Reddit to reportedly tokenize karma points and onboard 500M new users

American social media giant, Reddit, may soon convert users’ karma points into Ethereum-based (ERC-20) tokens and onboard 500 million new crypto users in the process, according to a newly hired Reddit engineer.

A series of tweets made by Reddit engineer, Rahul, highlights Reddit’s efforts to improve user interaction through various cryptocurrency initiatives. As Cointelegraph reported in July 2021, the platform had launched its own layer-2 rollup using Arbitrum technology for its rewards points, named Community Points. According to the website:

“Your Community Points exist on the blockchain, independently of Reddit, where they can only be controlled by you (just like Bitcoin (BTC) !).”

How will we pull this off?Reddit has partnered with @OffchainLabs (@arbitrum) and created our own separate instance. Community points for 2 subreddits (~80,000 users) are already on Rinkeby Testnet on our Arbitrum network (separate to Arbitrum One).

— Rahul (@iamRahul20x) November 3, 2021

Reddit's partnership with Offchain Labs’ Arbitrum network will allow for the creation of a separate blockchain instance, to be used for storing users’ tokenized community points. 

Currently, the community points of roughly 80,000 users from two subreddits — r/cryptocurrency and r/FortNiteBR — have been moved to the Rinkeby Testnet on the Arbitrum network, which according to Rahul, will be scaled for gasless transactions:

Moreover, Reddit communities will also have the ability to fork blockchains through community-based decisions, in addition to allowing the scope to explore new monetization strategies with Web 3.

“When we all pull this off, we would onboard 500M web2 users into web3 and then there is no going back. Let me say that again - 500 million new crypto users.”

Related: Reddit may be preparing to launch its own NFT platform

Reddit has been home to a number of community-driven crypto initiatives including Dogecoin (DOGE) fundraisers and continues to cater to a vast crypto community.

On Oct. 22, Cointelegraph reported on Reddit’s lookout for a senior backend engineer for a platform responsible for “millions of users to create, buy, sell and use NFT-backed digital goods.” According to Reddit via the job posting:

“With every new NFT project, a vibrant community of owners pops up with it. Over time, we believe this will only grow, and NFTs will play a central role in how fans support their favorite creators and communities.”

Other social media platforms including Twitter and TikTok have also started allowing NFT exposure to its users, signaling a bigger possibility of crypto’s mainstream adoption.