Background

This post details the collective effort of many r/CryptoCurrency users to place a Moon logo on r/place. Those unfamiliar with r/place can read about it here).

The general idea is that Reddit created a blank canvas where every user could place a colored pixel once every 5 minutes. Subreddits competed (and occasionally collaborated) to create pixel art to represent their own communities. According to Reddit, r/place lasted 83 hours, and in total 160M pixels were placed by 10.4M users. At the peak of activity there were 5.9M pixels placed per hour by 1.7M users.

The final image is quite impressive.

A few callouts before the summary begins:

• First and foremost, a huge thank you to u/TheTrueBlueTJ, who not only had the idea to collaborate on a Moons logo, but also lead the effort from start to finish over multiple days.
• Many users contributed to this project by participating in the live chat or placing pixels, but unfortunately I cannot name them all in this post.
• To reward users for their contributions, the moderators decided to give out some rewards in the form of Moons. You can find the details at the end of this post.
• Even though I did not lead the effort, I was asked by those who did to detail the events in a post. Writing isn't my forte, but I thought I'd dramatize the events so hopefully it's a bit more entertaining than just a list of things that happened.

Chapter 1: Failure to Launch

The first step in establishing our Moon was to lay claim to a section of the canvas. But as we soon discovered, this is easier said than done.

Before u/TheTrueBlueTJ stepped in, a small group of users set their target at coordinate (980, 500), directly below r/Monero's logo. We made some initial progress in the outline of the moon, but were overtaken by a motivated group of users from the gaming community r/OriAndTheBlindForest.

Even though their game was developed by "Moon Studios", these users did not take kindly to our Moon and our logo was replaced by their character "Ori". From what I can tell Ori is some sort of ghost squirrel.

First Attempt Below Monero

Next, we tried to move above Monero, but quickly met resistance from a group called r/GreenLattice. Our defeat here was swift and convincing, which is no surprise as this community ended up with the 10th largest image on the entire canvas when it was all said and done.

The team regrouped and identified a location that seemed promising for another push. The community behind it had already created a yellow circle, and if we could add some craters and a brown outline, our work would be done.

Nah Nah Nah

Unbeknownst to us, the image was created by r/WestSubEver, a community that worships Kanye West even more than Kanye West worships himself (a feat previously thought impossible by leading experts).

Soon after we began placing pixels, West's disciples found where the attack was coming from. Their response was to flood our live Reddit talk with an endless stream of semi-intelligible teenagers who would blast the song "Nah Nah Nah" (they were creating the album cover art of this song) before being banned.

At this point it was painfully clear that we were out-gunned (by bots and a larger number of active users) and too disorganized to make a legitimate push anywhere on the canvas.

We needed someone to step up. Someone who could create a battle plan that would turn a bunch of pixel-placers into a well-oiled machine. And luckily for us, those someones arrived right on time.

Enter u/_sweepy and u/jxntb733

Chapter 2: A New Hope

u/jxntb733 had the idea to create a Google spreadsheet with a grid of the Moon to help coordinate our efforts. u/_sweepy took it a step further and was able to give us the exact coordinates and colors of every pixel we wanted to place. With help from others, the final image we decided on was 32x34, a total of 1,088 pixels.

After discussing amongst ourselves, we just needed an area to start drawing. One quickly presented itself. At coordinates (1563, 447) there was a large empty yellow square, directly above a pixelated image of "Pou", a virtual pet from an old mobile game.

The plan was to create a dotted-line border of white pixels to signal to other communities that the area would be contested and that we wanted to occupy the space.

Claiming Space above Pou

The team worked quickly, and since Pou was being overtaken by other communities they had little time to focus on us. Led by a few users, the Moon logo emerged without much interference. We chose the text "xMOON" since when you google it the top result leads to r/CryptoCurrency Moons.

xMOON Completed

Chapter 3: The Megaman Accords

After establishing our Moon, we started to form alliances with the communities around us.

To the south was r/LandoftheLustrous (a Japanese action fantasy manga series). Our group had plans to usurp their pixels to place more text (perhaps "r/cc"). But after some back and forth at the border, a truce was brokered by u/TheTrueBlueTJ.

r/Bitcoin was to the east and r/CostaRica at the north. We never reached out to either group, but many of us were already helping r/Bitcoin and thought we'd have an implicit crypto agreement. Costa Rica never tried to encroach on our space, and they had a pretty cool image of a sloth so we were content with letting them be as well.

​

Costa Rica and Bitcoin

The biggest unknowns were our neighbors to the west, r/Megaman and r/Israel. The two subreddits were the focus of many griefers (users trying to interfere with their images) and had formed a truce amongst themselves.

As Megaman's laser pushed further into our orbit, u/ominous_anenome reached out to the moderators of the respective subs and was invited to a discord channel named "Megaman Accords".

Their group had already formalized a set of agreements in an impressively official document, namely that each would have a "no attack first policy".

Since our Moon logo was largely complete and both these communities had many more bots and users working with them, it was an easy choice to accept. Rogue factions occasionally tried to extend Megaman's laser, but Megaman's mods assured us (with screenshot proof) that they were actively telling their users not to.

At the end of r/place, the Megaman Accords involved a truce between 16 communities.

Section of Megaman Accords Document

At this point we were in maintenance mode and after making some changes with letters and coloring, we created the following image:

Completed Moon (or so we thought)

We thought the hard work was finally over.

Oh how naive we were.

Chapter 4: "The Void" feat. a Twitch Streamer with 200k minions

All people are different. Some like cryptocurrency, while others might enjoy video games, sports, cooking, or anime. And for some reason unclear to me, some apparently like feeding into the ego of a Twitch streamer by following their every command to place black pixels ("the void") over images the streamer didn't like.

Well, that's basically what happened. A certain Twitch streamer noticed our Moons logo and decided to direct his ~200,000 live viewers to destroy it along with some other images.

The Void Destroys the Moon

So while our leader u/TheTrueBlueTJ (who had just gone to sleep) was dreaming about our magnificent Moon logo still intact, the small contingent of active users could do nothing but watch as our 1,088 pixels were turned almost completely black in the matter of seconds.

As our image was targeted, our former ally r/LandoftheLustrous took about a third of the space we previously occupied to complete their images. Another group placed a logo of a colorful “N” in our space as well.. With only a dozen or so people active at the time, we could only sit and watch the massacre unfold.

And *poof* ... just like that our Moon was gone

Chapter 5: Return of the Moon

A day may come when the courage of r/CryptoCurrency users fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but u/NotRyanPoles made sure that it was not this day. Low on sleep but strong of will, he and a few other users slowly but surely recreated the outline of the top half of the moon.

After a couple hours, u/TheTrueBlueTJ awakened from his slumber and concentrated efforts to rebuild our Moon. In particular he led the charge to re-establish about half of the space we previously had by getting help from our allies from the Megaman Accords and defeating a group who had written a colorful "N" in our northeastern territory.

Taking back our space

At this point we realized we couldn't return to our former glory 1,088 pixels since r/LandoftheLustrous was too established at our Southern borders to invade. However, a collaboration ensued when we noticed that the image r/LandoftheLustrous had also included a Moon. u/TheTrueBlueTJ negotiated in their discord and soon came to an agreement to share the space.

We were allowed to expand downwards, as long as their half-moon and red-headed character stayed intact. After multiple iterations, an agreement was reached and we were even allowed to write "xMOON" stretching downwards on the west end of the shared territory

As u/TheTrueBlueTJ and u/jasomniax worked to update our spreadsheet to reflect the new joint drawing with r/Landofthelustrous, u/1969gypsy took the reins and gave instructions to our pixel placers. By the time our finalized pixel image was on the spreadsheet, we had already made significant progress.

In not much time at all we collaborated to produce what ended being our final image

Final Image

Chapter 5: The End

The last few hours were spent defending the Moon from small griefers placing discolored pixels, changing our letters, or messing with the craters. Our only real threat at this point was an attack from a streamer. We monitored a couple of streams, and lucky for us no attack came as the streamers were preoccupied with destroying larger pixel art.

The group speculated that r/place would end around 4pm PST, which is close to the end of the working day at Reddit HQ in San Francisco. And sure enough, right around that time r/place ended with users only being able to place white pixels.

All the pixel art on r/place slowly faded away, and the team could finally rest and watch as the moon faded to oblivion

The end of r/place

Good night sweet Moon.

Epilogue: Moon Prize Announcement

10,000 Moons were allocated as prizes to the contributors of r/place. After taking note of the users who the lead the Reddit talk, we decided to award Moons in the following way:

• 1,000 Moons to u/TheTrueBlueTJ, u/_sweepy, and u/NotRyanPoles
• 500 Moons to u/Jxtnb733, u/jasomniax, u/fan_of_hakiksexydays, u/youtooleyesing, u/1969gypsy, u/Tryin2GetThru, u/gantelope_, u/imaducksfan, u/Deathtolucky, u/hkliv
• 200 Moons to 10 randomly selected users who entered the raffle by posting proof of contribution to r/place. These users were: u/i_sawyer_n00dz, u/bonkosaurus, u/DBRiMatt, u/ktfcaptain, u/cryptosaurusDex, u/Wilhelm_chan, u/Nox_Lucis, u/volvostupidshit, u/Jmp-U235, u/Old-Philosopher8450
• The moderator in charge of distribution is a busy man, so please allow some time for these moons to be distributed.

Congrats to the winners and hope everyone involved had fun creating our Moon.

Anyone who wants to see a timelapse of the events can watch this video created by u/youtooleyesing!