Kickstarter Crowdfunding Platform Moves To Blockchain-Based System

JAKARTA – Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter is about to launch a new company that will eventually see its website move to a blockchain-based system on Celo.

In a blog post Wednesday, December 8, CEO Aziz Hasan and co-founder Perry Chen said Kickstarter will develop an open source protocol that will live on the Celo blockchain. Both executives cited blockchain's efforts to minimize its environmental impact — being carbon negative — in addition to the fact that it is open source.

“We are entering an important moment for alternative governance models, and we think there is an important opportunity to advance this effort using blockchain,” Chen and Hasan were quoted as saying by Cointelegraph.

Bloomberg also reports that Kickstarter plans to transition its website to a blockchain platform in 2022, with the project announcing it will release a white paper “in the coming weeks.”

Kickstarter reportedly said the migration would not affect the millions of users who currently use the platform to crowdfund for projects including medical and wellness products, artwork, books and films.

Additionally, Kickstarter says it plans to set up a governance lab to “oversee the development of governance protocols.” The Purpose Foundation's executive director and co-founder, Camille Canon, will lead the effort.

With the emerging crypto space, certain projects that may have received money via Kickstarter have shifted to distributed autonomous organizations. Last November, a group called ConstitutionDAO attempted to buy a hard copy of the first edition of the US Constitution, for which 17,437 supporters were awarded a governance token called PEOPLE.

Even though DAO failed to make a winning bid, the price of its token soared after the team behind the project allowed users to continue holding the token.

First launched in 2009, Kickstarter reports 21 million people have pledged more than $6 billion to support 213,034 projects using the crowdfunding platform, including the Peloton bike and 2014 film Veronica Mars.