Reddit co-founder bets big with Solana after $100M investment to build social media projects

  • Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is joining Solana with a $100 million investment to be used to build social media projects on the Solana blockchain.
  • Reddit is betting on Ethereum with the social media news aggregator set to turn its Karma points into Ethereum based crypto tokens.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has confirmed recently that he is backing social media projects on the Solana blockchain. Ohanian who made these comments in a chat with Solana co-founder Raj Gokal at Breakpoint Conference in Lisbon, further revealed that he is investing around $100 million in these projects.

The Reddit co-founder invests in Solana despite praising Ethereum in the past and confirming that he owns a lot of the second-largest cryptocurrency.

Read More: Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian praises Ethereum, reveals he owns a lot of ETH

Ohanian who is investing through his Seven Seven Six venture stated this about the partnership;

With a high-performance blockchain like Solana, there is an unprecedented opportunity to fuse social and crypto in a way that feels like a web2 social product but with the added incentive of empowering users with real ownership,

This comes as the platform he co-founded reportedly moves to tokenize karma points and onboard 500M new users. The platform seeks to engage with users through cryptocurrencies. For this, Reddit will allow users to convert users’ karma points into Ethereum-based (ERC-20) tokens. Early in the year, the platform launched its own layer-two rollup using Arbitrum technology for its rewards points, named Community Points. It noted at the time;

Your Community Points exist on the blockchain, independently of Reddit, where they can only be controlled by you (just like Bitcoin (BTC) !).

In addition, Reddit is on the lookout for a senior backend engineer for a platform responsible for “millions of users to create, buy, sell and use NFT-backed digital goods.” The job posting has suggested to the crypto community that the platform is working to launch an NFT platform.

Related: Reddit chooses Ethereum Layer-2 Solution Arbitrum to scale its services

For many years, centralized social media platforms have dominated. But now blockchain technology has allowed for the development of decentralized social media platforms. Unlike centralized platforms that take up much of the revenue generated through advertisements, decentralized platforms will allow for fair financial rewards to contributors.

With no platform yet to hold a grip of the decentralized space, Ohanian is backing Solana projects to host the biggest of the decentralized social media platforms.

The decision to work with Solana comes as no surprise with the network enjoying massive attention from both institutional investors and retailers. Last week, the native token (SOL) marked its all-time high.

Related: Investor backing, NFT, and DeFi Boom help push Solana (SOL) to new ATH

Ohanian who is married to American professional tennis player Serena Williams earlier in the year resigned from Reddit’s company board. This was in an effort to ensure that the board is more diverse urging his seat to be replaced with a black candidate. Notably, his wife Serena Williams has invested in both NFTs and NFT platform, San Francisco based Bitsk, with American rapper Jay-Z.

Read More: NFTs latest: American rapper Jay-Z gets in on NFTs after investing in Bitski