Greetings y'all. Something has been gnawing at my mind ever since I saw it a couple of weeks back. Today, I'd like to share my objective (yeah, right) views on why we might be making history with Reddit Community Points (yes, MOONs) and the writings are already on the wall.

Reddit Community Points

So, I'm sure we're all aware already of the fact that Reddit will be scraping the existing coin and awards feature that many of us have grown to love, which is the reason why you have been seeing an orgy of awards lately on Reddit. People will no longer be able to buy or earn (through Premium membership) coins for awards and will have until 12th September to finish using it up. However, they did not announce any other features that would replace this award system and only mentioned that:

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In the coming months, we’ll be sharing more about a new direction for awarding that allows redditors to empower one another and create more meaningful ways to reward high-quality contributions on Reddit.

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Now, some of us (incl. me) have speculated that Reddit would start going in the direction of using Reddit Community Points as a replacement for the award system. In fact, an article recently published on 12th July (2 days before Reddit announced that they were scraping the award system) has documented that during an APK teardown, they discovered codes that suggested Reddit is exploring ways to incentivize users for quality contributions. The code reads:

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Fake internet points are finally worth something! Now redditors can earn real money for their contributions to the Reddit community, based on the karma and gold they've been given. How it works: * Redditors give gold to posts, comments, or other contributions they think are really worth something. * Eligible contributors that earn enough karma and gold can cash out their earnings for real money. * Contributors apply to the program to see if they're eligible. * Top contributors make top dollar. The more karma and gold contributors earn, the more money they can receive. 

Another piece of the code also writes:

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 Once you hit the payment threshold, you'll automatically be paid out via your Stripe account. * Approximate calculation before fees. Exchange rate and payment thresholds are subject to change. 

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It seems like there would be an off-ramp option through Stripe for contributors on Reddit that allows them to cash out when they hit a certain payment threshold. What I found to be extremely coincidental (maybe it's not) is that X (formerly known as Twitter) also recently launched a Revenue Sharing Program that rewards creators for their share of ad revenue. This program has a very similar model to what is described in the Reddit APK code and also uses Stripe for payouts. It could just be that these types of business models will become increasingly popular and Stripe is a platform of choice to execute these plans.

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The Vault and Reddit Avatars

I'm sure we're all very familiar with what the vault is and what Reddit Avatars are. I know a lot of people on this sub are very against Reddit Avatars and how Reddit has handled the launches for each Gen so far (specifically Gen 3). However, Reddit Avatars play a more significant role than you might think in Reddit's shift towards Web 3 adoption. In 2022, Reddit's CPO Pali Bhat revealed there were already 3 million Reddit Vaults opened, mainly for purchasing Avatars. Based on today's analytics, Reddit Avatars have successfully onboarded about 13.4 million users so far. Clearly, Reddit Avatars have helped a lot in terms of adoption for many users on this platform and it is only the beginning.

Onto the main point of my post today. In July, there was a contract deployed that hinted at a new release of avatars (likely free drops due to their mint numbers) named Level Up x Reddit Collectible Avatars. Usually, the avatar drops are very close to when the contracts are deployed. But, this particular free drop has been quiet and no news of a free drop has been announced so far.

Level Up X Reddit Collectible Avatars

So they look nice and all. But, what is perhaps hidden in plain sight is the icon for the vault. As you can see below, the vault icon is visible in all of the avatars, suggesting a link between the drop of this avatar collection and the vault.

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The vault icon is visible in all of the avatars.

My hypothesis: This new collection is linked to the release of the new Reddit Community Points program that awards contributors on Reddit and will likely be released at the same time. Seeing as RCPs are basically distributed and stored in Reddit Vaults, it would make sense that the drop of the new avatars would coincide with the adoption of RCPs and would be used to generate/encourage more users on Reddit to open up a Vault wallet. This would then be the foundation of the new Reddit Contributors Program.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you have made it to this part of the post after going through the entire thing. If not, the TLDR for this post is that despite the hate for the Reddit Avatars on this sub, I believe it is strongly connected to Reddit's vision for Web 3 adoption and the future of this platform. Reddit will likely launch a contribution program that rewards Redditors with Reddit Community Points that can be held or sold for money. The clues for this lie in the new free Avatar drop. The only flaw in my hypothesis is that RCPs cannot be sold without liquidity being provided. If it is anything like X (Twitter) is doing, the money being dispersed from the Contribution Program would come from ad revenue and/or premium memberships. Instead of cashing out immediately, Reddit Community Points would be a buffer for users to hold these tokens in their vault and Reddit itself will be our liquidity provider (idk how this would work in terms of regulations and upcoming IPO). At the very least, the recent ToS change has suggested that trading these RCPs is possible. I still cannot figure out how MOONs will play out in this scenario, but I'm hopeful because MOONs will always have the first-mover advantage here. Many users will flock to this sub for knowledge about their new RCPs and will inevitably be exposed to MOONs. The future of MOONs is bright.