Kickstarter plans to migrate to platform built on Celo blockchain

Published at: Dec. 8, 2021

Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter will be launching a new company that will eventually see its website move to a blockchain-based system on Celo. 

In a Wednesday blog post, CEO Aziz Hasan and co-founder Perry Chen said Kickstarter would be developing an open source protocol that will live on the Celo blockchain. The two execs cited the blockchain’s efforts in minimizing its environmental impact — being carbon negative — in addition to the fact it was open source.

“We are entering a significant moment for alternative governance models, and we think there's an important opportunity to advance these efforts using the blockchain,” said Chen and Hasan.

Bloomberg reported that Kickstarter planned to transition its website to the blockchain platform in 2022, with the project announcing it would release a white paper “in the coming weeks.” Kickstarter reportedly said the migration will not affect any of the millions of users currently using the platform to crowdfund for projects including medical and fitness products, artwork, books, and movies.

In addition, Kickstarter said it planned to establish a governance lab “overseeing the development of the protocol governance.” Purpose Foundation executive director and co-founder Camille Canon will be leading the effort.

Related: A Community-Governed DeFi Platform Makes Crowdfunding Decentralized

With the emerging crypto space, certain projects that might have received money through Kickstarter have shifted to distributed autonomous organizations. In November, a group called ConstitutionDAO attempted to purchase a first edition print copy of the U.S. Constitution, in which 17,437 backers were issued governance tokens called PEOPLE. Though the DAO failed to make the winning bid, its token price surged after the team behind the project allowed users to continue holding the tokens.

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

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