Crypto-crowdfunding platform Swarm announced last week it would hold a demo day on Guy Fawkes Day for five decentralized projects, and applicants are already being screened for the event.
Cultural note: Guy Fawkes Day is the 5th of November, remember, remember? Fawkes tried to blow up the House of Lords in London in 1605, and his visage has been made famous through V for Vendetta and the activities of Anonymous as a symbol of rebellion.
That same ethos of revolution is at the heart of what Swarm is trying to do with its demo day.
“The world needs a more fluid funding mechanism,” Swarm founder Joel Dietz said in a statement. “We believe that using cryptocurrency and crowdsourced project screening will allow innovative projects to be funded much more quickly without having to be run through centralized middlemen.”
(Dietz also wrote a piece for Cointelegraph last week criticizing the American Federal Reserve. “There are old institutions that are decaying,” he wrote. “That's fine, because at the same time there is a new world being born on the blockchain. Let's make sure that people find out about it.”)
Demo Day Application Details
Applications for Swarm’s demo day are open through October 5, and anyone interested can apply here. The five projects will be selected on October 8, and those teams will be invited to present their work at the demo day event in Silicon Valley.
“If your project passes the initial review process, you will be invited to do a video presentation,” the Swarm website reads. “This presentation will include your 5-10 minute pitch and questions followed by a swarm of questions raised by reviewers. Projects that do well through these stages will be invited to be a part of the first Swarm class.”
The projects will also be able to launch their own Swarm crowdsales. Swarm’s crowdsales are powered by cryptocoins that can be sold to anyone via the platform in exchange for bitcoins. Those bitcoins remain stored in a multisig wallet, and over time those funds become available as people following a given project vote on it.
“This means that you can raise more funds because your fans know that they will get their funds back if you don’t meet your goals,” an informational document (PDF) on the site reads.
Selected projects will have time between Oct. 8 and Nov. 5 to make decisions about and arrangements for their own cryptotoken sales.
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