Discord Backpedals on Ethereum Integration Following Community Backlash

The Discord social media platform has made a U-turn on its plans to integrate Ethereum following backlash from the community.

Discord CEO Jason Citron hinted that there may be integration between the social media platform and Ethereum earlier this week.

On Nov 8 he tweeted a preview that showed Web 3 wallets Metamask and WalletConnect integrations on Discord’s platform. However, some Discord communities were outraged over environmental concerns regarding the energy usage of Ethereum and NFTs.

On Nov 11 Citron confirmed that there were no plans to develop the concept further.

Thanks for all the perspectives everyone. We have no current plans to ship this internal concept. For now we’re focused on protecting users from spam, scams and fraud. Web3 has lots of good but also lots of problems we need to work through at our scale.

Outraged over Ethereum tokens

The concept would have potentially allowed users to exchange ERC-20 tokens and NFTs directly via the Discord app. The move followed suggestions from other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter which have both signaled interest in NFTs recently.

Discord fanatics and crypto detractors spammed Citron’s feed threatening to cancel their subscriptions. Some were also disgruntled at the CEO’s response which largely bowed to the pressure from users:

No current plans” is not good enough. Personally I cannot renew my Nitro sub unless I am sure my money will not go to the NFT market, and many others are in my situation.

Some of the ludicrous claims were quite outlandish such as “You obviously haven’t heard that each NFT purchased results in roughly 3x as many trees that exist on earth being cut down,” and “I kindly request that you do not engage in the NFT scene. I want an app that does not enable a money laundering scheme that is also proven to contribute to climate change.”

The irony is that Discord is a social media platform for gamers, which in itself is a fairly energy-intensive industry with servers and data centers constantly consuming power all across the planet. Additionally, there is the constant production of new gaming hardware and a growing e-waste mountain of old hardware — not exactly environmentally friendly.

Pro crypto arguments

There were plenty of responses in the pro-crypto and NFT camps. Yearn Finance developer “banteg” replied:

Don’t let concern trolls dictate your behavior, build whatever you feel is right. Discord is very aligned with Web3 values, there are a lot of people who would appreciate deeper integration and new experiences.

Others suggested that Citron not let “uneducated teenagers” make decisions for him.