[mike_hearn]

Hi, I'm the author. Thanks for your interest! If you'd like to follow the project, you can sign up for email updates on vinumeris.com (they will be quite rare so don't worry about being spammed).

Once launched, I plan to host a curated collection of projects for upgrades to Bitcoin and related software. In fact Lighthouse is partly software I'm writing for my own company, because that's how I would like to make money - by implementing open source upgrades and raising the funds to pay for it through per-project assurance contracts.

As mentioned in the other replies, obviously a decentralised solution can't have any central curation built in, but people are free to run their own curated collections of projects if they like. Often though, it won't be necessary, because the creator of the project already has a good reputation and the reputation of an aggregator is inconsequential.

In other cases, the entire notion of curation may be irrelevant. Consider micro assurance contracts like someone who wants to rent out a house with a pool and organise a big party with friends there, but only if enough friends commit to going for the party to be fun. This would not be allowed on Kickstarter, but Lighthouse lets you do it by simply attaching the contract file to the announcement email. Replies can have the pledges attached (you can drag the pledges right out of the app into an email compose window). So this is the kind of ultra light weight contract that might be possible in future, when you have a totally decentralised solution.