- A Reddit/Ethereum Foundation partnership has been announced
- Reddit will benefit from increased decentralization with helping Ethereum scale
- An Ethereum-based Community Points system is already being tested on the site
The Ethereum Foundation and social media platform Reddit have announced a partnership which will see the blockchain platform benefit from enhanced scaling and resources while increasing the decentralization of the Reddit platform. This partnership is already underway as evidenced by the new Community Points reward scheme currently being tested in select subreddits which is run on the Ethereum blockchain.
Reddit/Ethereum Partnership Mutually Beneficial
The Reddit/Ethereum partnership was announced on the social media platform on Wednesday by an admin on the Ethereum subreddit called jarins, who summarized the benefits to both sides:
Through this partnership, we (Reddit) will be increasing our commitment to blockchain, accelerating scaling and resources for the Ethereum ecosystem, and bringing the value and independence of blockchain technology to millions of redditors.
Jarins said that the seeds of the collaboration were sewn during a Scaling Bake Off that the Ethereum subreddit hosted with the Ethereum Foundation last year which illustrated the benefits of blockchain technology to the social platform. The immediate focus of the partnership on “bringing Ethereum to Reddit-scale production”, with further work on Ethereum’s well know scaling troubles continuing to take precedence:
Our intention is to help accelerate the progress being made on scaling and develop the technology needed to launch large-scale applications like Community Points on Ethereum. The scaling technology developed through this partnership will be open-sourced and publicly available for anyone to use.
Community Points ERC20 Already Being Tested
One visible impact of Reddit/Ethereum partnership is through the new ERC20-based Community Points program which jarins says gives “more ownership and control back to users through decentralized technology.” Reddit made headlines recently when its r/WallStreetBets subreddit was instrumental in short squeezing billion-dollar hedge funds through buying up shares of GameStop, Nokia, AMC and more.
