Kickstarter moving to blockchain

[NotAYakk]

Blockchain is just ledger entries, plus a cryptographic hash of the previous ledger entries.

Plus a pile if noise.

It is git, a source control system, with fewer features and (ideally) cryotograpically stronger hashes and weaker structure.

Distributing it with a consensus protocol to keep a single branch can keep multiple sources of truth synchronized in some nice ways.

 

[Umbran]

Doesn't Bitcoin pretty much exist to finance crime and human trafficking?

Whether or not that was the original intent, when your tool is a method of financial exchange with specific focus on anonymity, you can expect that it will be useful to criminal enterprise.

Meanwhile, Kickstarter specifically doesn't need its transactions to be anonymous. I imagine they actually want them to be specifically tracked and auditable.

 

[Staffan]

Patreon courted, and received, an infusion of venture capital cash so of course they had to show profitability. They announced that they were going to add a per transaction charge, on the patron side, to payments for creators. If you had a horde of $1-$2 Patreon contributions that you were making then suddently you were going to be paying 20-40% more per month. Not such a big deal if you had larger payments, to fewer creators, but substantial if you were an average person, supporting a bunch of creators, at a lower level. My own support costs would have jumped from roughly US$50.00/month to US$70.00 per month, by my calculations, with no increase in payments to those I support.

The whole idea was (edit: "seemed to be"; this is my assumption) that they wanted fewer but larger creators, presumably because it would require less infrastructure and internal costs to maintain them.

That's not exactly how I remember it, though the end result was the same. The problem was that some creators on Patreon had trouble with people abusing the system. Basically, people would sign up for a patreon, download whatever was archived, and cancel their patronage before the end of the month when cards would be charged. Patreon's solution to this was to charge each patronage separately, monthly based on starting date. The additional charges weren't coming directly from Patreon (at least not mostly), but from credit card processors.

But the end result was the same: lots of people dropping their support of many creators. It's one thing to support, say, 15 creators at $3 each and pay an extra $1 in processing fees on top of the $45 monthly cost, but when you're paying the additional dollar once per creator that gets expensive real quick.

 

[Ryujin]

Doesn't Bitcoin pretty much exist to finance crime and human trafficking? I wouldn't want my money to go anywhere near it.

Chummer, you gots a Platinum Credstick, I can pretty much guarantee you anything in The Sprawl.

 

[Ryujin]

That's not exactly how I remember it, though the end result was the same. The problem was that some creators on Patreon had trouble with people abusing the system. Basically, people would sign up for a patreon, download whatever was archived, and cancel their patronage before the end of the month when cards would be charged. Patreon's solution to this was to charge each patronage separately, monthly based on starting date. The additional charges weren't coming directly from Patreon (at least not mostly), but from credit card processors.

But the end result was the same: lots of people dropping their support of many creators. It's one thing to support, say, 15 creators at $3 each and pay an extra $1 in processing fees on top of the $45 monthly cost, but when you're paying the additional dollar once per creator that gets expensive real quick.

The solution to that issue was to charge people the moment that they signed up as a patron, not wait until the end of the month. That was a completely different issue and the way that they dealt with it was reasonable.

 

[Blue Orange]

I do remember Kickstarter having a problem with 'creators' taking people's money and then not producing anything? (Kind of inevitable with this kind of platform of course.) So maybe having a record of everything would be a way to deal with that?

As people have said it is probably a plot to get venture capital--apparently Long Island Iced Tea Corp changed their name to 'Long Blockchain Corp' and temporarily tripled their stock price.

 

[Yora]

I do remember Kickstarter having a problem with 'creators' taking people's money and then not producing anything? (Kind of inevitable with this kind of platform of course.) So maybe having a record of everything would be a way to deal with that?

As people have said it is probably a plot to get venture capital--apparently Long Island Iced Tea Corp changed their name to 'Long Blockchain Corp' and temporarily tripled their stock price.

I don't see how. I don't think tracking down the people who set up the campaign ever was a problem. It was proving that they were engaging in fraud instead of actually failing their attempt to create their product with the available funds.

 

[Staffan]

The solution to that issue was to charge people the moment that they signed up as a patron, not wait until the end of the month. That was a completely different issue and the way that they dealt with it was reasonable.

That's the solution they landed in after the backlash. I believe it's also a thing creators can toggle, though I'm not sure.

Here are some links from the time in question:
Patreon's Fee Change Stokes the Ire of Creators (when the changes had been announced and people were very angry)
Why content crowdfunder Patreon is halting its hated fee change – TechCrunch (Patreon walking back the changes)

 

[RealAlHazred]

Except that blockchain technology still relies on DNS to address where its packets go.

Yes. It's kind of like deciding to send out a tour bus to advertise a new scheme you've cooked up to eliminate taxes, and sending it on publicly-funded roads and charging people a fiat currency to attend the lecture about it in a public space.

IOW, grift.

 

[Ryujin]

I do remember Kickstarter having a problem with 'creators' taking people's money and then not producing anything? (Kind of inevitable with this kind of platform of course.) So maybe having a record of everything would be a way to deal with that?

There's an easy way to deal with that sort of thing: Don't let serial abusers use your platform. Have a look at the following campaigns:

Pencil Dice
RPG Pencil Dice
Deck Dice
Spinward Traveller
Knights of the Dinner Table
Castles & Crusades: Beyond the River

... just as an example of serial abuse.