A new partnership in the crypto space has emerged, involving Sam Bankman Fried’s crypto exchange FTX and social media giant Reddit. The collaboration will allow users to buy Ethereum directly on Reddit and pay gas fees on transactions using community points.
Amy Wu, FTX’s ventures, M&A, and gaming leader, announced the news on Twitter, saying, “Users need Eth for gas fees to transact with their Points on-chain, and FTX Pay allows them to do that.”
Reddit’s “Community Points” transactions are processed on Ethereum, which rewards users based on the quality of their posts. In 2021, community points were moved to the Arbitrum Nova blockchain. Nova employs a data availability committee as part of an innovative technology strategy.
“Today, Community Points are going live, and users can collect and get access to Points earned via FTX Pay,” the announcement read.
The partnership with FTX indicates that Reddit wants to make community points more accessible to non-crypto natives. The feature is to be integrated in the United States, the European Union, Australia, and other markets.
Customers who are unfamiliar with crypto can purchase the crypto required to use their “community points” directly through the Reddit app with dollars.
The points, which appear next to the username, determine a user’s reputation. The more points a user earns, the more influence they have in that space.
Tokens can be viewed in the Reddit Vault wallet on a mobile device or a computer, and airdrops can be collected by paying an Ethereum network fee, or “gas funds”, once earned.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried commented, “FTX Pay’s payment and exchange infrastructure integrates with Reddit Community Points, making the customer experience a more seamless process.”
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For the time being, Community Points are only available in the r/CryptoCurrency and r/fortnightBR subreddits, though Reddit has a waitlist.
Niraj Sheth, Staff Software Engineer at Reddit, said, “We’re always working to empower communities and introduce new ways to use Reddit, and decentralized, self-sustaining blockchain technology allows us to do that. By working with FTX, we’re able to do this at scale.”
The announcement comes on the heels of Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs’ recent launch of the Arbitrum Nova chain. Arbitrum’s AnyTrust technology served as the foundation for the new Arbitrum Nova chain.
