Kickstarter, New York City, a US-based crowdfunding platform, is revamping its basic technology and fine-tuning it with more modern elements. The platform is reportedly moving to a Blockchain technology backed protocol, making it accessible to everyone. Founded in 2009, the company says its mission is to bring creative projects such as movies, music, video games and publications to life using crowdsourced funds. This open-for-all Blockchain protocol provides the tools needed to build a crowdfunding website like Kickstarter itself.
“As a first step, we support the development of an open source protocol that will essentially create a decentralized version of Kickstarter’s core functionality. This will live on a public blockchain and be available to contributors, independent contributors and even Kickstarter competitors from around the world to build on, connect with or use,” Kickstarter wrote in an official blog post.
As part of this major functional transition, Kickstarter is putting together an independent organization to continue developing the Blockchain protocol. For now, the name of this organization remains undecided.
Funding and appointing a board for this project will also be chaired by Kickstarter, which will become the first client to use this emerging blockchain-based crowdsourcing system. When the protocol is ready, Kickstarter will also move its website (kickstarter.com) to the upgraded infrastructure.
Under Kickstarter’s new governance lab, the protocol will be built on an eco-friendly, open-source blockchain network called Celo.
“Like the internet in the early 1990s, the Blockchain is an emerging technology whose story has not yet been written. Celo’s efforts to minimize environmental impact (and focus on global accessibility through mobile blockchain access) reminds us that the best way to get better systems is to build better systems,” the blog says, co-author of Kickstarter founder Perry Chen and CEO Aziz Hasan.
Twitter is also reportedly planning to create an open-source, decentralized social media system called Bluesky and has been working on it since 2019.
