Kickstarter wants to make "decentralized fundraising" a thing.
The crowdfunder announced Wednesday that it would develop a new blockchain-based protocol that would let anyone from your code-savvy grandma to a full-fledged Kickstarter rival implement their very own version of the site.
"Today we're announcing our commitment to a more open, collaborative, and decentralized future. As a first step, we're supporting the development of an open-source protocol that will essentially create a decentralized version of Kickstarter's core functionality," wrote Kickstarter founder Perry Chen and CEO Aziz Hassan in a blog post.
The two cited the company's founding mission, "to help bring creative projects to life," adding that "to truly serve that mission, we need to build on what made Kickstarter so innovative in the first place: the power of a large network of people working together towards a common goal."
The protocol will operate through the CELO, a negative carbon blockchain that count's Jack Dorsey as one of its backers.
"Blockchain technology is a powerful tool to create and align decentralized and distributed networks of people - in effect, new forms of networked organizations and economies," wrote the two, citing the need for new forms of networking due world's increasing complexity.
In a further nod to decentralization, the company said that a yet unnamed independent company would govern the new protocol instead of Kickstarter. According to Chen and Hasan, the yet-unnamed company will count Kickstarter as its first client, implementing the new protocol into the crowdfunding site, with full implementation expected sometime in 2022.
The company says that the core experience of Kickstarter will remain unchanged, adding that "you won't 'see' the protocol, but you will benefit from its improvements."
Kickstarter will also set up a new governance lab headed by Camille Canon, former executive director at the Purpose Foundation. The lab will initially help set the rules for Kickstarter's new protocol, but as the lab's findings mount, the company hopes it will become a broader resource for questions of online governance.
Founded in 2009, Kickstarter has become a household name for crowdfunding.
Peloton (NASDAQ: PTON), a company worth $12.5 billion today, helped bring its first stationary bike to market with the help of funding raised on Kickstarter. The Oculus (NASDAQ: FB) headset also got its start on Kickstarter, while fans of the cult hits 'Veronica Mars' and 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' got to help fund new seasons of their favorite shows through the site.
Even without Kickstarter's new protocol, the blockchain is already revolutionizing fundraising through Digital Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).
Like a group chat with a bank account, large groups of people get together to raise money on the blockchain, with the rules and their enforcement being largely left up to code.
In a preview of what might come through Kickstarter's new protocol, ConstitutionDAO recently raised roughly $40 million on the blockchain in the hopes of winning a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution at an auction.
The gavel ultimately came down at $43.2 million, and ConstitutionDAO lost in the end. And just as the code determined, its members were automatically refunded, and the organization disbanded.
The incident no doubt offers a test case for what Kickstarter might look like under the new protocol, and for what fundraising look like in the future.