Reddit users may finally have a use for their fake internet points as the platform’s cryptocurrency team adapts its karma points system to an Ethereum-based token.
Rahul Kothari, an engineer for Reddit’s cryptocurrency team, announced the developments in a now-deleted Twitter thread. “Your Karma points will soon be tokens,” he said. According to Kothari, the Reddit team is seeking to “Decentralise. Social. Media.”
Reddit to add value to karma
Reddit’s karma system denotes the number of upvotes each user has. By tokenising karma, subreddits could make collective decisions, weighted by the number of points users hold. Kothari said this could lead to “forking subreddits in disagreements”.
Forking refers to the potential for subreddits to divide, keeping their users in a new subreddit rather than building an offshoot community. This mirrors Bitcoin Cash’s fork from the original Bitcoin blockchain.
Reddit has traditionally been a difficult platform for creators to monetise. Its Reddit awards have no real-world use, aside from granting recipients a month of Reddit Premium. Kothari suggested its users could potentially become earners through curating content, adding new revenue avenues for creators.
By scaling this to the wider ecosystem, Reddit could create 500 million new cryptocurrency users, Kothari said.
MA Interactive Journalism student, interested in gaming, tech, and crypto journalism, focusing on Audience Growth. Once attended a physical NFT art gallery opening.