Reddit Challenges Users To Submit Ethereum Scaling Project To Expand Community Points Feature

In partnership with the Ethereum Foundation, Reddit is soliciting Ethereum scaling projects from users to support the platform's new community points system.

The points system was revealed last month, allowing users to earn points by providing quality content to their community. Redditors points are stored on an Ethereum-based blockchain, keeping them safe from moderators or even site admin themselves. The points verify a user's reputation within a community and provide access to special features including GIFs, badges, or personalized emojis.

On Thursday, June 18 Reddit posed a challenge to its community: submit a scaling solution that could eventually allow all 430 million monthly Reddit users to participate in community points. Over the past month 17,500 users have earned points and there have been 20,000 point transfers. Unfortunately, there is no prize for cracking the code to scalability.

"This is your chance to earn some fame but, to be clear, there is no prize if your solution is chosen or modified to meet Reddit’s needs. Our lawyer made us write this," the announcement read.

Ethereum developers have been looking to answer a similar question while working on the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet which is set to launch before the year is up. Developers aim to improve energy efficiency, accessibility, and most importantly scalability. The highly anticipated launch will make the switch from a proof-of-work consensus protocol to a proof-of-stake consensus protocol.

Reddit's post highlighted that most existing projects are targeted towards optimizing transfers on an exchange, but for the site managing the costs of obtaining tokens will be more important. The post added that distributing community points has used more gas than all other operations combined, mostly thanks to on-chain storage costs.

PC: Reddit website via https://www.reddit.com/community-points

Software company Connext has already shown interest in participating. Connext is an infrastructure layer built to scale Ethereum and is compatible with many production environments, one announcement states.

"Founder of Connext here - wow, this is awesome! We'll definitely be participating. :-)," Arjun Bhuptani, CEO of Connext, wrote in the comments.

The post asked that all submissions include a live proof of concept, source code, documentation, and summary of costs and resources. Submissions are expected in the comments section of the post by July 31, 2020.

By Emily Mason

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