Decentralized Crowd Funding Options.
As you may know from my most recent posts, I am interested in getting Steem/ SBD integrated into OpenBazaar. I would like to continue to do work like this on other projects, and I have been interested in how these platforms work for a while now, so now is the time to get into it.
This article will just be a brief outline. I plan to go a bit deeper into the ones that I end up using, so keep an eye out for those.
Sadly, I'm no dev.
What I am, however, is able to spend the time and effort to help with things like funding, organizing or publicity. Hopefully, this ongoing information hunt will be interesting and useful for others that may want to do the same or similar things.
Sustainable Open Source Funding.
One of the biggest hurdles I see in the Open Source project space is funding. Projects need developers and infrastructure and neither of those is, nor should they be free.
Many, if not most developers in the open source world do work for free. Thankfully, a passion for the project motivates a good portion of the open source developers to continue on. Without this passion, most projects wouldn't exist.
When we look at the quality of the leading open source projects today, we see some real top shelf stuff. Paying people will not necessarily get this kind of quality, but there is more to it than that.
What if someone like me sees something they want done, but don't have the chops to get it done? The only thing we can do is hire a developer. These people are doing a service and should be paid.
So, how can we get the work done that we want so that ourselves and others can continue to enjoy the freedom and "free-ness" that we all enjoy and probably take for granted?
Today, there is a growing amount of options in the blockchain and decentralized, crowd-sourcing space.
In sticking to the decentralized and open source principles DiggnDeeper is always looking for, lets see what is out there.
Fundition
"Fundition is a next-generation, decentralized, peer-to-peer crowdfunding and collaboration platform, built on the Steem blockchain."
That certainly says a lot of the right things to me. I have seen a few projects using Fundition including HomesteadersCoop that is using this service to help with start-up and initial operations, as I understand it. Being on the Steem blockchain helps greatly in transparency and simplicity.
Steem
Crowd funding can be done through content creation on a project in the form of project updates or other information that is relevant. There are a lot of things being funded this way and the genius of it is that donors aren't really out anything.
BitBacker
Built to be a Patreon type of replacement for the blockchain, this is more of a standard subscription-based platform (like Patreon) for content creators.
There is a moderate "close to 1%" fee, but like Tallycoin below, they never hold your keys or coins.
BitBacker is came to notoriety as Patreon started to censor creators on its platform. BitBacker claims that you will never be banned for your ideas.
Tallycoin
Another Patreon-like replacement for the crypto-sphere. It has a very slick and simple interface. You can set up subscriptions and lock your content behind a paywall or create a fundraiser. You can keep your audience up to date by posting on the site.
There are no fees and you get pain immediately, as your bitcoin goes directly from donor to your wallet of choice.
I have no idea what the community is like and there isn't a whole lot of talk on the Interenet about it, even though it seems to me like a pretty slick replacement for those of us that are crypto-centric in our fundraising efforts.
Utopian Colony
"Utopian Colony is a platform for open source collaboration, home to all digital professionals with a passion for open source innovation. Utopian Colony gives everyone a voice and a place to contribute, reward and be rewarded."
This is the most promising platform I have found. It is also the most difficult to initially wrap my head around. Now that I have read through the guidelines and rules, and have chatted with the kind folks in their Discord, I feel like this is a truly revolutionary way to sustainably manage projects.
As with any platform, the community is the key. Here again, is where Utopian.io seems to handily outperform the others at this time. Right now, it is pretty much just well organized blogging on the Steem platform with a GitHub account, but development for complete project funding and collaboration is underway.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://trade.diggndeeper.com/decentralized-crowd-funding-options/
Fundition is pretty nice, although it's centralized i.e. projects needs to be approved by their team before getting funded and featured.
Utopian is really promising, we have been using it for over an year now!
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As I have looked more and thought more, really these are all at least somewhat centralized except pure Steem and somewhat Utopian. Utopian is much less centralized but they still do censor plenty through their guidelines. That generally is fine, but it does exist.
I just saw a conversation about that on their Discord where someone asked if their project would be allowed or not. I'm not saying that's wrong, but that I was somewhat mistaken in terms of censorproof decentralization.
Agreed, We have been trying to crowdfund Swapsteem for like almost an year now. @utopian-io has been so far the best supporter for us and we are grateful to them for this. Censorship is sometimes needed to prevent misuse of such services for personal profits, imho. Although the degree of censorship at @fundition is higher than that of @utopian-io.
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Bitbacker and Tallycoin... first time hearing about those.
That's the same thing Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter said when they first started, and look at what happened, gov and social pressure on those businesses made them censor many content creators and projects. If it isn't decentralized it's not censorship-proof, but let's wait and see where it goes.
Utopian and STEEM are def my favorites, and let's see what will happen with Nougit on EOS. I really like the way STEEM projects get funding by providing news about the project.
Never researched Fundition that much, but guess I need to do it since it sounds awesome.
I haven't looked outside the Steem system much I guess and I didn't know about the Nougit on EOS. I'll check that out.
I suspect your concerns about BitBacker or anyone that is more centralized when they claim something, it should be taken with a grain of salt.