The idea behind this is to research and experiment with "smart contract" funding for open source and free software.
- Allow less-known developers / projects to earn the public's trust ("cautious funding" — helping them build a reputation of being able to deliver; mechanisms may vary. could be based on bounties [see below] or funds release confirmations if bounties are not suitable for any reason... or something else entirely)
- Allow direct organization/person funding (simple token transfer)
- Allow funding specific goals (bounties)
- Allow branding [sub]tokens for a specific project (bragging, voting, other kinds of rights)
- Allow continuous support pledges (recurring payments)
- Allow nominees to exchange tokens for the amount they were originally bought for (backed by ETH, the funding is deposited through an ICO, or a series of offerings)
- Allow project maintainers and developers to publish their expenses in IPFS and refer to hashes of the receipts
@xdamman no mining required if it is an ERC20 Ethereum coin unless I am missing something about your usage of the term mining.
Utility is the big one. Pledging support to an individual? Sounds like Patreon. Pledging to a project? Similar to Gratipay.
Which doesn't mean one can't build similar things, just have to think about what a decentralized version looks like & what lessons those other systems have already learned.