Reddit Notes: Users Getting 10% Equity With Kinda-Sorta Currency

Reddit has just announced an odd initiative that aims to see 10% of the company's shares distributed among users, making true on a promise they made back in September after receiving $50 million in new funding. They're calling it Reddit Notes, and the details are still very slim. The basic idea is that Reddit Notes are to act a kinda-but-not-really form of currency that holds no real world monetary value, but can be used to "tip, donate, or trade" with other users for things of value.

Reddit's plan so far is this: beginning in the fall of 2015, 950,000 notes are to be randomly be distributed via lottery to active users who joined the site before September 30th of this year. Those who receive notes will see them deposited into a virtual wallet, where they then can be used in micro-transactions on the social media site, in other words tipping, donating, or trading.

To further iterate that Reddit Notes are not equal to an actual currency, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian says they are to be seen as a "digital asset." Project manager Daniel Lim has also compared them to a McDonald's Monopoly game. It seems Notes are also to have something in common with bitcoin in that they will use blockchain technology, but they will not act as a cryptocurrency, as Reddit engineer Ryan Charles said they legally can't do.

Other than that, Reddit is being fairly tight-lipped about further details. They have said that there are strategies in place to deal with all the legal, financial, and regulatory hurdles they must get through, although there are many things that could change between now and fall of next year. Reddit adds that the idea for notes was a collective result of thousands of user requests and a few of the company's own concepts.

With all that said, it will be interesting to see how loyal users take to notes, as well as how the experiment as a whole will affect the Reddit community as a whole.

SOURCE Reddit Blog