Request for comment: Aragon Crowdfunding App, to enable more responsible crowdfunding with DAOs

Hey guys, me and the team were thinking about connecting ICOs with Aragon for some time already. Recently i’ve seen that initial crowdfunding app has been discontinued and we’re now researching if we can take it. I assume that you’ve discussed that a lot and can share important ideas about that. So i’m asking for help =) Here’s what I’ve drafted for now.

Aragon Crowdfunding App, to enable more responsible crowdfunding with DAOs

Problems

  • Costly ICO infrastructure
  • Misaligned incentives between founders and investors
  • Threat of scam

Solution

  • Motivate funds and individuals to prefer DAO structures for funding
  • Allow easy creation of the company and launch of the crowdsale (maybe start with lower amounts like $10-100k, not millions, things like Nest program)
  • Allow setting up the transparent crowdsale terms and lockups

Features

  • Crowdsale stages setup
  • Token freeze
  • Tap on spendings
  • Milestone-Based Lockups
  • Ability to close DAO and return funds
  • KYC?

References:

(only 2 available for me =/ )

5 Likes

I think combining on-chain governance with crowdfunding makes a ton of sense because it allows the project and funders to have strict accountability throughout the lifecycle of a project.

I wanted to add this to the discussion, which is a proposal for a curation market funding platform for Aragon DAO that has a lot of similarity to the DAICO model, the most resecent draft of the proposal is here: https://github.com/1Hive/Apiary

5 Likes

I have spoken with several different co-op structured business owners who would love something like this. Real brick-and-mortar businesses as well - specifically breweries - who would want to be able to raise capital this way and administer the org.

4 Likes

We had a Fundraising app in the roadmap initially, but dropped the idea since we have been focusing on creating a great platform for others to build upon instead. So I’d love to see this kind on app for Aragon DAOs!

A lot of projects, including ourselves, have done sales with a centralized structure and have to later transition to pure decentralization, which takes a lot of work. Being able to start as a DAO and fundraise as a DAO would be great!

I’d also advise against integrating any KYC since it’s hard to do in a public blockchain without a centralized point of failure, and also goes against the crypto ethos

3 Likes

Thanks for the feedback, guys. As a next step i’ve made a piece on the potential use cases: https://medium.com/practical-blockchain/use-cases-for-the-aragon-crowdfunding-app-apiary-917377772121

Will appreciate comments on which use cases you see as more realistic, thanks in advance.

4 Likes

I have 2 use cases not mentioned on your post :slight_smile:

  1. Finance organizations/mutual funds can use this to raise capital and then reinvest that capital elsewhere, providing transparency on where you money is being invested.

  2. Nonprofits could also use something like this to be transparent about the way they raise/use funds. Usually when you donate to a cause you have no idea what the organization did with the money, but with this you can actually know where the money ended up, which is pretty cool.

Also, I don’t know if this was mentioned already, but there is some other tech project called Apiary, which is pretty popular: https://apiary.io/

I think it would make sense to change the name so that when people google it they don’t get misled to Oracle’s Apiary tool.

3 Likes

@dxiri thanks so much for your input, those cases are really useful!

Regarding the name – yeah, it seems like we’ll need to think more about that =)

I like the name because it fits the concept well, but from a practical perspective it totally makes sense to use a different name for an actual product launch. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Agreed, I like the name too :slight_smile: One way around it would be just to use a different word that means the same, for example, Apiary comes from the latin apiārium, so a change name to Apiarium would be fitting, and a search for apiarium yields nothing tech related which is useful.

1 Like

Do you think that there should be no private layer for KYC data that can be revealed in case of disputes resolution? I agree that pseudonymization is very important for crypto ethos and to enable it there should be some kind of privacy staking mechanism like reputation - user is anonymous while he maintain good reputation.