The Bitcoin Model for Crowdfunding

http://startupboy.com/2014/03/09/the-bitcoin-model-for-crowdfunding/

by jakobmarovt • 12 years ago

108 34 12 years ago

startupboy.com

alaskamiller• 12 years ago

Micropayments has come to pass.

And with that, Charlie Brooker's scifi television show becomes more apparent.

jackgavigan• 12 years ago

Naval's model isn't a million miles away from ASICMiner's "corporate" structure. It's also a step in the general direction of a commodity future-like cryptocurrency, with computing services as the underlying commodity.

A crytocurrency can't succeed, in my opinion, unless it has intrinsic value or exists as a means of exchanging value within a closed ecosystem where fiat currencies are impractical for whatever reason.

ThomPete• 12 years ago

There is no such thing as intrinsic values in any currency Fiat, digital or crypto.

The value in a crypto-currency is determined by how much the "nodes" trust the network. This trust takes time to build as we are seeing with the various alternative CCs coming out these days and thats just ok.

But keep in mind that the currency is only one way to use the technology. You could in theory have an ebook be based on the technology.

minhnt• 12 years ago

> The value in a crypto-currency is determined by how much the "nodes" trust the network.

Could someone explain it clearer?

compare• 12 years ago

Exactly what I've been thinking over the past week as I've watched some cause-themed coins start to take off.

Most people try to squeeze their mental model of what cryptocoins are into something like a currency, but there are really interesting equity / p2p database aspects too.

panabee• 12 years ago

would you mind elaborating?

torbjorn• 12 years ago

this addresses the p2p database aspect http://expectedpayoff.com/blog/2013/03/22/bitcoin-and-the-by...

novalis78• 12 years ago

Isn't that exactly what Marscoin (www.marscoin.org) does - trying to privately fund space exploration by letting people buy into the altcoin.

mpg33• 12 years ago

crowd equity will be huge

argumentum2• 12 years ago

I've been thinking about this for a while, particularly with bandwidth as the scarce resource. I don't quite grok the connections between the crypto aspect, the stock aspect and the currency aspect.

The problem is that (the way Naval treats them) each of the main variables seem arbitrary, but could easily determine whether the economy you create is viable.

Pre-mine or early-mine Appcoins and keep some non-threatening amount.

In Bitcoin, though the system itself is "trustless", participants trust that they are all treated equally according to the protocol & open source code.

In the case of a startup raising funds, you wouldn't get the same sense of altruism. The incentives are not aligned for the major players: the startup founders, the protocol developers, the other coin owners/shareholders and the miners.

Should an arbitrary pre-mined amount be set (as the founders' equity), and simultaneously be non-threatening, what is to stop the network from invalidating the pre-mined amount at will?

If it were instead threatening, why would miners be interested in spending compute power?

Naval also writes of supporting the open source developers with transaction fees. Unlike the commodity on which the coins are based, these are not easy values to calculate.

Certainly there are a lot of possible new models, and autonomous corporations are very exciting. I just don't see how you can add a founder-controlled, for-profit startup to the other players in a crypto currency ecosystem (the miners, the non-profit developer foundation and the coin owners) and get something that works.

jamesk_au• 12 years ago

In Bitcoin, though the system itself is "trustless", participants trust that they are all treated equally according to the protocol & open source code.

But Bitcoin participants do not have to act on "trust" because they can inspect the protocol and open source code to verify equal treatment. In Naval's system, if the premise for participation (eg equal treatment) is equally verifiable by inspection of the protocol and open source code, is there any material difference between the two? It is true that there is nothing to "stop the network from invalidating the pre-mined amount at will", but participants will only participate in the network if it is easily verifiable that the network gives effect to the premise for participation.

I just don't see how you can add a founder-controlled, for-profit startup to the other players in a crypto currency ecosystem (the miners, the non-profit developer foundation and the coin owners) and get something that works.

I think I agree with that statement, but only because of the words "founder-controlled". If a network like this is to succeed, the founders must forfeit control to the network. Given that it is the founders who write the protocol, they should be happy to do that, and then set it free. I don't think it would work if the founders made some attempt in the protocol to reserve to themselves a power to intervene in the operation of the network.

Can I offer another interesting hypothetical:

Is it possible for a network to incorporate some kind of mechanism for democratically amending its own protocol according to some objective characteristic (or subjective vote) of the participants? If participants are mining 'shares' in the 'company', should they have the power to act as 'shareholders' and to exercise control accordingly?

(Assume that some aspect of the protocol means that the controlling majority is always held by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, which I think is meant to be the case with Bitcoin.)

argumentum2• 12 years ago

But Bitcoin participants do not have to act on "trust" because they can inspect the protocol and open source code to verify equal treatment.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. I agree that trust is the wrong word, I should have said "participants can verify that they are all treated equally".

Perhaps I'm stuck thinking of these startups like I would think of most for-profit startups where each round of fundraising adds complexity (different "classes" of shares, etc).

One of the more important advances in startup fundraising over the last few years has been the lengthening of time where the startup is under the founders' thumb(s). Fundraising in the manner you suggest would give you the money of an angel round (or less) + the loss of control of an IPO.

Many startups severely regret going IPO, because (unless you carefully manage the process a la Facebook or Google) you immediately cede a great degree of control to the shareholders.

In this case, the only benefit to the founders (assuming their coins aren't invalidated) is monetary, while the costs are manifest. I think the pre-mined allocation will be competed out of existence, as it adds no value to the process and because as long as the currency gets adopted, the founding developers (like Satoshi and the early bitcoin devs) will still benefit greatly.

Basically I can see very few benefits to the startup's founders for going this route vs normal fundraising. Democracy may be the least worst form of governance for a nation-state, but the point of a (good) nation-state is to preserve liberty, not to realize a particular vision (unless that vision is liberty or in the case of bitcoin, is the currency itself).*

What could work in the manner suggested is more akin to an autonomous, non-profit corporation. (Yes, individuals can profit by being early adopters or providing value-add services, but the corporation itself is self-perpetuating and not-for-profit).

I'm not saying such autonomous corporations shouldn't be built, of course they should be if they fill a need (just like non-profits). I just don't see this as a viable alternative to fundraising for a for-profit startup.

* There are of course several examples to the contrary (of a "vision" being achieved in such a manner). Wikipedia (and now bitcoin) being perhaps the most notable, but all that I can think of remain non-profit organizations.

Nursie5• 12 years ago

It seems to me that bitcoin is the wrong model for this. There are lots of other crypto-currency models that have central control as a feature. These are anathema to the bitcoin sect, but allow all sorts of other neat stuff - offline transactions for example. As they are also centrally controlled they don't require the crazy processor thrashing that is bitcoin mining, either.

rplnt2• 12 years ago

they don't require the crazy processor thrashing that is bitcoin mining, either

How do you verify someone did something worth of getting the coin?

orasis• 12 years ago

You're still paying for the service. Basically this is talking about making free services non-free to support the creation and growth of the service.

dmix• 12 years ago

this is talking about making free services non-free to support the creation and growth of the service

Naval (author of post) already did this with Angellist, in a way. They systematized the introduction of founders->angels. Which was happening freely over email beforehand. The service inbetween can add value over free methods.

Nothing wrong with that really as a starting point. Centralization is sometimes needed for trust. The angels may need to trust some escrow, dispute process, or software stability if they want to invest money this way.

But agreed it could technically be decentralized/free.

drawkbox• 12 years ago

As long as the entire internet isn't tolled because it is a new way to tax. Crypto coins have been branded for all types of needs, pay it forward is a big part of many coins. What would suck is if it became pay to use everywhere if biz runs away with it. We might be entering a bad era of tolls and tiers if we aren't smart.

kyledrake• 12 years ago

This is exactly what I'm trying to do with Coinpunk (in addition to doing a classic crowdfund): http://igg.me/at/coinpunk

jabgrabdthrow• 12 years ago

This is what Invictus has been doing to raise money for their DACs via AngelShares

quadrangle2• 12 years ago

If this is used for proprietary business models, that's completely backwards. The future involves recognizing that digital works are NOT scarce, only development time or server bandwidth is.

Paying this way for server bandwidth is fine. Otherwise, this is about excluding poorer people from accessing resources, just like the traditional broken proprietary business model.

I hope this idea dies quickly. We don't need anything that further extends proprietization, we need systems to fund Open projects.

rayiner• 12 years ago

If digital works are not scarce, where are all the great public domain licensed movies, TV shows, and video games?

quadrangle2• 12 years ago

It's copies that aren't scarce.

em3rgent0rdr• 12 years ago

This idea in this blog post is not novel...it is actually an idea called "Distributed Anonymous Corporation" which was described in this blog post last september: http://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of-rob...

devx• 12 years ago

That's how Ethereum will be launched, too, and once it's launched thousands of others can do the same on top of Ethereum, without having to reinvent their own "coin" from scratch. Building their own DAO's will also be much easier.

https://www.ethereum.org/

DennisP2• 12 years ago

He mentions FastCoin as a fast-clearing currency. Bitcoin's confirmations are slow for the sake of security. There's a new method that makes it possible to get fast confirmations with good security, but I don't see any indication that FastCoin is using it. For details and a link to the academic paper, see here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=359582.0

Ethereum is the only new coin I know of that's planning to use this protocol, though I'm sure there are others.

Nursie5• 12 years ago

Bitcoin's confirmations are slow because it takes several new blocks to be generated before a transactions is considered really confirmed. A block takes about 10 minutes.

If you speed up the block time, you speed up the confirmation time, no?

maxerickson2• 12 years ago

The value of the confirmations roughly corresponds with the amount of computation wasted on them.

(or whatever word you want to swap in for wasted; it's the difficulty of matching the computation that is interesting, not the number of blocks)

The Bitcoin Model for Crowdfunding

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