What happened
When Reddit announced a $50 million funding round in September 2014, it paired the news with an unusual pledge: the company said it intended to give roughly 10 percent of the round back to its user base. CEO Yishan Wong explained in the funding thread that Reddit planned to create a cryptocurrency, backed in some way by shares, and distribute it to the community, with investors explicitly agreeing to the arrangement as part of their terms.
The project, branded 'Reddit Notes,' envisioned distributing about 950,000 notes through a lottery to active users, with eligibility tied to activity before the funding announcement, and a planned giveaway in the fall of 2015. Reddit staff quickly acknowledged legal obstacles, noting it would likely be illegal to make the notes directly exchangeable for shares in a private company. The ambitious experiment in user ownership ultimately stalled and was never delivered, but it stood out as one of the earliest attempts by a major platform to treat its community as stakeholders rather than just an audience.