Hi everyone,
I had a good conversation with Dan at Bizdev. Thereās a use case for crowdfunding as an investment vehicle on the network ā it helps to vet projects to see they have a clear audience as well as it gives funders the opportunity to invest in projects they like without getting the whole network onboard, or going through traditional VC routes. In a crowdfunding tool investing would essentially be done through rewards for contributors.
The devil is in the details about what specific mechanisms funders would like in place to receive rewards. Building a trustless platform requires that the contracts enforce these reward mechanisms without any manual intervention, so the more complicated we want those mechanisms the more time it takes to build.
I have added a SNIP-24 minting reward in the current proposal but it is pretty simple. In addition, there will be ways for project creators to put funding thesholds on different rewards. However, one additional set of features that Dan identified, which is not included in the proposal as it stands, is a way to add stages to the funding. That would work in 2 ways:
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A vesting schedule for tokens generated for the project, so they cannot be dumped immediately.
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The ability for funding to be dispersed in stages where contributors can vote to cancel the rest of the crowdfunding if milestones have not been met (votes would be proportional to the amount they funded).
In the first case, it would require a generic vesting contract that can be parameterized appropriately. The second one also adds a fair bit more logic to the crowdfunding contract. For both because they add complexity, it will add more to testing and so on.
Thereās a lofi workaround to stages of crowdfunding which is just that someone creates multiple crowdfunding projects one after another. However where that breaks down is when you want to include locked in dispersment of tokens based on milestones.
The bottom line is that adding in these additional mechanisms will definitely push the budget of the project beyond the limits of the CCBL (at least at current SCRT price). There are two ways I see proceed: keep the proposal as is, once it is developed if there additional features that people feel are must haves, then that can be a follow-up project. Or I work out a new proposal, but one that just goes on chain but not as a CCBL project. Iām leaning toward the first option because my sense is that doing a smaller project that delivers relatively quickly is a good first goal. It will still be a useful tool, and thereās no reason more bells and whistles cannot be added after that. I will keep this forum going for another 3 days for any additional comments on this before doing anything.
Finally, regardless of the scope, I will definitely continue to involve stakeholders such as Bizdev regularly to get feedback as I develop the user interface for the crowdfunding site. In the end it would great for crowdfunding to be seen as one of the main avenues for getting projects going on the network alongside grants, VC funding, and incubators.