when people start talking about the never ending shell game of crypto my eyes just glaze over, lol. “We’ll likely never know” seems to be the final line of every crypto story these days, when it comes right down to it.

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    • banneryear1868@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think it really boosted the worst kind of engagement. I found a whole spam network there modded by a single egomaniac who spent their whole life creating subreddits, maintaining different personas on the site, crossposting posts between all their alt accounts and subreddits, to external subs they didn’t control, etc. People who noticed spammy behavior were silenced and many who spoke out were harassed by them through false reports. Admins recently banned all their main subs, and they constantly lost alt accounts for this behavior, but they still operate smaller subs on the site and behave the exact same way.

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  • roboticide@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The belief amongst some is that reddit basically did a rug pull. People could and would buy these crypto points with real money, so reddit likely made money. Odds are it just was not successful outside of niche subreddits, hence:

    Its newer Contributor Program, which rewards users with actual money from the Reddit gold and karma they accrue, is one such example. “Part of why we’re moving past this product is that we’ve already launched, or are actively investing in, several products that accomplish what the Community Points program was trying to accomplish, while being easier to adopt and understand,” Reddit’s director of consumer and product communications, Tim Rathschmidt, told TechCrunch.

    Crypto also hopefully seems to be on the decline, and it’s possible Reddit did not want to appear to be behind the times.

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• avater@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Image

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• Kodemystic@lemmy.kodemystic.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Those karna whores be crying lulz xD

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• malockin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  heh.

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