Open source funding hits art. Anyone can view it and get the benefit of doing so, the artist got paid to create, somebody gets bragging rights. Everybody wins.
Everybody wins except for the part where a bunch of people wasted a bunch of energy competing to be the one whose computer confirmed the financial transaction in an absurdly inefficient distributed database.
Patreon's been solving the problem of "open source funding" for about a decade without that part.
Suppose you wanted a distributed system where arbitrary nodes can enter without vetting. You'd need to be robust to adversarial nodes that lie and collude. Distributed consensus under asynchrony and adversaries seriously ramps up the difficulty of already challenging problems typically solved by Paxos derived algorithms. The first moderately scalable solution to consensus within such a hostile environment and with relatively few moving parts was built on a proof of work scheme inspired by hashcash. It's not inefficient, it's just a complex domain.
It should be noted that NFTs run on Ethereum which has been in the process of moving to the vastly more efficient proof of stake scheme.
> Patreon's been solving the problem of "open source funding" for about a decade without that part.
There are a number of developing nations whose citizens cannot participate on Patreon. For others, there are workarounds that involve hurdles like navigating providers with worse customer service rep than paypal, giving out sensitive identification, high fees, high withdrawal friction and chaining various third parties who themselves might disappear or be indirectly connected to fraudulent banks.
"Maybe someday crypto will move off of PoW so you should completely ignore the fact that there the networks exist entirely because PoW is how people get paid" is a bunch of bullshit that does nothing to change the fact that Proof Of Wasting A Lot Of Power On Nothing is how it works right now. Right now I consider crypto finding a way to work that doesn't burn shit-tons of energy to be about as likely as The Year Of Linux On The Desktop finally coming to pass.
Yes, it is a completely contrived marketplace based on bragging rights. It seems to work, but it is incredibly stupid and eventually people will move on.
this is another instance of the phenomenon in tech and startup culture where someone claims to solve an already solved problem with a needlessly overly complicated technical "solution"
Patreon's been solving the problem of "open source funding" for about a decade without that part.