Sunsetting r/ethtrader’s Donuts

TL;DR: We made the difficult decision to sunset Donuts. As of today, you'll no longer see your balance on user flairs, nor earn any more Donuts on r/ethtrader.

Introduction

Donuts have been one of the earliest and most unique experiments in SocialFi – they offered onchain rewards, tipping features, and governance – all of this directly within r/ethtrader.

Over the years, Donuts became a fully independent system – maintained by volunteers and contributors. None of this would've been possible without the community that built, used, and believed in them.

Why sunset

After the sunset of Reddit's Community Points Beta and Special Memberships, the environment for operating Donuts became more restrictive over time.

Reddit kept implementing limitations that made it progressively harder for us to maintain and scale the project.

Over the past year, we had a full assessment of the project – we weighed its pros and cons. Ultimately, we concluded that we no longer have the resources needed to keep the project running.

To keep the project alive, we'd need to continue selling Donuts to cover operational costs – this would add constant sell pressure in a market with very limited demand. This created an unsustainable cycle.

Plus, over time, contributors stepped back or changed their focus to other projects, reducing our capacity to maintain and scale the ecosystem.

And so, after this one-year evaluation, it became clear to us that continuing under current conditions would not be viable long term. Instead of prolonging a dying project, we chose to end the project responsibly.

More info and what we'll do

As of today:

• u/donut-bot will be shut down.
• All DONUT-related features on r/ethtrader will end.
• User flair balances will no longer display.
• Tipping commands will no longer work.
• There will be no more distributions.

To finalize the sunset:

• We've withdrawn our LP position on Arbitrum One.
• We'll burn all Donuts held in the treasury.
• We'll renounce contract ownership.

After this, Donuts will become hard capped and deflationary – their future will be entirely determined by the market, not by us.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this journey.

All of you helped build one of the earliest real-world examples of SocialFi – a system where content, governance, and incentives came together in a meaningful way.

The experiment may be ending – but the lessons and impact will remain forever.