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Cool idea. However, some feedback: It seems the time span involved could cause problems. Consider things like changing financial circumstances, expiring credi

Cool idea. However, some feedback: It seems the time span involved could cause problems. Consider things like changing financial circumstances, expiring credit cards, closed accounts, deaths of backers, forgetful backers contesting charges, etc. How will you prevent fraud? A dollar buys a vote, but the dollar goes to the winner... so just register two accounts and contribute enough to unilaterally decide that you yourself (on the other account) are the winner. Get your own money back plus everyone else's. Similarly, what's to stop a backer from pledging some huge sum to get someone to develop something and then withdrawing their pledge at the last minute to get the benefit of the finished development without paying for it? This isn't intended as my way of saying "you shouldn't do this", it's intended as my way of saying "don't get yourself into trouble by neglecting these issues."

rpm4321 13y ago
Thanks Daniel, appreciate it. Regarding the points you made: 1. Time span - there may be some "erosion" in the prize amount as it goes on, but we follow up with pledgers to update payment information as necessary, and update the prize amount accordingly. Unfortunately the time span can't really be helped due to the fact that prizes have to have time to build in value in order to attract teams to the prize, and then there's R&D time for those teams to actually accomplish the prize's goals. 2. Regarding fraud, there is a final up or down vote on any leading prize applicant that didn't receive 70% or greater of the vote. I don't want to get into too much detail publicly on fraud prevention, because it's obviously counter-productive. ;) - but we're certainly confident we'll be able to prevent someone from pledging 70% of the prize in order to capture the remaining 30%. Also, the majority of that 30% would surely cancel their pledges if a sub-par project was about to win - that is if we hadn't already disqualified the fraudulent applicant. 3. Regarding free R&D for a big contributor, I suppose that's a possibility, but I'm not sure it would be a very big concern. Presumably any R&D that would motivate a scheme like that would be pretty valuable, and all I.P. would still belong to the prize applicants themselves.

rpm4321 13y ago

Thanks Daniel, appreciate it. Regarding the points you made: 1. Time span - there may be some "erosion" in the prize amount as it goes on, but we follow up with pledgers to update payment information as necessary, and update the prize amount accordingly. Unfortunately the time span can't really be helped due to the fact that prizes have to have time to build in value in order to attract teams to the prize, and then there's R&D time for those teams to actually accomplish the prize's goals. 2. Regarding fraud, there is a final up or down vote on any leading prize applicant that didn't receive 70% or greater of the vote. I don't want to get into too much detail publicly on fraud prevention, because it's obviously counter-productive. ;) - but we're certainly confident we'll be able to prevent someone from pledging 70% of the prize in order to capture the remaining 30%. Also, the majority of that 30% would surely cancel their pledges if a sub-par project was about to win - that is if we hadn't already disqualified the fraudulent applicant. 3. Regarding free R&D for a big contributor, I suppose that's a possibility, but I'm not sure it would be a very big concern. Presumably any R&D that would motivate a scheme like that would be pretty valuable, and all I.P. would still belong to the prize applicants themselves.