Reddit has been aggressive in its push to combine blockchain technology with their widely used social media platform. Recently, Reddit issued free NFTs that are minted on the Polygon blockchain to it’s top contributors as a way to market the release of their premium collectible NFT avatars. Shortly after the sellout of the first batch of collectible avatars, prices on the secondary market began to skyrocket and in some cases sales of above $2,000 for a single Reddit NFT were reported.
The popularity of the new launched NFTs has overshadowed what I believe to be a much bigger milestone in the fight to bring crypto to the masses, the monetization of upvotes/karma.
Make people listen to your incoherent rambling and get paid for it. Don’t be a dummy, start a blog and work towards financial freedom. Some blogs earn up to seven figures a month. Siteground plans start at $2.99 and setting up a blog takes under 10 minutes.
Reddit by the Numbers
First of all, let’s talk about Reddit’s userbase. It’s astonishingly massive and one of the largest social media platforms on the internet with over 430 million active users reported in 2020. Many of it’s users may be entirely unfamiliar with the existence of blockchain tech which equates to ample opportunity for Reddit to convert a large chunk of its userbase to the dark side…sorry… I mean the incredibly profitable and not at all horrifyingly depressing world of crypto. I jest, in all seriousness, things are not great right now, the world is on fire and markets everywhere are plummeting but I believe in the long term viability of the crypto markets and I feel like great things are on the horizon. Full disclosure: My definition of “on the horizon” is about 1 – 2 years, I’m talking about you 2024, don’t you dare let me down you bitch.
Social Media Giants Turning Towards DeFi
With Facebook laser focused on bringing Mark Zuckerberg’s dead eyed avatar to the metaverse and Reddit looking to incorporate more blockchain utility into its platform, crypto seems to be gaining traction in the journey of mainstream adoption.
Reddit Launches Cryptocurrency to Reward Users
Here is a brief history of Reddit moons as stated by u/ultron290196, as not to be confused with the other 290195 Ultrons.
In December 2019, The first ERC20 token natively linked to a Reddit subreddit was born called DONUT. This marked the first official link between Reddit and Ethereum’s infrastructure. Reddit was periodically distributing DONUT tokens based off the Reddit Karma earned from posts in r/ethtrader.
Reddit ran into scaling issues with the process due to high gas costs. Donuts were like the alpha test. They’re currently on the Ethereum mainnet. Then came the beta: r/cryptocurrency Moons and r/FortniteBR Bricks.
They are both ERC20 tokens as well. But they are on the Rinkeby Testnet and run on the XDai side chain which is more centralized but prevents the high gas fees. In the beginning you could claim and tip moons without the need to pay gass fees but after they migrated to the mainnet you now have to pay gass fees to move or tip moons.
r/cryptocurrency moons are distributed based on your community contribution in our subreddit (earned Karma). The ratio currently is around 0.44 moons per karma. Total moon count is hard capped at 250 million moons. You can claim them by opening your moon vault in your official Reddit app. Moons are now on the main-net, rejoice! This is great news for all you moon heads and means that big things could be on the horizon.
Reddit user u/ultron290196 (outdated information was edited or removed)
I have no god damn idea what fortniteBR bricks are so this article will focus exclusively on Reddit Moons, glorious and beautiful Moons that are, as far as I’m concerned, the unofficial but super official cryptocurrency of Reddit.
Moons can be earned exclusively by submitting top-tier shitposts…I mean top-tier comments and posts to the r/cryptocurrency sub-reddit. The amount of moons you earn depends on the amount of karma you have received during that period. The ratio of Moon to Karma changes from month to month and depends on a multitude of factors but lately it has been around 0.6 – 0.8 Moons per 1 karma received.
Think about that, you take a few minutes every day to participate in discussions with other crypto degenerates, have a few laughs, learn a few tricks, and at the end of the month you’re rewarded with crypto that you can sell or accumulate until the markets start to show signs of life again. Some users have been able to earn hundreds of thousands of moons since the inception of this program and with moons currently trading at just under 10 cents per moon, that seems like toilet time well spent. At the peak of the bull run last year, moons hit 28 cents briefly, which is just a preview of things to come.
Need extra money for some bills or how about some extra money to invest into crypto? Create a free SwagBucks account and make money everyday for completing surveys, web searches, or even playing games.
What Can You do with Reddit Moons?
You can sell them of course, hoard them, stare at them, tip them to other users, and uh…pet them…digitally. But really, this is just the beginning of the crypto experiment on Reddit and I foresee an abundance of crypto utility being slowly introduced to their platform. Just the fact that I can sell coins that I earned from using a website I was going to be using anyways feels pretty good and might serve as the blueprint other large social media website soon follow.
For the most part, the social media giant has been pretty tight lipped about their future crypto plans but recently the CEO of Reddit touched on its plan to mint 10 million free NFTs for their active users. Of course, these free NFTs are being used as a marketing tool to draw awareness and get people talking about NFTs and blockchain tech and you know what? It’s working. Free NFTs have caused a positive shift towards acceptance in some subreddits while causing other subreddits to declare war on blockchain jpegs, but people are talking about it and that’s all that matters.
Read More : The best side hustles you can do online
In the long run, I think this move by Reddit will prove to be a very shrewd one and help considerably in shifting market sentiment surrounding digital collectibles. Pokémon cards sell for six figures and no one bats an eye but an NFT (digital card) sells for six figures and everyone loses their mind and starts ripping out their eyebrows. It’s nonsensical to hate on digital assets to that degree – its the equivalent of hating Nickelback in 2006 because it’s edgy and your friends told you to. Love you Chad.
My personal position: $10 – $50 NFTs: Good affordable fun with some pretty nifty utility that can spread awareness and seed adoption.
$400,000 NFTs: Risky and not something I’d personally buy or recommend buying but I fully expect the trend of flexing and or money laundering ridiculously expensive NFTs to continue for a little while yet.
Downsides to Monetizing Comments and Karma
Of course, Reddit’s plan is not without potential pitfalls. When you add a monetary value to comments and discussions you may remove the organic nature of a conversation. People may be hesitant to say certain things for fear of being punished and losing out on earning crypto which means you may create a hive mind where everyone follows the heard like a braindead zombie with pockets full of Bitconnect coin. In other words, actual conversations where ideas and topics are challenged could become a thing of the past rendering discussions largely useless and filled with the same 5 or 6 lazy catch phrases that are all but guaranteed to receive upvotes.
Reddit’s decision to introduce a crypto reward program risks creating a new subclass of user, the moon farmer. The moon farmer doesn’t enjoy participating in thoughtful discussions about market sentiment or the debate between POS and POW. The moon farmer only cares about filling their greedy bottomless pockets with as much moon crypto as they can. The moon farmer has a vocabulary of 17 words and 3 catch phrases that they spam day in and day out to receive precious and valuable updoots that are converted into moons and lastly sold on the open markets.
This kind of user threatens to undermine what makes Reddit so great and really the only reason it exists, thought provoking discussion. It sounds like I am against Reddit’s decision to introduce crypto to their platform, I should re-iterate that I am not, in fact I think it could prove to be one of the best decisions they will make. Those who don’t adopt get left in the dust and it’s clear that Reddit doesn’t intend to sit on the sidelines of the crypto boom. However, I think it’s important to point out potential pitfalls so we can better learn how to avoid them and improve current lines of thinking.
Time will tell if Reddit users should get use to seeing crypto friendly features or if it will turn out be a failed experiment in the long run. Personally, I don’t see how a move like this can backfire and choosing to not embrace new trends or technologies is a great way to get left behind.