Comment by CrazyStat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CrazyStat | Hacker News Reader

After reading the readme and skimming a couple source files it's not clear to me what this actually does other than define how you would like to be paid.

Does openfare collect, apportion, and distribute funds? Solve recursive allocation (e.g. Project A stipulates that 5% of donations should go to Library B, which in turn splits their donations from Project A and elsewhere into N parts)? Address transaction overhead and friction somehow? If a project's OPENFARE.lock file specifies a 60-40 split but I don't like Steve so I split my donation 40-60 instead will openfare identify that (e.g. by hooking into wallet apis) and tell John he needs to give some of what he received to Steve?

Machine-readable payment preferences are a step forward, I guess, but it seems like a very small step if that's all it does.

In theory aggregation and distribution allow for lower transaction overheads but in practice the middleman seems to keep a lot of the money.

Fifty people donate $20 each, to be divided between 100 recipients, that's 150 transactions (50x$20, 100x$10). As long an the donations are earmarked for more than 3 recipients per donor, that works out as fewer transfers.

Apple Music in theory could have paid artists more, but I haven't heard any news on that front since ages ago, when Weird Al puzzled out loud about how he was making about 1/10th of what he used to make.

And I thought Brave's original model was something along this line and they seem to have abandoned it, which is probably worth digging into.

I think you have to consider as well that if and when someone actually figures out how to make this distribution model work, Visa will notice and introduce their own system. They can split the difference on overhead and increase their margins while also increasing donation efficiency. But perhaps only once someone else has proven the idea (free R&D).

Thank you for taking a look at what I've shared so far.

My intent is to create a community around the idea and to get early feedback. It's true that there are many problems outstanding. I'm yet to share a payment portal for instance that will effectively outsource the infrastructure necessary to distribute funds.

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