The Future of Crowdfunding Creative Projects — Kickstarter

I've backed well over a dozen Kickstarter projects, and I also like how Kickstarter built itself on Kickstarter, seeking support for features on their platform as projects that users backed. And now Kickstarter is going to build a Web3 version of itself!

So, today we’re announcing our commitment to a more open, collaborative, and decentralized future. As a first step, we’re supporting the development of an open source protocol that will essentially create a decentralized version of Kickstarter’s core functionality. This will live on a public blockchain, and be available for collaborators, independent contributors, and even Kickstarter competitors, from all over the world to build upon, connect to, or use. We think bringing all that we’ve learned about crowdfunding since 2009 to inform the development of a decentralized protocol will open up exciting new opportunities for creative projects to come to life. In the coming weeks, a white paper will be released outlining the technology and plans for the protocol.

This is a long play, but it makes incredible sense to me. Think about it, even today Web3 capabilities like NFTs have a potential to dislodge Kickstarter. Instead of getting a bunch of backers on Kickstarter, I could sell different NFT's for each level of my project and people could redeem them (burn them) for the reward at the end. How interesting that the token could even be sold at a profit or loss, before the project ships. Very interesting stuff, so it makes total sense to me that Kickstarter itself should be here. Notable also that they are choosing a carbon-negative blockchain, Celo, to develop the protocol on.