Kickstarter on Web3 Will Be Built on This Surprising Chain

December 9, 2021       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• Execs from Coinbase, Circle, FTX, and other crypto heavyweights, appeared before Congress in a mostly positive hearing yesterday.

• Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin recently put forthEthereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4488, which would decrease transaction costs on rollups ahead of sharding.

• Nexo, a crypto lender (and, disclosure: former sponsor of my shows), is partnering with Fidelity to provide products and infrastructure for institutional investors.

• OpenSea backtracked from comments about an IPO.

• Sushi CTO Joseph Delong resigned from his post yesterday.

• Axie Infinity announced a breeding fee adjustment for SLP and AXS.

• Reddit is expanding its Community Points program, which runs on an Ethereum testnet, to allow subreddits to create their own token.

• Visa announced a crypto-focused advisory unit to help clients better understand the industry.

• Silvergate Bank, a crypto-focused bank, is looking to raise$462 million through the sale of common stock.

• Digital Currency Group’s mining spinoff, Foundry, launchedFoundryX, a new marketplace for Bitcoin mining rigs.

• Three Arrows Capital bought $400 million in ETH shortly after co-founder Su Zhu “abandoned” Ethereum due to high gas fees.

• Saturday’s Bitcoin selloff was the second-largest single-day BTC futures liquidation this year.

• The EOS community stopped payments that would have sent $250 million in EOS to Block.one and Brock Pierce.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

The Future of Crowdfunding

Kickstarter, the web2 crowdfunding OG, unveiled plans to build an open, decentralized protocol that offered the same services as the centralized crowdfunding platform. The company, which has facilitated more than $6 billion in pledges for over 200,000 creative projects, is moving towards an “open, collaborative, and decentralized future,” according to a blog post written by the company execs.

Kickstarter’s first step is to build an open-source version of its core crowdfunding functionality on Celo that would be open for anyone, including its current competitors, to build on. The company plans to unveil a white paper outlining the technology for such a protocol in the coming weeks.

Notably, Kickstarter.com will eventually be built on top of the protocol. “As a user, the Kickstarter experience you’re familiar with will stay the same. You won’t “see” the protocol, but you will benefit from its improvements,” wrote the Kickstarter team.

One motivation for Kickstarter to disrupt itself is the fact that DAOs are now crowdfunding and investing in their own projects, giving competition to crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter.

Additionally, Kickstarter is launching an independent governance lab. This team will be headed by Camille Canon, who was recently the executive director of Purpose Foundation (US), which is focused on developing and scaling alternative ownership and governance models.

Kickstarter said that Celo, as “an open-source and carbon-negative blockchain platform,” offered the “best technology and community on which to build the protocol.”

“In the coming years, we believe large swaths of the internet will be reconstructed from the ground up by open and decentralized networks of contributors, who participate in the design, operation, governance, and even ownership of the technology themselves,” concluded Perry Chen, founder and chair of Kickstarter, and Aziz Hasan, Kickstarter’s CEO.

At press time, CGLD, the native token of Celo, was up roughly 15% over the past 24 hours.

Recommended Reads

• Abraham Sutherland, an adjunct professor at University of Virginia School of Law, on tax code 6050I:

• Pantera Capital dropped their December investor letter on the seventh:

• Alameda Research’s Sam Trabucco on the future of finance:

On The Pod…

Crypto Philanthropy: How to Donate to Make Real-World Impact

Some of the biggest names in the crypto industry discuss their personal giving philosophies, how blockchain technology could change the dynamics of giving to charity, and which crypto projects are making a lasting real-world impact. Guests include Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital; Caroline Ellison, co-CEO of Alameda Research; and Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos. Show topics:

• the definition of effective altruism

• why Haseeb thinks crypto is the best industry for effective altruism

• how Haseeb and Arthur differ in their philosophy of doing good

• why blockchain technology is less important than liquidity when donating money across borders

• whether Axie Infinity is making a real-world impact

• why Arthur thinks Axie’s impact will be short-term and not sustainable

• whether people should donate now versus later

• Haseeb’s and Arthur’s thoughts on how giving changes people

• what people working in crypto can do to give back

Book Update

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians