E-Money #1: Funding the Web Commons, Or, How Do You Fund Crowdfunding?
Danyl Strype
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TL;DR summary of intent might be, 'to create a well researched summary of the useful, sustainable funding tools currently available to commoners'. The opening post and blog piece linked in it were an attempt to explain the needs I want to address. If you have any specific questions, I'm happy to answer them as best I can.
Late last year I wrote a blog piece on the challenges of trying to collect contributions from people who appreciate work contributed to the online commons:
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/blog/2018/04/19/funding-the-web-commons-or-how-do-you-fund-crowdfunding/
I've been meaning to write a series of follow-up posts, investigating the terrain in more detail, but I haven't yet found the time. There's a lot I can say about the tech stacks various sites use, whether they are free code and so forth, as well as some of the political-economic dimensions. But I'm painfully aware of my lack of expert knowledge on the commerce and legal aspects of the problem, which are just as important if not more so.
It occurs to me that this would make an excellent group research project. Does P2PF/ CT have any formal work going in this area? If not, any other groups of academics, activists, techies or otherwise, investigating this area that may be keen to collaborate? If so, I'd much rather pitch in than go about reinventing the wheel. Failing that, would anyone involved with P2PF/CT be interested in working with me on this?
Sybille SG Tue 11 Jun 2019 8:12PM
may you sum up your intent and needs please
Danyl Strype Wed 12 Jun 2019 8:00AM
A TL;DR summary of intent might be, 'to create a well researched summary of the useful, sustainable funding tools currently available to commoners'. The opening post and blog piece linked in it were an attempt to explain the needs aspect. If you have any specific questions, I'm happy to answer them as best I can.
dilgreen Wed 12 Jun 2019 10:21AM
|I wrote this about incentivising FOSS coding: https://medium.com/@dilgreen/you-say-12648c587cca
dilgreen Wed 12 Jun 2019 10:23AM
The person I was responding to now works here: https://gitcoin.co/about
Danyl Strype Fri 2 Aug 2019 11:46AM
Intriguing. As I understand it, Gitcoin is pretty much implementing what you propose in your piece on Medium. What do you think about it?
dilgreen Fri 2 Aug 2019 12:07PM
I see gitcoin as different, in that it is not mutual credit, but fundamentally priced in dollars. Anything priced in dollars is likely to to be owned as a dollar denominated asset, and thus framed as part of the debt-based, scarce-by-design, hegemonic issuance world of the dollar.
Anything in that world seems pretty much doomed to be sucked into the (distinctly sub-optimal) 'dollar optimiser' AI that western imperialist culture has built - the one called corporate capitalism.
My proposition was for a Mutual Credit approach - where currency is created by any participant in a trust network who is willing to commit future value production capacity to that network (with credit limits established on the basis of their productive capacity).
This unit is not priced in dollars, but in trust.
That doesn't mean I dislike gitcoin. I suspect Eric Berry was in conversation with Gitcoin in Dec '17, as he joined with them in Jan '18. At the time he responded to my piece, saying 'I want to introduce you to some people' - but then went silent. Their model is profit-extracting, afaict, so for me it will tend to feed into the flow where OSS coders build stuff that FAANG leverages to build neo-feudal corporates.
Not anything I want to actively support.
Here's my economic manifesto, fwiw.
Jeff Regino Wed 12 Jun 2019 10:46AM
https://www.loomio.org/d/Yx8h0TZS/e-money-1-funding-the-web-commons-or-how-do-you-fund-crowdfunding-/6
It would be awesome for you to add the TLDR on your main post.
There are currently many such tools, depending on needs and niches:
Crowdfunding platforms;
Creating your own website and payment facility (could be thru PayPal etc.);
YouTube (thru ads);
Patreon and similar platforms;
Substack and Revue (for writers);
Twitch;
Those you've mentioned and in the links you've shared
Danyl Strype Thu 20 Jun 2019 3:16AM
It would be awesome for you to add the TLDR on your main post.
Good idea, I'll do that now. FYI this is something you can do yourself. Context boxes in Loomio threads can be edited by any group member.
Jeff Regino Thu 20 Jun 2019 5:11PM
Thanks for that info. It seems my account doesn't have that feature.
Greg Cassel · Sat 3 Aug 2019 4:35PM
I think the free rider problem is very real and well-defined, even though you're right that it might not be a significant or systemically critical problem in some cases. Depends on all the variables involved in each system.