Popular social news aggregation and discussion platform Reddit is moving swiftly towards tokenization according to a recent communique from engineer Rahul. According to him, the company was moving towards tokenization of Karma points on the platform as well as other features. This is the first big such digitization effort from a major social media player as Reddit looks to preserve its status as an innovation-driven experience.
In a series of tweets by the Rahul, he highlighted Reddit’s digital currency driven efforts. The most important approach is that the social media outlet has added a layer two setup that is not directly connected with the rest of the Reddit systems. This will allow the new tokenization efforts to be independent from the workings of the platform and thus have an independent credibility of their own.
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
For this purpose, Reddit’s partnership with OffChain labs is going to be important. It will allow the creation of a separate blockchain entity that will operate separately from the rest of the workings of the social news aggregation outlet. The blockchain system being deployed to handle this is called the Arbitrum Chain and is the result of the close cooperation between OffChain Labs and Reddit.
As a testnet exercise, the community points from two popular subReddits, r/Cryptocurrency and r/FortniteBr are being moved to the Arbitrum Network. The initial testnet will be scaled for eventual gasless transactions according to Rahul. There is also a protocol in place for upgradation of the blockchain network through community-based decisions, something Reddit has pioneered over the years.
Rather than implementing decisions in a top-bottom approach, Reddit has historically relied on heavy community engagement. As a result, it is primed to adopt a more participative decentralized system where users have a voice and it is heard. So, it is an ideal candidate for tokenization in the near future. With the new Karma system in place, users will be able to debate on any updates that will be enacted as a consensus through forks.
Reddit’s user engagement is much more intense than other social media outlets and it is the go-to-place for innovators and builders. A tokenized Reddit could open the door to a lot of possibilities that were previously unavailable.
Image Source: pixabay.com
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