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Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: CLains on March 24, 2014, 02:28:10 pm

Title: Conditional Pledging
Post by: CLains on March 24, 2014, 02:28:10 pm
Conditional Pledging

Person A: I Pledge that IF total amount pledged exceeds X, then I pledge Y.
Person B: I Pledge that IF total amount pledged exceeds X, then I pledge Y.
Person C: I Pledge that IF total amount pledged exceeds X, then I pledge Y.

And so on. At some point the conditional pledging of Y exceeds X. Now the conditional pledging can suddenly jump into reality and become actual pledging!

Why don't people pledge more often, donate to a cause more often?

Optimistic Wikipedia: If everyone reading this donated 20$ the fundraiser would be over in one hour.

Cynical Joe: But everyone won't and my funds will be useless!

Rational Joe: Why should I have faith that other people will contribute?

Powerless Joe: My contribution is a drop in the ocean, I am insignificant.

Lamenting Joe: Why should I carry the burden of everything myself?

Now you can pledge 20$ conditional on the goal being satisfied!

This was impossible before the advent of blockchain based technologies. Forget the Tragedy of the commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons), now we can race ahead and become the Superrational (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality) beings we were meant to be :)
Title: Re: Conditional Pledging
Post by: CLains on March 24, 2014, 02:40:10 pm
With Conditional Pledging we also get Conditional Funds. The general idea implies that there will be conditional funds hovering as a sort of shadow future (http://www.practicallyefficient.com/home/2010/09/28/the-adjacent-possible) over the present as all the ways money can be used to reinvent the current state of things.

I could propose an idea like "Musician X and Musician Y doing an album together" and people could pledge conditionally on this idea. The pledging could even be conditional on implementation; for instance if we establish a predicition market on the probability of implementation (of Musician X and Y doing the album together), and then make the pledging conditional on that probability approaching some value close to 1.

In general the external judges considered for Insurance could be applied here as well. If known in advance, the money could go directly to the implementors in a delayed fashion conditional on their trust-rating via a prediction market.

This would definitely help third party DACs with funding as well. To some extent, investors want to buy a stake in a DAC for a low price, but if the price is too low, then the DAC will likely fail due to lack of funding (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=499211.0); thus, for each investor they might have a sweet-spot (between two values) in mind - enter conditional pledging!
Title: Re: Conditional Pledging
Post by: CWEvans on March 24, 2014, 06:31:08 pm
This is what drives crowdfunding. Its viability has been proven.

The next logical step is to decentralize it.

Imagine how this might play out in a disaster relief scenario, especially if the money reached actual victims.
Title: Re: Conditional Pledging
Post by: santaclause102 on March 24, 2014, 07:02:43 pm
Great!  +5%
Wouldnt it be easy to do an automated (hardcoded, trustesss) escrow service that has that function: If within xy days zw BTC/BitUSD are sent then those zw USD + constitute the funding / the donation. If not it automatically goes back to the sender address
Title: Re: Conditional Pledging
Post by: CLains on March 24, 2014, 07:24:47 pm
If within xy days zw BTC/BitUSD are sent then those zw USD + constitute the funding / the donation. If not it automatically goes back to the sender address

Exactly. The main idea here is extremely simple but the reason I now emphasize it is because I have come to believe that it is very powerful.

I imagine a simple frontend "Kickstarter" website where you can adjust three values, 1. the donation amount 2. the conditional total value 3. the time limit.

Since everyone will likely set different size of donations, conditional total value, and time limit, the website should have graphs representing statistics for these in real time.

Since it is blockchain based it would also be easy to implement as system where people get shares in a new asset proportional to their donation.

Of course, once that is implemented, all these other things can build on that.
Title: Re: Conditional Pledging
Post by: CLains on March 24, 2014, 07:40:53 pm
I love this story of a philosopher wanting to organize a conference with the top philosophers of the day. The way he did this was first lie to the people who provided funding by telling them that big-shot philosophers A, B and C where definitely coming. He then went to philosopher A, B and C respectively and told them that he had funding and that the two other big-shot philosophers have decided to come.

Soon after he got funding since - after all - he had promised that A, B, and C were coming. And of course philosopher A came since he had been told that the conference was funded and B and C were coming, and B of course came since he had been told that A and C were coming and finally C had to come since he had been told that A and B were coming.
Title: Re: Conditional Pledging
Post by: santaclause102 on March 24, 2014, 07:41:35 pm
If within xy days zw BTC/BitUSD are sent then those zw USD + constitute the funding / the donation. If not it automatically goes back to the sender address

Exactly. The main idea here is extremely simple but the reason I now emphasize it is because I have come to believe that it is very powerful.

I imagine a simple frontend "Kickstarter" website where you can adjust three values, 1. the donation amount 2. the conditional total value 3. the time limit.

Since everyone will likely set different size of donations, conditional total value, and time limit, the website should have graphs representing statistics for these in real time.

Since it is blockchain based it would also be easy to implement as system where people get shares in a new asset proportional to their donation.

Of course, once that is implemented, all these other things can build on that.

The potential is indeed tremendous! The questions why such conditional pledging isn't used widely seams strange by now.
With blockchain technology we now have: An easy way to send value. An easy and secure way to track the sender and a way for the sender to prove the ownership of his donations practically without costs. Little costs of running the business (kickstarter I think takes 10% of the donations which is ridiculous). No need to trust the kickstarter company even with big amounts of money.

Merging a blockexplorer (like blockchain.info) with kickstarter...

Are you the entrepreneur or the developer? :)
Title: Re: Conditional Pledging
Post by: CLains on March 24, 2014, 07:51:16 pm
Are you the entrepreneur or the developer? :)

Surely not the developer. I can't tell Python from C++ :D
Title: Re: Conditional Pledging
Post by: santaclause102 on March 24, 2014, 07:54:40 pm
Are you the entrepreneur or the developer? :)

Surely not the developer. I can't tell Python from C++ :D

Haha. I'm the same! lol