At Pledgecamp, we are hard at work developing a new type of product. This product sits at the intersection of some of the largest, most exciting industries in the world. So a question naturally comes to mind, are we building a blockchain company or a commerce company? #TokenTuesday

Blockchain Characteristics

Pledgecamp certainly has features and characteristics that mirror those of other blockchain protocols, projects, and companies. Pledgecamp leverages blockchain technology to improve on what is already available. Our whitepaper goes into great depth on this topic.

The blockchain creates the opportunity to enable borderless crowdfunding with a trust-reinforcing mechanism. For example, we introduced Backer Insurance to solve this exact problem. More about it in this article we published:

Backer Insurance creates a financial incentive for backers to provide frequent updates to community members and to meet the deadlines.

Verified blockchain records can also be used to create a global ecosystem of project creators, backers, and vendors. Today, reputation management is difficult to handle over the internet — but we believe our solution will bring transparency and visibility.

Furthermore, Pledgecamp employs smart contracts, an innovation of the Ethereum blockchain, to enable trustless protocol features that are enacted without intermediaries.

Commerce Characteristics

With that said, our platform also has similarities with traditional commerce channels. We want to have a broad selection of crowdfunding projects (vendors), a vibrant community of backers (customers), a beautiful user interface, and helpful customer support.

Commerce is a broad category and touches everything from buying coffee in the morning to books from Amazon and furniture from a boutique shop. While we do facilitate commerce — often across state and national borders — there are certain things we will not engage in.

We believe this clarity of vision is important because the problem we are solving is massive and has the potential to change lives.

Globally, billions of dollars are raised on crowdfunding platforms but the bulk of the existing solutions focus on Western audiences. Looking at the trends, countries like China and India will drive tremendous growth in the coming years. We believe crowdfunding — which provides non-dilutive business financing to early-stage companies — will become increasingly important.

In addition to helping the companies that raise money on Pledgecamp, there is also a network of vendors in their supply chain that we are supporting. We believe that a commerce company built with a global, inclusive mindset will win over the coming years.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Pledgecamp is a decentralized crowdfunding platform.

We envision bringing financing options to billions of people around the world. To do this, we need to bring together scalable cloud applications, advanced IT security, payment processing for fiat and crypto, a community of backers, the features that creators need, and much more.

All of this brings together different disciplines — from computer science and cryptography to product management, marketing, community management, and customer support. Ultimately, every employee and community member has the same goal.

That’s the beauty of building a decentralized platform: We are all working towards the same goal. Whether you’re a developer, a backer, a creator, or simply a community member, we all win when great projects meet the right financing.

Blockchain is a brave new world, new ideas are not necessarily bound to traditional forms of classification. However, Pledgecamp and other projects are actively creating novel solutions to known problems in many industries.