A Crypto Network that desires to be independent and free of centralized influences needs to consider the way its projects and general developments are funded. Whatever funding mechanism people choose to adopt for their crypto projects must be fraud-proof, decentralized, achieve projects development goals with little to zero scam, otherwise the funding mechanism should be considered unreliable and avoided.
We need reliable self-funding mechanism that doesn't completely depend on single entity or funders from centralized world.. Everyone should be allowed to participate freely in genuine crowdfunding, funds should be locked and released gradually to workforce for parts of the project that are successfully completed according to specifications, with little to zero issue.. This funding mechanism is the right approach since crypto is trustless, requiring proofs for unverified claims before they are accepted as right or true. Crypto is a different world entirely where "pay before service" or "trust without verification" should not apply to avoid scams. However, things should be done in ways that guarantee payment or trust once agreement is fulfilled and work approved. And the best way to achieve things like this is to have a agreement or contract (written or otherwise) for what needs to be done before fund is released for example. The contract is signed, fund locked in a box and everything handed over to a neutral party who has the power to unlock the fund and release it to receiver once the contract term is fulfilled.
Agreement based crowd-funding with smart-contract/escrow.
To successful crowdfund a crypto project, the fund raisers have to be very transparent by letting the funders know what the project is about, how they intend to develop the project, how it will work and its roadmap(how/when it's going to be gradually done till completed). This will then be reviewed by funders and experts especially to know how the developers intend to achieve it and whether it can be done the way it's proposed. If the answers are satisfactory then funding (funds are expected to be automatically locked at the receiving smart-contract address) should immediately commence. This will become the basis of gradually release of funds to developers
Once funding is completed, it is allocated to smart-contract addresses (which are automatically locked) to be released to workers for different parts of the project they are working on, plus with clearly written roadmap of different stages of project development and completion time. The workers compete to finish each work or they collaborate together to receive funds or earn rewards allocated to each address. If a work is completed and properly done, the fund for the particular work is released to the worker/workers.
To release fund there has to be work review to ensure it's completed and according to specifications. Once reviewed, the reviewers vote on fund release {fund release inquiry from Smart-contract: Release Fund? Yes/No/Not yet
Votes with reliable evidence-based answers have more weight}. The same applies to other parts of the project that have been completed.
Low barrier to entry for Workers
Everyone is free to participate in the project development and accessing funds. All interested workers will need to competitively complete each part of the project either individually or through collaboration, the first to successfully complete each part gets or share the locked fund as soon as the work is verified as of good quality and completed.
Building on the right crypto standards
When reviewing a project care should be taken to ensure that the project meet these requirements:
- Decentralization: project must be decentralized
- Transparency: non-private activities and information need to be transparent.
- Immutability: information and records should be undeletable and unchangeable. Old records or information should always be accessible and unchanged even when replaced with new ones.
- Censorship Resistance.
- Privacy and Anonymity-friendly
- Permissionless/Trustless: project should require little to zero permission & trust to join. Trust can be built up over time
Etc
Finally, with all these put in place, crowdfunding and project development should become better, with scams and failed projects drastically reduced without compromising on crypto standards