Reddit, the front-page of the internet, has been tinkering with the idea of introducing a sort of monetized point system for the platform for some time. And now, the popular social media platform seems to have pulled the plug on a point-based system that’s aimed to incentivize content creation. 

According to a medium post shared by a Reddit community manager, the company laid out the foundation for the newly-introduced community points. The points were created as a tool that represents ownership of a subreddit and will be available in some subreddits that decide to opt into the points program.

The points will be stored on the Ethereum blockchain in the form of ERC-20 tokens, as such, will be completely owned by the user that earns them. They can be used and accessed independently from Reddit and are owned pseudonymously. 

Users will be able to earn the community points every month by contributing to their subreddits, both in the form of posts and comments. All of the points users earn will be visible next to their usernames as a way of showing each person’s reputation to the public.

The company intends on making points a flexible tool that will be used in different ways by different communities on Reddit. 

There are, however, some previously designated uses for the points according to the company. The points can be spent on buying special memberships in Reddit communities, which will allow users to unlock exclusive features such as badges, animated emojis, and gifs.

To ensure Reddit doesn’t profit from these memberships, each time one is purchased the tokens used in the transactions are burned. This will not only ensure a fair distribution of points, but also make sure that everyone’s share of points goes up, benefiting the community as a whole.

Users without any community points will also be able to buy memberships with fiat currency, in which case Reddit will receive the money and burn some of its own points to compensate, a Redditor explained. 

However, users that have been banned from the website or a specific subreddit will not be awarded any Community Points in any of the distribution cycles on the platform.

When it comes to distribution, points will be handed out every month. The company explained that every 4 weeks, a list of karma amounts (Reddit’s internal reputation points) earned by each user in a subreddit will be published. The community is then given a week to review the list, after which Reddit verifies the wallets of each user on the list. Reddit’s public signature assigned to each user is used to claim points on the blockchain, while users without a cryptocurrency wallet will have 6 months to claim their points before they expire.

The initial distribution will be 50 million Community Points which will be distributed according to karma points earned in each subreddit to date. Over the first year of the program, another 50 million points will be distributed, while the maximum supply of the points will be 250 million.