What is Reddit’s MOON Community Cryptocurrency and How to Convert It to USD
I will remember September 2020 as the month where cryptocurrency allowed platform participation to turn into actual monetary value.
It started with Uniswap’s surprise UNI airdrop on the 18th of September where UNI tokens were distributed to users that used the Uniswap protocol in different ways in the past and continued with the new ability of converting Reddit Moons ($MOON) into the USD backed stable coin DAI.
I have witnessed a lot of confusion regarding the MOON to DAI conversion process so I feel like a detailed guide is going to be beneficial to some.
First, I will provide a brief intro to MOON. If you already know all about it, feel free to skip straight to the “Converting MOON into DAI” section.
Intro
What are Reddit Moons ($MOON)?
At the start of May 2020, Reddit introduced a new feature known as “Vault”. The Reddit vault is essentially an Ethereum based cryptocurrency wallet that is incorporated into a user’s Reddit account and its purpose is to store new subreddits based community tokens. The most intuitive subreddit to start this experiment in was r/Cryptocurrency and it was no surprise that the first reddit community token was launched for this subreddit.
This new token, known MOON was distributed to past r/Cryptocurrency participants and is being distributed to users every 4 weeks. According to Reddit “Moons are a new way for people to be rewarded for their contributions to r/CryptoCurrency. They represent ownership in the subreddit, they are tokens on the Ethereum blockchain controlled entirely by you, and they can be freely transferred, tipped, and spent in r/CryptoCurrency”.
The MOON contract was deployed to the Rinkeby testnet Ethereum network which means that you had little to do with the Moons you received for your participation efforts as testnet coins have no value.
A wild utility appeared
On September 23rd, a thread named “New Moons feature — convert to Coins!” was pinned in the r/cryptocurrency subreddit and it described how Moons can now be converted intro Reddit coins. Reddit coins are used to award posts and comments. They are not new, users were able to purchase Reddit coins using fiat money for a while now.
Suddenly Moons had utility. By allowing Moon coins to be converted into a coin with actual value, they inherently became valuable. Therefore it is no surprise that money markets that allow converting MOON, which is a a testnet cryptocurrency into mainnet cryptocurrencies that have value were created.
Click here to see the current price of MOON
Converting MOON into DAI
Pre-requirements:
In order to convert MOON into DAI you will first have to own some:
- Moons (obviously)
- A small amount of ETH in order to pay some gas fees
- A small amount of DAI (~5) in order to convert Dai to xDai and pay some fees in the xDai network. If you don’t have any DAI but have some other cryptocurrency you can swap it into DAI using a most of the exchanges. Binance and Uniswap are prominent ones
- A small amount of Rinkeby testnet ETH. You can get it for free using https://faucet.rinkeby.io or https://rinkeby.faucet.epirus.io
Transfer your Moons from the Reddit Vault to your Metamask wallet
If you don’t have a Metamask wallet installed:
- Go to https://metamask.io/download.html
- Click the Chrome or Firefox logo, to add Metamask to your browser
- Now Open the Reddit app on your mobile
- Open the Reddit Menu (Click your profile picture in the top-left)
- Click on Vault
- Click on the 3 dots next to Vault, once in the Vault Page
- Click on Recovery Phrase and Copy it to your clipboard
- Send the Recovery phrase to your computer in a secure manner, so you can access it on the computer you have installed Metamask
- Once Metamask is installed, click “Import using account seed phrase”
- Paste in the seed phrase you got from your Reddit Value
- Set a password, and continue, you should now be logged in to Metamask
If you do have a Metamask wallet installed:
- Open the Reddit app on your mobile
- Open the Reddit Menu (Click your profile picture in the top-left)
- Click on Vault
- Click on arrow button in the top-right
- Enter your Ethereum address from Metamask in the input that days “User or Ethereum Address”
- Choose Moons in the dropdown and enter the amount of coins you would like to send
- Click “SEND MOONS”
Great job! Notice that the transaction may take a couple of minutes until it’s completed.
Seeing your Moons in your Metamask wallet
Choose the “Rinkeby Test Network” from the Network dropdown.
If you are able to see your Moons in your wallet, skip ahead.
If you can’t see your Moons:
- Click “Add Token”
- Click “Custom Token”
- In the “Token Contract Address” field, put in 0xDF82c9014F127243CE1305DFE54151647d74B27A
- Click “Next”
- Click “Back”
- Click “Custom Token”
- In the “Decimals of Precision” field, put in 18
- Click “Next”
- Click “Add Tokens”
You should now be able to see your Moons balance within Metamask on the Rinkeby Test Network.
Set up the xDai network in your Metamask wallet
Click on the Network dropdown and choose “Custom RPC”, fill in the following details:
- Network Name: xDai
- New RPC URL: https://rpc.xdaichain.com/
- ChainID (Optional): 100
- Symbol: xDai
- Block Explorer URL: https://blockscout.com/poa/xdai
- Click on the “Save” Button
Very good! We can now start with the conversion.
Convert Dai to xDai
You will need some xDai in order to pay fees in the xDai network, in order to get some:
- Go to https://dai-bridge.poa.network/
- Link your Metamask wallet, in the top-right
- Switch to the “Main Ethereum Network” wallet
- Put in 5, and click Transfer
- Confirm the transfer in your wallet pop-up
Done! You should in a minute or so, have 5 xDai, in your xDai custom Network.
Convert MOON to xMOON
The next step is to convert MOON to xMOON, it will later be sold for xDai.
- Go to https://xmoon.exchange/
- Connect your Metamask Wallet by clicking “Connect” in the top-right
- Switch to your “Rinkeby Test Network” Wallet in Metamask
- Click “MOON to xMOON”
- Confirm the transfer in your wallet pop-up
- Wait until the xMOON’s show up on the exchange, it will be on the left-hand side.
- Switch to your “xDai” wallet in Metamask
That’s it! Notice that selling large quantities of Moons, at once may tank the market a touch, due to the currently quite low liquidity. If you have a large amount of Moons it’s better if you convert a max of 500 Moons and repeat the process until they are all converted.
Convert xMOON to xDai
It is possible to continue with the previous website but the amount of liquidity there is low. A different exchange has much more liquidity and we’re going to use it:
- Go to https://honeyswap.org/#/swap?inputCurrency=0x1e16aa4df73d29c029d94ceda3e3114ec191e25a
- Accept the disclaimer
- Switch to your xDAI network, within Metamask
- Convert your xMOON’s to xDAI
- Confirm the transaction, within the Metamask pop-up.
Awesome! Again, if you have a large amount of Moons, swap an amount of 500 max and repeat if needed.
Convert xDai to Dai
We’re almost done! Last step it convert our newly owned xDai into Dai. Important: It may take some time until you’ll be able to see your DAI in your wallet. It took me around 4 hours, the reported average time is 1 hour.
- Go to https://dai-bridge.poa.network/
- Switch to your “xDAI” Network within Metamask
- Transfer your xDAI to DAI via the bridge
- Confirm the transaction in your Metamask wallet pop-up
- You will soon have your DAI in your “Main Ethereum Network” Account
Great! you just turned your testnet coins into mainnet coins! Your Moons were converted into DAI.
What can I do with my newly acquired DAI?
You can earn interest on your DAI using a DeFi protocol. You can swap your DAI into any cryptocurrency you wish using an exchange. You can also cash out your DAI into fiat money using a dedicated service provider that operates in your country.
Outro
The conversion process is not intuitive at all. You must go through a lot of steps in order to successfully convert MOON into a mainnet currency like DAI. Taking into consideration the extremely fast pace of technology advancements in crypto, I believe this guide will become obsolete very soon. In the mean time, I hope you found it helpful.
In addition to my writings, I have linked several guides parts in order to compose this full one. Credits goes to the following Reddit post authors:
Consider following me on Twitter for more crypto, software development and technology related topics.
