A small step for reddit, a huge leap for crypto. Real Moons!
Reddit has released a cryptocurrency based community rewards system on two of it's subreddits. They have added Moons to r/cryptocurrency and Bricks to r/fortniteBR. Moons and Bricks are on the Ethereum blockchain and will mark a point of exposure to millions of potential users. At the time of writing this r/cc has >1million users and r/fortnite has >1.3million users. Fortnite being an unrelated userbase that very likely is being exposed to wallets and cryptocurrencies for the first time. If even a small fraction of those users set up their free vaults, the amount of active ethereum addresses could skyrocket. At the time the Moons screenshot below was taken there was 773k total supply, and before I had finished writing the article the total supply had grown to over 1.1 million moons!
Moons are earned within the r/cryptocurrency subreddit and can be redeemed for premium subreddit features. Bricks are earned in the r/fortnite subreddit. There was detailed posts explaining the new features that can be found using these links: Moons & Bricks
The badges and emotes are quite noticeable, and these features come with a price tag of 1000 moons per month. There is already quite a bit of excitement surrounding the new reward system and users have been engaging to earn as much as they can.
The Vault functions as a traditional Ethereum based wallet should. Having a very similar experience to Brave Browser's Ethereum wallet.
One of my favourite features is that it allows you to manually back up your private key so that your wallet is always safe no matter what happens to your device or account. This feature makes me feel like I am really using a cryptocurrency wallet within reddit. The ability to backup using a separate password is also a nice feature to keep everything within the app. I however chose to manually back up my private key on paper and stored in a safe place amongst my other wallet backups.
There is also tipping built in! Meaning users will be able to send & receive Moons or Bricks using either their u/username or Vault public address. The experience is incredibly simple. It also shows the profile picture and a confirmation checkmark if the user you are sending to is verified to receive points, which is a nice feature. This has the potential to create an economy within reddit and they already have the population to support it (2.3 million users within just the two subreddits, and presumably expectations to add more). Tipping and Reddit are a natural fit, as has been proven with Banano_Tipbot's consistent success over the last two years, as well as the other succesful tipbots.