Scaling Reddit’s Community Points with Arbitrum

TL;DR We are scaling Reddit’s Community Points with Arbitrum! Today we are deploying a new Layer-2 rollup using Arbitrum technology. We will be testing this scaling network on top of Rinkeby, before migrating to the Ethereum mainnet.

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Hello Ethereum world!

Last year, we launched Community Points – tokens on Ethereum that give more ownership and control back to users through decentralized technology. Soon after, we invited the crypto community to a Scaling Bake-Off to help figure out how to bring Community Points to the Ethereum mainnet. As we evolve these efforts, we’re continuing to work towards our commitment to blockchain, helping to accelerate scaling and resources for the Ethereum ecosystem and bringing the value and independence of blockchain technology to more communities and millions of redditors.

Now onto the exciting Bake-Off news...we were deeply impressed by the breadth and quality of the projects that participated in the competition. Thanks to all your hard work, there has never been a more exciting time to be building on Ethereum!

After significant research and in-depth reviews of multiple projects, we found Arbitrum’s optimistic rollups to be the most promising scaling technology for Community Points. Today, we are launching our own Layer-2 rollup using Arbitrum technology. We will be testing this scaling network on top of Rinkeby, before migrating to the Ethereum mainnet.

As we did our research, it was clear that different scaling solutions fit different needs. For us, there are multiple features that make Arbitrum stand out:

• It’s decentralized. Arbitrum derives its security and finality from the base chain. No centralized actors or bridges, which means users are always the ones in control of their Community Points and other blockchain assets, not anyone else.
• It’s developer-friendly. Arbitrum supports the same Solidity smart contracts and the same toolchain as Ethereum. Developers can launch apps on top of Community Points on this network as easily as they can on Ethereum.
• It has broad ecosystem support. Many large projects are launching on Arbitrum, outside of us. A big ecosystem brings together the tools and infrastructure to keep things growing even further.

We have been working closely with Offchain Labs, the team behind Arbitrum, and we are excited to take our collaboration to the next level. We’ve been impressed by the quality of their work, the maturity and thoughtfulness of the team, and the progress they’ve made on bringing optimistic rollups to production. We look forward to continuing to work with them and the Ethereum Foundation to bring Ethereum to Reddit-scale production in ways that will benefit the entire ecosystem.

Today’s launch is a big step forward, but our work is far from done. Our goal is to cross the chasm to mainstream adoption by bringing millions of users to blockchain. If you are a top-notch engineer who wants to build a more decentralized Internet at Reddit-level scale, we want to work with you! No crypto experience required. To learn more about our team and our project, apply on that link or shoot me a PM, I’d love to talk to you.

If you have questions, I’ll be around in the comment section with some friends from Offchain Labs - ask away!