Crowdfunding (Crowd Founding) Safe Applications

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So interest exists around the idea of Crowd Founding safe projects. For those that do not know what it is or what it could be, I’ll give a brief summary of how I envision it working. In short, it’s a way for everyone to be involved in the development and ownership of projects they wish to see come into existence on the safe network.

#How It Could Work

Folks propose what they want - Discussions would happen around what an MVP for this desired project might look like.

Optional: Perhaps a pledge process until a certain amount is reached before the funding can begin.

Folks fund the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) - We need a way to estimate what an MVP would cost, and each project would be different. The estimation could be done through developer quotes perhaps. The funds would need to be held by a trusted source (until some kind of smart contract system is realized). Perhaps this is some kind of multisig address controlled by trusted members of the project’s community in the interim.

Once funded, the MVP stories (development speak for requirements and features) would be available to work on through some type of development bounty program. This would enable a type of on-demand development workforce. There could be some kind of reputation system built for developers and the community.

Once stories are accepted into the codebase by the community (some kind of voting process?), developers or developer shops receive the bounty attached to the story.

Once the MVP is complete the owners can vote on next features and fund those also in an iterative process until the project is live.

If the project is a for-profit project the income gained from the project can be paid to the owners through dividends. Until smart contracts, this could be done through a multisig management process as well.

#The Way Forward

Lots of these processes could change as we learn more about the network and it’s capabilities.

I am willing to pledge some coin toward seeing this Crowd Founding Application built. I am also willing to take on some development stories if it ever gets that far. If others are of like mind let me know because I’m not willing to do it alone ;).

This discussion continues here.

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I think this is a great idea, I am willing to spend time working on this starting July.

One thing that you mentioned that I found very interesting is the idea of dividends. If safecoin is earned by popular apps in the network, the dividends could eventually be baked into a smart contract. It could work like this: I do a crowdsale of a token where I guarantee (via contract) to give X% of the safecoin developer payments generated by the app to the investors in perpetuity. These tokens now have intrinsic value tied to the popularity of the app, the present value of the future dividends.

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Yep, awesome thoughts. I believe this is a great way to let everyone in the network be involved with starting apps. Both technical and non-technical folks alike. Each project could decide how much of the dev payments will go to the Investors. I think each dev that does work on bounties should also receive some tokens along with coins so they stay invested in the projects for the long haul. For this app I’d suggest 100% go to all token holders.

I think we should found this app through the same process (or something similar) to what I’ve described. Not knowing yet what the MVP would cost or what a token sale would look like, I’m willing to pledge up to 10k Maidsafe Coins to get things underway. I’d like to determine how much interest there is. Anyone interested please pledge according to your interest level and also if you would like to develop and we can start discussing what the MVP will look like.

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@Seneca - I think this feature should use your Decorum protocol. Maybe we could work it out as a type of POC. I will also be in touch with you regarding tokens on the safe network as you discussed with @fergish in safe crossroads.

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I think such projects should clearly define what they’ll need. Also a set of conceptual tools should be created for designing and illistration of ideas. Things like charts, illistration, presentation, and demonstrating metaphor sounds handy when trying to explain and visualize ideas that will ultimately be manifested in code. Especially if this is to be done repeatedly for multiple apps.

Also @anon81773980 and I have been working on a crowdfunding project of our own based on a side project, or concept I should say, I had a couple years ago and merging it with the bitlaw project. So perhaps that could be merged with this project here. Although it’s scope rather exceeds just app creation.

Also I think there should be a clearly defined list of what is needed to pull each project off. Not just programming but things like graphic design, UX, marketing, accounting, PR, concept design, writers, etc. Post problems and tasks publically so even if someone can’t solve something in code they might be able to solve it and post the answer in English. As said above contribution is for both coders and non coders.

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Funny enough a month ago, I was talking about crowdfunding on SAFEX

A kickstarter is not different from a marketplace, except that you got a goal/pledge/backers/deadline or no deadline. In the decentralized environment we also need something like bitrated.com (escrow/reputation).

Funny enough almost a month ago, I emailed Teenage Engineering a company that can help to make hardware.

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But this decentralized phone crowdfunding idea got a few problems.

  • Only a few members out this community wanted to part take.
  • Teenage Engineering wanted to help, but they won’t put up a crowdfunding site/maybe they don’t even know about bitcoin, atleast they didn’t email me back.
  • At this stage I’m not ready to put up a company, unless I have a prototype first

But nevertheless the idea was simple 100 people pay 100 euro’s each and get 1 percent share per person. With the 10000 euro’s they let a company develop a phone, the phone it’s OS will running on the SAFE Network, will be totally opensourced and can be sold on a Fairphone business model (users order the phone, after a goal is reached, the phones are made). Later on I’ll revisit this SAFE Network phone idea.

Maybe I’m to lazy to not put up a company and start a crowdfunding, but if people would like this maybe it could be done through the Maidsafe foundation. What is also needed if people are serious about a crowdfunding campaign is: If you invest money in a project, you must also be willing to help with marketing, PR etc like @Blindsite2k says.

Maybe it would also help if this forum, has a category “crowdfunding” and ideas can be posted. People can always be paid out in app revenues, so that alone is a reason to really support projects on the SAFE Network.

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I like what Rob had to say about the iterative nature of how it might work.

For the Phcne type of crowdfunding then you would describe it as a venture, a research project to start with then crowdfund the production.

The research project could be mapped out and funding in stages from the backers.

I see the project MVPs similarly. You are building up the POC and at this stage you have less of a tendance to waste resources. It’s easy to waste other people’s money when you have a lot of it at your disposal and when you don’t have a clear idea of what THE MOST IMPORTANT next step should be. Neat shiny things draw our attention away from the most important goals (government anyone).

Investing feature by feature is also easier for people to see how the project is moving along. If they see progress in the right direction they can decide to keep investing. If things are getting sidetracked they can bow out without losing much. And if your investment is tied to sellable tokens you might not lose anything.

At this stage of the SAFE network I’m always going to have to reign in my interest level in when it comes to all the shiny opportunities and focus on the most important next step. I appreciate Maidsafe for doing just this. Focus on the most important things first and prove their hypothesis. Each iteration and each feature of a projects should be like this.

Is anyone here familiar with Objectives + Key Results or OKRs? There is a really good book about them called Radical Focus. It’s a good short read if you have some time. In a nutshell the book explains how to use both qualitative (the exciting emotional stuff) and quantitative (the measurable stuff) focuses in a start-up to put your team in the mode of highly efficient execution on the things that matter most.

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Great project and I will definitely pledge some Maidsafecoins for this project, I’m thinking in the 5 to 10 k range.

I was wondering if you were still planning on going ahead with this since I haven’t seen you post anything about this for a long time, glad to see you are still hacking at it.

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Nice to see @chadrickm :slight_smile:

I can’t promise time but will certainly be interested in helping to fund. I like your style man!

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I think I should also reiterate that there is more than one kind of investment. Those that do not have money can instead invest time, service or resources of one kind or another. As SAFE itself demonstrates Money = Safecoin = CPU resource = Time = Energy = App development = Content = Hardware = Software = Other resources. When you back money on resources instead of debt these things happen. Just because one doesn’t have currency doesn’t mean one can’t invest. And ways to “exchange resources” so to speak should be created. That’s one of the reasons to be so explicit about what’s needed for the project.

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Awesome! I was just talking to @Safety1st about this very thing today. She asked how someone could pay for something that wasn’t development and I suggested the community create a specific story around that person’s abilities and/or resources and assign the story to them. I think this is a way to make those circumstances work.

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@chadrickm, I’ll match that and pledge 10k Maids for this one too.

Not had a chance to read everything yet, but love this idea and definitely gonna get involved in this stuff! :slight_smile:

Brilliant!

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This kind of thing would also work for resume and reputation building outside of the scope of crowdfunding.

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No kidding sir. Each completed story is a feather in the cap of the one who did it. They receive rep for doing well and also not so well. Because everything is transparent, everyone can see the deeds done. The educational aspects of this is huge too. Think of a story added to a project (help a new dev learn the ropes within this project while doing x). If the community agrees to the cost we are helping train the next generation of devs/owners who will take that knowledge and apply it to their next story or another project’s stories… which we are probably all investing in.

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I love this line of thinking. I’m so tired of the corporate, resume, coverletter way of thinking.

How many of us have poured hours into Maidsafe one way or another because it is our passion. Can we all describe what we did and put it in a resume to sell ourselves to a company? Probably not, but every minute brought value to this project somehow. We have the potential now to truely incentivize people to pursue their passion, write their own story (a few paragraphs or a novel) and be compensated thru community consensus for thier efforts no matter how small.

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It’s awesome to be a part of it happening for sure. Empowering the world to labor in freedom! I’m stealing this for this project’s mission statement.

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Okay well back to the MVP idea.

People propose what they want:

This is subjective so I think one should the option of remaining anonymous when doing this. For instance a porn app is not going to go down to well with the conservative religious folks. An Christian missionary app is not going to impress Muslim fundamentalists either. An app to run a pool to gamble and fund an assassination of the president won’t win you any points either. How much risk one wishes to take by associating their name with their idea should be entirely up to them. The same should be said for backers of the project. Do you want to be known as someone that contributed money to the human trafficking app? While people are free to do so and I’m sure people will do so I think there should be a measure of discretion as to how public to make one’ association with any given project.

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The people using network will take care of this. I’m probably going to have multiple ids and only some will be associated with me personally. I’m too subversive to the status-quo to let all that be known :wink:

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Ah looks like we’re on the same page! I just started coding. See here.

Be free to contribute. :slight_smile:

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Distributed Autonomous Organizations created with crowdfunding tokens invested in with safecoin would be a great direction to go with this idea.

But of course first we need the Safenet Crowdfunding Platform!

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