Parachain Slot Won — Decentralized Crowdfunding for Anyone

Imbue Network has officially secured Kusama Parachain slot #40. Read the retrospective of the newest innovators building on Kusama.

Published in

ImbueNetwork

5 min readJun 20, 2022

It is a special day for Imbuers everywhere. Thanks to the massive support from you, and the community, we have reached the monumental achievement of winning a parachain auction. Now, decentralized crowdfunding can go live with real currencies like $IMBU and stable currencies.

In celebration with our community, we’d like to take a moment to lay out how far we’ve come. You are part of the first project to ever win a Kusama parachain without any venture funding. If you have been with us for any amount of time so far and you believe that decentralized crowdfunding can get mass adoption, share this with your friends and colleagues so that they too can become Imbuers.

Q4 2021 — Giving Web3 Actual Utility

As Founder Sam looked at the current sentiment of cryptocurrency and Web3 as a whole, one criticism struck him: There’s nothing you can actually do with your tokens.

Inspired by a mission to bring real utility to cryptocurrency and Web3 as a whole, Sam also noticed a power imbalance in the relationships between retail investors and Whale VCs. For years now, crowdfunding projects (blockchain or traditional) have been able to receive immense amounts of funding with no verifiable way of holding the projects accountable to their investors and community.

This is where Sam and the rest of our developers used their expert knowledge of Substrate and data engineering to create a new system for crowdfunding that promotes accountability and sustainability.

Q1 2022 — Making the Mission Real

After hundreds of hours of research and theory, Sam and the developers felt that they had enough of a grasp on the problems to begin working on the Imbue prototype.

While the engineers were sweating, Founder Aala and the Community Building team got to work on our website, brand identity, and assets that would help spread the word on Imbue’s innovative solution to crowdfunding. Imbue finally had a look and a voice.

Jan 20, 2022 — First Polkadot{.js} Demo

Ah, the first Imbue prototype! It feels almost nostalgic. This was the first time that we showed how accountability in venture funding through milestones could work. In this demo, Sam is the Initiator. Bob and Alice are the Contributors.

In order for his project to be considered for funding, Sam brings his project to the chain. During the first phase of our DAO, the Council made up of Imbue Heroes will vet Sam’s project to ensure his project makes sense and adds utility. The first collaborations in our DAO will be the most important; the Council represent the community to ensure that we are funding worthwhile projects.

Bob and Alice like Sam’s idea. So they each Contribute.

The beauty of the Imbue system is that Sam does not receive his funds in full when funding goals have been met. Embedded inside the proposal (and the chain itself) is the amount required to get started and the rest is released based on completed milestones.

Finally, Sam and his newly hired team get to work and complete their first milestone. After submitting it to the chain, Bob and Alice now have the opportunity to vote on the milestone. Once the chain confirms the milestone has been approved, Sam gets his next round of funds. The process is repeated for subsequent milestones.

What started as a simple {.js} module has now blossomed into a crowdfunding platform that can stand against the rest.

Feb 4, 2022 — First Web3 Foundation Grant

After a 2 month sprint to complete the Imbue chain MVP, we collaborated with the Web3 Foundation for testing of our code functionality and funding. With zero change requests and only suggestions to improve, W3F gave their full support. The core functions of our chain have been shown to be bulletproof.

Feb 14, 2022 — Proposal Submissions Opened

As we continued building and back-testing our TestNet, we knew how pivotal feedback would be for each step in the crowdfunding process. It was then that we opened a testing UI that would allow the community to submit proposals.

Mar 23, 2022 — Imbue Heroes Launched

With the opening of our Discord server, Imbue extended a new branch of communication and transparency with our community. To celebrate, we launched the Imbue Heroes program. Our own twist on ambassadors gives amazing advantages to the members of Imbue that contribute the most value.

Apr 18, 2022 — Acala and Imbued Imbue

Imbue means to fill with quality. From the very beginning, we’ve set out to be a project that stands out in terms of community involvement and contribution. Since our brand launch, we received feedback that our MVP would not be “Viable” without the feature of funding in stable currencies.

This came as no surprise. For the better part of Q1, we spent a lot of time researching and communicating with stablecoin projects in order to find the best solution for what Imbue needed to launch. Finally, we landed a partnership with Acala to support the funding of Initiated projects with $aUSD!

Apr 25, 2022 — Final Web3 Foundation Milestone Complete!

In further collaboration with W3F, we made major strides in creating a public-ready MVP of Imbue. Major enhancements reviewed by their team were core to the scalability of our chain. These enhancements included Dapp improvements in cases of insufficient funding, the Democracy Pallet and the Funding Pallet.

All pallet tests succeeded as we passed our next round of funding.

May 4, 2022 — Imbue TestNet Goes Live

Finally, the day arrived when Initiators and Contributors could test the full functionality of our crowdfunding platform. By the time testing was closed, we received over 400 proposals and amazing constructive feedback from the community.

June 2022 — Partnerships w/ Fractal and BiFrost, Crowdloan Begins!

June marked the start of the Summer of Imbue! Our partnership with Fractal added an identity layer to Imbue for Contributors. This was just one step forward in our goal of making Imbue fully decentralized while maintaining accountability through identity verification.

With the announcement of our Kusama crowdloan and token sale, we were eager to partner with BiFrost. Their technical achievement made it possible for Imbuers to contribute to our parachain auction while maintaining access to their $KSM liquidity.

How We Move Forward

This is only the beginning, Imbuers. Now that our auction is won on Kusama, we can now start a new way of crowdfunding. As we prepare Imbue to launch at full strength on the relay chain, we need your support more than ever.

You can help us decentralize crowdfunding for blockchain and traditional businesses. To help spread the message, show your support on our social media, join our Telegram and Discord, and submit your own projects!

#DecentralizeTheVCs

About Imbue Network

Imbue Network is a decentralized crowdfunding DAO built on the Polkadot blockchain platform. It is an idea incubator open to the entire world that allows anyone from any walk of life and any endeavour to submit and vote on ideas worth funding from the communities that believe in them the most.