Reddit’s Blockchain Rewards Will Migrate to Ethereum by 2021

The popular social blogging platform Reddit has confirmed that its tokenized rewards will migrate onto the Ethereum blockchain later this year.

On May 13, Reddit officially revealed its Community Points system, announcing that the feature would be rolled out over two days across “limited communities.”

However, the rewards system will operate on a testnet until autumn 2020 at the earliest.

A Reddit post confirmed that points will comprise ERC-20 tokens, however, the system will not be migrated onto the Ethereum mainnet until after beta.

While the system will initially manifest on the Rinkeby testnet while in beta, a suite of Ethereum-based smart contracts will execute transfers, distribution, and other operations underpinning the reward protocol after the migration.

Points balances accrued in the meantime will also be carried over.

Reddit embraces blockchain rewards

Each subreddit’s points will be donned with a unique name, with the cryptocurrency subreddit’s reward tokens donned "Moons." 

Community Points will be distributed monthly based on individual users’ activity within a subreddit, such as posting or commenting. 

The post states that Moons can be freely traded by users, or used for a number of utilities within the r/Cryptocurrency community. Currently, Moons can be used to display reputation, unlock badges, GIFs, and other features, and add weight to voting in polls.

Reddit targets 250 million Moon supply

Users will also receive an initial distribution based on their score under the existing reputation system, "karma" — with 50 million Moons slated for initial distribution across the r/Cryptocurrency subreddit.

From there, the following month will see $5 million Moons shared among users based on activity — with the total set to decrease by 2.5% each month towards an intended cap of 250 million.

Rumors of a blockchain-based reputational rewards system first surfaced in early April after a screen recording providing an overview of the "points" feature was posted to the r/Cryptocurrency subreddit.

A second video was posted a few days later, comprising a walkthrough of the FAQ for the "Community Points" system — which appeared to confirm that the rewards feature would be launched on Ethereum.