How Qortal Revolutionized Crowdfunding

The arrival of a decentralized, peer-to-peer and open source blockchain infrastructure such as Qortal brings about innumerable benefits with it, probably enough to write books upon books about it! However, in this blog we’ll explore one especially good advantage of Qortal and its parallel economy: crowdfunding!

Yes, you heard correctly, crowdfunding! The concept of raising money amongst people inclined to support a given cause goes as far back as 1798, when Auguste Comte, a French philosopher and mathematician issued notes for the public support of his future work as a philosopher.¹

Crowdfunding isn’t a new concept, and has been around for a long time²

The idea is not new, and it’s widely spread on the normal internet, with websites such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter being extremely popular for startups, aspiring artists, solopreneurs, and pretty much everybody looking to raise money for a cause. So if the idea and concept are not new, and already vastly popular, where’s the innovation and advantage brought forth by Qortal?

Well, first let’s take a look at some recent scandals surrounding GoFundMe and Kickstarter, as this will set the tone for why Qortal is so revolutionary and cool (in so many ways).

Recently, a protest in Canada during the Covid lockdowns led to a Trucker convoy descending on the capital of the country, Ottawa, in a peaceful measure to denounce the overreach by the government during the pandemic years. Truckers and other protestors started an encampment and blockade which disrupted the city streets for over 3 weeks!

To fund these efforts, an organizer called Tamara Lich started a GoFundMe campaign, which surpassed 10 million Canadian dollars in donations. However, GoFundMe decided to freeze the funds after it ruled that the crowdfunding went against their terms and conditions, and would be used for violent purposes.³ Needless to say the crowdfund failed, and GoFundMe ended up reimbursing everyone who had donated to the cause.

To make matters worse, many protestors who had donated to the cause saw their bank accounts frozen by the Canadian government, including Ms. Lich who would also eventually be prosecuted in court for inciting the movement.⁴ The whole fiasco painted GoFundMe, and crowdfunding in general, under a very bad light!

A screenshot showing the frozen GoFundMe crowdfund to support the Freedom Convoy of 2022⁵

As for the Kickstarter, it is not exempt from its own scandals, as it’s been reported that with nearly a fifth of revenue raised on the crowdfunding giant going toward scams.⁶ This is due to incompetence on the company’s end in handling fraudulent crowdfunds, and can be directly attributed to it being a centralized website.

All these problems would be avoided if people began crowdfunding on Qortal’s very own Q-App called Q-Fund, which works the same way as traditional crowdfunding platforms, but with one major kicker: no middlemen! That’s right, all the QORT, Qortal’s native coin, raised on Q-Fund would go directly to the crowdfunder’s account, thereby saving the person up to 10% in fees, which are normally charged on normal internet websites.⁷ This is due to the fact that Qortal is decentralized and peer-to-peer blockchain, meaning that transactions between users are direct, with no third parties involved!

A screenshot of a crowdfund on Q-Fund on Qortal Hub⁸

This decentralized architecture also means that censorship and freezing of crowdfunds based on political motives is impossible! Had the truckers used Q-Fund to raise their money back in 2022 for their protest, they would have received all the amount they had funded, with nobody standing in their way. And to top it off, nobody who had donated to the crowdfund would have had their bank accounts frozen, as it is impossible to trace an user’s name on Qortal back to their ip address. In other words, people who donate to Q-Fund are doing so practically anonymously.

And in regards to the fraudulent crowdfunds found on Kickstarter, Qortal also has a solution to this! They are called “Automated Transactions”, and work as an automatically executable contract that runs in the blockchain when certain conditions are met. In this example, Q-Fund could be technically updated to add an escrow service to it, whereby it could automatically release the QORT funded in stages based on milestones achieved by the person raising the money. We say technically because this is not yet in place, but an ambitious developer could update the app to allow for this if he or she so desired. And Q-Fund is open source, as is all code on Qortal!

So now that we’ve seen all the problems with crowdfund applications found on the normal internet, and how they are absent on Qortal, the question must be asked: why would anybody want to ever raise money using centralized services ever again? And let’s not forget that you can trade QORT against 6 other coins, including Bitcoin, on Qortal, meaning you could technically raise funds for other types of cryptocurrencies too. Q-Fund could also be updated to accommodate this too. Everything is possible on Qortal, and the infrastructure is still in its infancy!

Qortal has revolutionized crowdfunding, and it will revolutionize many other applications on the normal internet too! It’s just a matter of time. If you haven’t installed Qortal yet, you can do so here. See you on Qortal!

1. Positivists.org. (n.d.). Auguste Comte's appeal for public support. Positivists.org. http://positivists.org/blog/archives/5959

2. AMEF Consulting. (2024). Crowdfunding: Source of financing and investment opportunity [Image]. AMEF Consulting. https://www.amef-consulting.com/en/2024/01/crowdfunding-source-of-financing-and-investment-opportunity/

3. The Star. (2022, February 4). GoFundMe pauses donations to Freedom Convoy as fundraiser surpasses $10 million. The Star. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/gofundme-pauses-donations-to-freedom-convoy-as-fundraiser-surpasses-10-million/article_14b6093b-ee75-5514-9d52-a7f1e6b178e4.html

4. Austen, I., & Bilefsky, D. (2022, February 22). Canada protest's unexpected legacy: Uniting disparate groups. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/world/americas/canada-protest-finances.html

5. GoFundMe. (2022, January 14). Freedom Convoy 2022 fundraiser page [Screenshot]. GoFundMe.

6. Jarvis, M. (2024, March 12). Almost a fifth of money raised by Kickstarter projects goes to scam campaigns, report alleges. Dicebreaker. https://www.dicebreaker.com/companies/kickstarter/news/fifth-of-money-raised-by-kickstarter-projects-goes-to-scams-report-alleges

7. eFulfillment Service. (2023, November). Pricing your crowdfunding campaign: A guide for success. eFulfillment Service. https://www.efulfillmentservice.com/2023/11/pricing-your-crowdfunding-campaign-a-guide-for-success/

8. Qortal Project. (n.d.). Support My Marketing Efforts – Q-Fund campaign [Screenshot]. Qortal Hub.