Reddit launched Community Points on Ethereum’s Rinkeby testnet

On May 13, 2020, Reddit began rolling out Community Points, an Ethereum-based rewards experiment, in r/CryptoCurrency and r/FortNiteBR. The respective tokens were called Moons and Bricks, and users could claim them through a new wallet section, called the Vault, in Reddit’s iOS and Android applications.

The launch mattered because it placed blockchain accounts and transferable tokens inside a mainstream social platform rather than a crypto-native service. One pilot community discussed cryptocurrency, but the other was devoted to the Fortnite video game. That gave Reddit a way to test whether people without an existing interest in digital assets could navigate wallets, private-key responsibility and token-based community features.

It was nevertheless a limited beta—not a migration of Reddit as a whole onto Ethereum and not a live deployment on Ethereum’s main network.

How the pilot worked

Reddit described Community Points as units reflecting participation in an individual subreddit. Members could earn, tip, collect, transfer and spend them. The initial uses included displaying reputation, purchasing special memberships with features such as badges and GIFs, and adding weight to votes in community polls.

Distribution was tied initially to Reddit karma generated through posts and comments, although Reddit said each community would have the final say over its allocation method. In r/CryptoCurrency, the administrator announcement specified an initial allocation of 50 million Moons based on prior karma. Subsequent monthly distributions were planned to begin at 5 million Moons and decline by 2.5% each cycle, producing a supply that would approach a stated maximum of 250 million.

Those figures described Reddit’s announced distribution design on May 13. They were not measurements of circulating market supply, and the record did not establish an exchange price for either token.

Users needed Reddit app version 2020.17.0 or later to establish a Vault. Reddit said the first Moons would soon become claimable by active r/CryptoCurrency contributors with at least 100 karma, while the Vault feature was being rolled out during the day. The Bricks announcement described a comparable process for eligible r/FortNiteBR contributors and expressly stated that Bricks were not affiliated with Epic Games.

Ethereum, but not Ethereum mainnet

Reddit’s Moons announcement identified the assets as ERC-20 tokens managed by smart contracts handling balances, transfers, claims, distributions and membership purchases. A technical review posted by an OpenZeppelin community manager on May 14 independently identified both Moons and Bricks on the public Rinkeby test network and observed the use of meta-transactions through the Gas Station Network.

Reddit said its smart contracts and mobile applications had been reviewed by Trail of Bits. That was a contemporaneous company claim; the reviewed sources did not include a separately published audit report establishing its scope or findings.

Reddit also represented that claimed tokens were controlled by their users and could be sent to other Ethereum addresses. CoinDesk reported that Reddit would temporarily cover transaction gas for people operating through the Vault because many users did not hold ether. External-wallet users could face their own gas requirements.

The crucial limitation was Rinkeby. It was a test network whose ether had no intended monetary value. Reddit warned that tokens sent outside the Vault would appear only in software configured for Rinkeby and the relevant test contract. The company said it planned to move Community Points to Ethereum mainnet after the beta and carry balances forward, but that was a plan rather than a completed migration.

Why the experiment was significant

The May 13 rollout combined a familiar reputation system with user-controlled blockchain accounts, giving Ethereum a consumer-facing test beyond trading and fundraising. Reddit was testing whether tokenized participation could become ordinary product infrastructure while concealing some of blockchain’s operational friction behind its mobile application.

The surviving event-day record did not demonstrate durable adoption, decentralization in practice, security after launch or economic value. It also did not support attributing any movement in ether’s price to the announcement. The defensible conclusion is narrower: Reddit placed Ethereum testnet tokens and wallet functionality in front of two established online communities, creating a meaningful but explicitly experimental bridge between a mainstream platform and public-blockchain technology.