Ask HN: Is a cryptocurrency for funding community projects a viable idea?

4 points by bryanchappell 8 years ago | 5 comments

It appears that most people are dissatisfied with politics and civic engagement can be difficult to measure.

What if there was a cryptocurrency that gave every participant a vote on the usage of a portion of the funds? Directly linking a member's participation in a fund with the projects within their community. Each member would have a single vote. Theoretically this could act similar to an infrastructure bank but not limited to a certain type of project.

There are obvious issues with this idea: Does the amount of money required to initiate the fund prevent it from being viable? Will members from outside a given community attempt to "steal" its' funds? How could the identity of a member be authenticated without being intrusive? Are people truly interested in improving their community?

slimshady94 8 years ago |

I wonder if crypto-tokens could be used as an easy way of quantifying open source contributions? Famous GitHub projects could assign and pay their own custom tokens (not exchangeable for money, permanently tied to an identity), on the basis of issues and PRs. It would also be easy for developers to link these tokens on their resume while applying for jobs. The proof-of-PR token could even be used to skip interviews altogether.

All these ideas seem pretty low-hanging fruit for cryptocurrencies.

BjoernKW 8 years ago | |

Git already provides a proof-of-PR with its commit history. You can have a look at someone's GitHub profile so see the projects that person has contributed to.

While it's not a permanent record you'd have to go to great lengths to permanently delete someone's effort from the record. You could also still keep the repositories for yourself on some local machine as a permanent record.

The permanent, tamper-proof record feature of blockchains only provides a significant benefit if many or all players in the game have an incentive to tamper with the data in the first place.

coryl 8 years ago |

What's the difference between this and a Kickstarter project?

The problem isn't the funding format, it's the politics of getting people to agree on decision making.

Design by committee doesn't work, that's why all organizations empower a head honcho to make important decisions.

Any kind of project would be better off centralizing decision making in a few people, and the rest of the participators can passively fund or promote.

nnn1234 8 years ago |

You should look up the DAO which attempted to do similar things.

Incentive for trading the token is something to be vary of. Political and governance problems are the issue here. Tech is here

TaylorGood 8 years ago |

If philanthropic, there are a handful of projects already attempting this. It's not taking off but $PINK is coming closest. Traders aren't charitable.