FFUNDER

A crowdfunding platform and marketplace for freelance services, designed to help Web3 projects launch on the Theta Blockchain. Incentivizing supporters with rewards and encouraging collaboration.

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Inspiration

As early Theta investors, and enthusiastic community members Julian and myself took a helicopter view on where the Theta ecosystem was back in 2022, and where we could help take it. We were quite surprised at how young on in its life span the ecosystem was at that time, despite amazing tech, an impressive list of patents, strong partnerships and an amazing creative community. Whilst working on the design work and marketing for the inaugural ThetaCon, the idea of the project came to us. We presented it to a couple of key community members and went on and pitched the idea in a breakout room at TC22. The reaction was overwhelming 'this is a game changer' was said more than once. But the key takeaway was, Theta Labs needed a way to encourage devs and creators from other blockchains to move over to the Theta ecosystem.

It was at that breakaway session we met Jeremiah who offered to help make the project a reality. Since then we have refined the concept and white paper with the help of the community, built MVP and feel now is the time for the whole community to benefit from FFUNDER.

What is FFUNDER?

A crowdfunding platform and a marketplace for freelance services, designed to help Web3 projects launch on the Theta Blockchain, incentivising supporters with exciting rewards. FFUNDER connects project creators, developers, and creative talent encouraging collaboration.

Supporters will be able to participate in a secure and compliant environment to incubate early stage projects or help existing projects get to the next level.

The FFUNDER platform enables supporters the opportunity to secure early access to innovative projects. Project supporters will be rewarded with our utility token, ‘Theta Loving Care’, the TLC token as well as bespoke project creators rewards.

FFUNDER brings project creators, service providers, and supporters together in a focused ecosystem, akin to a combination of Fiverr and Kickstarter.

What problem is FFUNDER solving?

The development of new Web3 projects and the expected crossover of the Ethereum community has been slow and must be accelerated. FFUNDER aims to solve these issues by fostering collaboration and providing support for seed projects.

Theta Labs introduced development tools in 2021. The tools were intended to specifically encourage new entrepreneurial-minded people to create projects on the Theta blockchain. An Ethereum compatible smart contract development tools and integrations with Truffle Suite and Metamask, with the aim to make applications easier to build from scratch and encourage Ethereum developers to seamlessly port over existing projects. But this alone hasn't been enough. We believe a focused marketplace running 24/7 coupled with an aggressive marketing approach will help to trigger the migration of developers and creators from other blockchains.

We've designed and built FFUNDER to not only attract others from outside but, to encourage the Theta community to create, build and collaborate at any time and not just wait for the annual Hackathon, which is unfortunately a DevPost environment and not a Theta focused event. Our aim is to help grow the Theta ecosystem for everyone.

Read more about FFUNDER and the TLC tokenomics in our white paper https://ffunder.io/paper/

How it works

How projects benefit

The platform connects project owners with the community to raise funds via crowdfunding and attract the right team members from the talent pool to help a project to incubate, grow and flourish. A new project owner will have access to a pitch page on the platform where the project can market itself to the community. Each project has the option to tailor their own smart contract to accept funds in either or all; Tfuel, Ethereum or BNB.

How supporters benefit

Supporters are rewarded with our TLC token, each time they fund a project. Projects will also offer a variety of unique rewards offered by the project creator’s such as products, NFTs, airdrops or an experience unique to that project. Rewards will vary from project-to-project and could sometimes include a project token.

How service providers benefit

The talent pool is a collaborative marketplace where service providers can market their skill set to the community via a profile page. The profile/portfolio page is a one-stop-shop where professional services are displayed. For example, as a developer, you would present an introduction about yourself, the languages you speak, your website, GitHub repository, discord and social media links.

How we built it

After the TC22 conference, we started drawing up plans to see how FFUNDER would work. It was crucial to follow a structured approach in stages. We began with requirement analysis, where we gathered and defined the scope of the project. Next, we moved to conceptualization and the design process, creating a blueprint that includes system architecture and user interface design. It was clear at this stage the project was going to be quite complex. So, our focus was on making the platform as simple to use as possible. Following the completion of the design we moved to development planning, and timeline for coding. Once we had a framework to test we asked community members to look at the design, and basic features. And, we asked a second group to debate the first iteration of the white paper. Lots of comments were made in these sessions, and we are massively grateful to those involved in those meetings. From there we took on board the comments and suggestions and build out MVP. We then asked a small group to test the project where more issues and bugs were found. These have since been ironed out.

This version of the FFUNDER platform is populated with placeholder projects, we have disabled the 'Support a project' function. The talent pool is also made up from a few placeholders together with a few community members profiles. We have done this purely for the Hackathon entry to demonstrate the concept.

Challenges we ran into

We encountered several challenges along the way, but gave ourselves the necessary time frame to solve them. The main one was controlling the projects potential. We had so many thoughts and ideas and striping these back was essential. We also faced difficulties with, comprehensive testing and managing suggestions for added features, reminding ourselves we are building MVP not the 'field of dreams'.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Addressing security concerns added further complexity to the process. We solved this by taking a different approach to dApp building. Rather than have one central contact that manages the entire blockchain experience, we took a new approach that lets each project launch their own contract on Theta blockchain. This allows funds to be sent directly to the project and removes FFUNDER as a money transmitter. We simply stand in the middle and watch to make sure the project is delivering on milestones as agreed. Then funds are released. If at any time a project fails we have the option to return the funds back to the supporters. We call this the 'Supporter Protection Program'. FFUNDER has no access to any supported funds.

We are also proud of the strong features included in MVP:

FFUNDER token swap. A swap function to allow the option for users to convert Tfuel, ETH or BNB to stable coins; USDT, USDC or BUSD. With the aim to avoid fluctuation in price during the pitch period. Tfuel can also be swapped for Tdrop. The swap uses Uniswap for ETH, Pancake Swap for BNB and Theta Swap for Tfuel.

KYC Integration, only allows verified users to participate.

Buy Crypto with a credit a card via a 3rd party. ChangeNOW is a secure, simple and fast instant cryptocurrency exchange service. Give that buying Tfuel in the US is difficult.

Dashboard, a user-friendly interface designed to provide a comprehensive and efficient user experience.

  • Notification and Messaging, like a simple discord
  • Follow members and projects
  • Project Milestones, acting as stage payments to projects
  • Project owners, supporters and service providers admin areas
  • FFUNDER admin, allowing us to manage disputes and return funds if bad actors are present.

Read more in our white paper https://ffunder.io/paper/

What we learned

Were do we start? We think it's best just to say EVERYTHING!

What's next for FFUNDER?

We are in the process of a finalising our legal position, which includes being granted a European Crypto License. Regulation is coming everywhere, so operating with a crypto licence makes us compliant from the get go. We are also in the process of raising funds for our Liquidity Pool.

The plan, once this is finalised, is to launch the project:

  • Mint the TLC token
  • Soft launch of the platform with 12 projects
  • Recruit service providers
  • Embark on an aggressive marketing campaign
  • Continue with video and document support
  • Be open to a wider testing group (the Hackathon) and evolve the project from user input.

Looking further ahead, our road map looks like this:

  • Community council event
  • Beta release
  • Allowing projects that fund up to $5,000 with a simplified milestone process
  • Prevision for projects to offer TNT-20 tokens as rewards
  • Offer holders of TLC tokens participation in governance decisions
  • Additional blockchain networks / exploring cross-chain interoperability
  • Mainnet Launch
  • Mobile App development

Sign up videos

To join FFUNDER is so simple it shouldn't need a video. Please feel free to signup to explore the platform in full. We have disabled the 'Support a Project' button and KYC for this Hackathon version... https://ffunder.io/join/

Start a project https://www.ffunder.io/video/

Launch a project https://www.ffunder.io/video/project/

Project admin https://www.ffunder.io/video/admin/

Support a project https://www.ffunder.io/video/support/

Become a service provider https://www.ffunder.io/video/sp/

Service provider excepting payment https://www.ffunder.io/video/proposal/

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