With Diem approaching will the time finally come for a crypto patreon alternative?

[PinkysBrain]

Currently cryptocurrency suffers from the problems of scary fiat onboarding, scary/untrustworthy wallets (people might trust Binance/Coinbase, but the companies don't profile themselves as payment companies) and lack of other uses for the currency. The scary onboarding won't go away, but with Facebook backing Diem and Facebook's Novi wallet and use for payments it should become a lot more palatable to normies. I have some preliminary ideas how a Patreon like service could be created which I'm just going to throw out here.

First off, it would still need a company since you can't decentralise trust. Unless Facebook builds a non censorship subscription service directly into Novi, someone has to play intermediary in the funds going from patron to creator which will require trust.

The patron will put money into a smart contract, from which the patron can reclaim all the remaining money at any point and from which subscribed creators can withdraw upto a monthly cap agreed upon subscription and then send a NFT to the patron to claim his rewards (as ridiculous as NFTs are, normies kinda understand the concept now so you might as well use it). For each such withdrawal part will be a fee to the service.

The patron will get monthly interest on their balance in a special token (say 5%) which can be used to "pay" upto a certain percentage (say 33%) of subscriptions. The creators will not get as much money from patrons which do this, but they will get a steady income because patrons will be incentivized to keep significant amounts of money in their accounts (say half a year's worth). The incentive needs to be substantial enough to push people to do it, yet it needs to not piss off people who can't dedicate that much money, bit of a balancing act. This is the downside of the service not having direct access to a credit card or bank account.

The service needs to be clear up front about being a non censorship service. I'd suggest a byline on the main page "How many children have to die before you censor beyond what's necessary to prevent legal liability? All of them."

PS. I'd also like to see the service operate on Solana with USDC for the non normies who want a more pseudonymous chain. But I think Diem is what's needed to make it viable.

 

[anne O'nymous]

The service needs to be clear up front about being a non censorship service.

There will be a problem here. Either you'll have "a company since you can't decentralise trust", or you'll be totally censorship free. But you'll not be able to have the two together.
There's a reason why all the services working this way (because they already exist) are on the "dark web", you are legally responsible of the content present on your platform. Therefore, either you seek for trust, and will have to apply some censoring to not end in jail as accomplice of a prostitution ring or child abuse, or you'll be censorship free, and never reach a level of trust high enough for the service to be reliable.
Look at subscribestar by example. Despite most of the scene wanting to get rid of Patreon's bans, it's still rarely used. Most creators prefer to comply to Patreon's rules, eventually following the "restoring patch" route, than joining a platform that is still too shady to be effectively trusted. And the same can be said about all the platforms that existed before the creation of subscribestar. There were already alternatives to Patreon, but all were shady places where, because of their censorship free policy, you would be offering your game among racist propaganda, negationism and probably half hidden p*d*shit and shady prostitution rings.

The fact that, as creator, you aren't much disturbed by this neighborhood will never be enough. It's not your own thoughts that matter here, but the ones of your possible bankers. You can feel using such platform as the sole way to express your creativity, but they'll feel that supporting someone using such platform is making a pact with the devil. They wouldn't just be just supporting you, they would also be paying the fees that will help the platform to exist ; what mean that by helping you, they would also be helping the shitheads surrounding you to spread their hate and abuse individuals that can possibly be (abducted) children.
And this, whatever one can think about Patreon's rules, is a real different step. Thinking that some censoring goes too far, because pixels aren't real persons, isn't the same than offering to real offenders a platform where they can live of their crimes.

 

[PinkysBrain]

I feel you're being a bit pedantic. I clearly meant to indicate that it would obey the law and I don't consider that censorship.

The moment you go beyond the law though it's a never ending slippery slope, like the Cloudflare president realized ... even as he was forced to get on the slope. That is what has to be made clear up front, that there is no censorship based on possible consequences. Just simply obeying the law, which is far less stringent than credit card company rules in most countries.

As for scaring off customers, that's for the creators to decide on ... Patreon won't go away and porn consumers tend to be more libertarian. A more pseudonymous service can find a niche and possibly extra customers even when a game is on Patreon. Also it might give creators which are a little too extreme in toeing the line a lifeline to finish the game when Patreon's gaze falls on them, a text patch can only cover up so much.