Community Currency

Home Screen

Inspiration

About 4 years ago, I was inspired by the Community Points beta that reddit launched for r/CryptoCurrency. For me, cryptocurrency is more than just money; it is a tool that allows users to own a piece of their work. Allowing users to own a piece of their community gives a sense of empowerment and belonging. I've worked to re-introduce community points in my own vision—I call it Community Currency.

What it does

Community Currency allows users to earn, spend, and tip points. Points can be earned by creating posts and earning upvotes or completing achievements. Currently, points can be spent on user flairs and collectible avatars, but there is so much more that we'll introduce in the future. Lastly, points can be used to tip comments and posts for other users.

How we built it

Over the last 3 years, this project started as a comment command app known as u/AvatarBot, then evolved into u/CommunityCurrencyBot. I don't mean to brag, but I mean to brag—my bots have held spot #1 and #3 on the reddit bot leaderboard (botrank.pastimes.eu). I've been learning the Devvit environment so that all the pre-existing comment commands could be replaced with buttons. Over the last year, what started as a blocks-test app slowly turned into a multi-feature user economy app.

The technical design leverages a Flask API and a Postgres database to track all the point mechanics. We also use the Python web3 library to perform blockchain transactions. It's important to note that while our app allows users to convert points into cryptocurrency, there is no wallet connection feature. Our connection-less method removes all the worries of security vulnerabilities that traditional crypto apps have. There is also no deposit method, so our app is not behaving as a custodian of funds.

Challenges we ran into

If I had a dollar for every async and formatting error I ran into, I could buy a whole Bitcoin. I pulled out a few hairs, but I finally got the hang of the devvit platform.

What we learned

I learned that the majority of Reddit users really hate cryptocurrency, and I don't blame them. Many users in the mod council have explained to me that they'll never adopt a crypto app. Although my app submission has crypto-integrations, I am working towards updating this app so that communities can have a crypto-free, points-only experience. The app also needs a settings page to allow moderators to customize their own user economy experiences.

What's next for Community Currency

If my app is approved to be published, we'll introduce a limited beta for r/Coneheads and r/CryptoCurrencyMoons to perform more testing and collect feedback.

It is my vision to make Community Currency a flagship app for Reddit and to empower subreddits with their own user economies.

Thanks for reading, and keep Reddit real.

TLDR; Community Currency is a magic internet points app made by a Conehead. Cone? Cone.