Reddit’s blockchain-based “Community Points” rewards crash after sunsetting::Tokens based on subreddit reputation saw dips over 85% after the announcement.
It doesn’t.
Crypto bros are really fond of the whole “use the blockchain to take your assets from one platform to another” grift, but it:
- Doesn’t work if the other platform doesn’t support it
- Could be done without a blockchain if both platforms agree to share a database
It’s like you said: Do any other websites care about your Reddit karma? No. Why would they? It’s only 2 uses are to make people addicted to Reddit through gamifying their opinions and filtering bot accounts by having a minimal karma threshold to post on subs.
This is basically the issue of almost every hypothetical use of the blockchain that advocates throw around.
“You could move all your skins from Counterstrike to Valorant?”
OK. Putting aside the unbelievably complex technical and practical issues, why would either Valve or Riot want this? In this scenario Valve is making it easier for their customers to leave, and Riot is effectively giving you a bunch of cool skins for free.
These people watched Ready Player One, totally ignored the part where the entire premise was “One single corporation controls basically all interactive media and that’s really bad” and decided that this sounded like a cool idea.
The more obvious flaw is not why would they want to do it but why would they want to do it with blockchain.
Basically every software engineer laughed their ass off once they realized they were serious about that stuff.
It just shows such an intense lack of understanding of how software and business works. Thinking that blockchain is just some magic powder that can bring their wishes to reality.
It’s what happens when the only use case for a tech product is its ability to interest venture capital.
We’re seeing the same thing now with “AI”
