Blockchain technology’s emergence provided platforms with the opportunity to leverage the features and utilize them accordingly. Popular social media platform Reddit has multiple examples of employing blockchain tech. While it has employed different offerings, recently the platform announced the sunset of a long-running and popular service.
r/CryptoCurrency subreddit has made the announcement of shutting down “Community Points” on October 17, 2023. The blockchain-based rewards service is unable to operate further given the scalability issues.
Highlighting the scalability concerns, a Reddit team member noted in the announcement that the platform witnessed the Community Points initiative could have future prospects. But there is no possible way ahead to scale and expand its reach across the platform.
According to the post, the Community Points service will no longer be available after November 8, 2023. The complete sunset will also include a special membership feature.
In a development dating back to May 2020, the inception of the community points system aimed to incentivize users to actively participate in designated subreddits and enhance the overall quality of content on the platform. These points denominated as ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, found their home in Reddit’s exclusive cryptocurrency wallet, christened the “Reddit Vault.”
In a recent update, the Reddit team member clarified that users will no longer see Points in their Reddit Vault and won’t earn more Points within their communities.
After its initial launch on the Ethereum network, the points service subsequently transitioned to the Layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum, enhancing its scalability capabilities.
Within each subreddit, a unique token system was established, featuring Moons (MOON) as the native cryptocurrency of the r/CryptoCurrency community, and Bricks (BRICK) for the r/FortNiteBR subreddit. These tokens allowed users to make purchases, including badges and exclusive avatar items.
In a reaction to the initial statement, the r/CryptoCurrency moderator known as “CryptoMods” expressed their disappointment, noting that they had just become aware of the decision.
Reddit has explicitly stated that Moons will remain in users’ ownership and will not be subject to any burning. The transfer functionality within the smart contract will persist, and Reddit will relinquish control over the contract.
After the announcement, the Reddit tokens MOON and BRICK witnessed a notable decrease in their value. This led to a wave of frustration and dissatisfaction among Reddit users and cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
Sunset of Solana Staking on Lido Finance
Earlier, Lido Finance reportedly decided to shut down Solana staking services on the platform. The decision from the biggest liquidity provider came in the wake of the inability to continue the offering in a feasible manner.
The operating cost to continue the product was more than the earnings to the platform through it. The developers behind the Solana staking protocol were facing financial constraints and Lido Finance DAO decided to not provide liquidity to continue. Hence, the staking services offering saw its end over the liquidity platform.