An “open, collaborative, and decentralised future”.
Kickstarter plans to move its crowdfunding platform to blockchain.
In a blog post, the company detailed plans to develop a “decentralised crowdfunding protocol” so people can “launch and fund creative projects anywhere” across the web.
Essentially Kickstarter’s core functionality will be made open source and live on a public blockchain hosted by Celo, a carbon-negative public blockchain platform, to allow access for users across the world.
Kickstarter was used to crowdfund Shenmue 3.
“This openness enables everyone who is interested in the promise of crowdfunding to help build its future and have a say and stake in how it works,” reads the blog post. “Blockchain will also open the potential to be rewarded for contributing to the systems that you use everyday.”
This new open crowdfunding system is yet to be named but will be an independent organisation with some initial funding from Kickstarter. Kickstarter itself will then switch over to the new infrastructure once built. The front end experience of Kickstarter will remain the same.
“We believe decentralisation will result in innovation like we’ve never seen before, and that it’s key to the future of crowdfunding. We’re excited to be working towards that future – as always, in service of our mission to help bring creative projects to life,” reads the blog post.
A statement by Perry Chen, Founder and Chair, and Aziz Hasan, CEO, gives further details. “Like the internet in the early 1990s, the blockchain is a nascent technology whose story is not yet written. Celo’s efforts around minimising environmental impact (and focus on global accessibility through mobile access to the blockchain), reminds us that the best way to get better systems is to build better systems.”
Kickstarter’s platform, which launched in 2009, has been involved in the funding of a number of high profile games, from Undertale, to Shenmue 3, The Banner Saga, and the unreleased Star Citizen.
However, the platform has seen diminishing use more recently. Crowdfunding projects are now often run through blockchains into distributed autonomous organisations (DAOs). It’s hoped that Kickstarter’s move to the blockchain will help it regain some relevancy.
Read Chen and Hasan’s statement in full here.