Common Fund Launches on NEAR: The Future of Crowdfunding Has Arrived
“The non-custodial crowdfunding solution that’s open to anyone.”
As the NEAR Ecosystem continues to mature, new projects continue to build and onboard to the protocol. While many of these projects represent a new frontier of innovative Web3 solutions, others are hard at work re-imagining existing solutions in new and more accessible ways. In this context, the NEAR Team is pleased to welcome Common Fund to the NEAR Ecosystem.
Common Fund is one of the world’s first non-custodial crowdfunding platforms. Similar to popular crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, Common Fund is a place where startups, individuals, and passionate creators can get funding for their projects. However, unlike these legacy funding models, Common Fund is fully smart-contract based: Pledged funds are transferred directly between funders and campaigns, without any intermediary involved.
As an innovative model for crowdfunding that is positioned to scale into the future, Common Fund inverts traditional practice by placing value in auditable and transparent smart contracts so that different stakeholders can interact with one another in a fully decentralized manner. As Kieran Mesquita, CEO of Common Fund states:
“The vision of Common.Fund is to be a platform where projects are able to raise the support they need to bring forth wonderful ideas and initiatives into the world through decentralized cryptocurrencies. This way, projects can garner support from anyone from anywhere in the world.”
Not only is the platform accessible to anyone around the world, it also allows for payments to be made in global cryptocurrencies—making it usable in any particular country. Common Fund is the blueprint for the future of both supporting and bootstrapping projects. It facilitates cryptocurrency-based funding in combination with a platform that is non-custodial and decentralized, while simultaneously providing a stellar user-experience.
Why Build On NEAR?
Common Fund initially started development on Bitcoin Cash before deciding to make the switch to NEAR. According to CEO of Common Fund Kieran Mesquita, Common Fund is looking for a larger ecosystem and community interested in helping early crowdfunds get off the ground faster. NEAR, while young and still under development, offers the best of both worlds: bridging over to ETH, cheap transactions, and an easily accessible and user-friendly wallet for getting connected to the platform. In addition to these benefits the Common Fund team has also found NEAR to be quick and easy for their developers to launch smart contracts —making the platforms’ pathway to market much faster.
“Obviously NEAR transaction fees are a lot, lot cheaper than ETH. It just doesn’t make sense if we are going out and saying that we are able to provide you a platform that has much lower costs than kickstarter and Indiegogo and have someone pledge 10$ in transaction fees.”
Common Fund Future Developments: What To Expect?
“It is our goal to fully decentralize Common.Fund in the years to come.”
In its current form, Common Fund represents an initial foray into a future of decentralized applications and open-source collaboration. In the coming months to years Common Fund will be growing their team—currently at roughly five full time people—and work to fully decentralize the platform so that anyone from anywhere can easily start a campaign or fund a new initiative with their cryptocurrency of choice. More immediately, stable coin integration and pledge routing through a DEX are at the top of the agenda for the Team.
From a broader perspective Common Fund sees its mission as one piece of a much larger process of democratizing access to finance around the world. Through Bitcoin, other Cryptocurrencies and DeFi, finance and money have become systems that are now Open for anyone to participate in. Common Fund represents the next generation of solutions that embodies that same spirit, but for crowdfunding and supporting new projects, companies, and passions.
“I view the whole movement of crypto’s as a way to even the playing field – we give everyone equal opportunity and equal access to world wide finance. So I certainly take the optimistic role and hope that Common Fund can be a component in that process.”
Be sure to follow the development of Common Fund in the coming months, as more campaigns launch on the platform and new crypto’s become compatible for fundraisers and projects alike! To get in touch with the Common Fund Team you can find them on Telegram or visit their website.
