# About CryptoPatronage

#### Why This Exists

In early 2022, we started an experiment that would turn into the Shokunin Network, with a core premise that resource distribution in the Kusama Network ecosystem was too centralized and bottlenecked on majority agreement.

Shokunin was fun while it's limited resources lasted and supported a handful of notable projects and builders in their early stages, but it was still very much limited in it's potential reach due to the fact that it was pulling from a finite pool of resources - *it didn't solve the problem it set out to solve*, it was not sustainable.

CryptoPatronage takes the lessons learned from running Shokunin and moves a step further towards it's initial goals using the same techniques, but significantly more automation and accessibility. Instead of a collective treasury to fund multiple creators, the CryptoPatronage platform allows *anyone* to securely (and revokably) earmark funds to support creators and builders for the long term, and it allows creators to tap on their supporters for consistent funding, instead of intermittent and unreliable comission/NFT/contract based work.

Think Patreon, OnlyFans et al., but without the hassle of a company controlling who is allowed to use their platform. CryptoPatronage is not unmoderatable, and does not intend to be unmoderated, but the underlying protocol it uses is entirely open and public, and does not require using our frontend.

#### For Patrons

* Publicly show your support and commitment to your chosen creators.
* Have confidence that your support will go directly to a creator with no middleman, and that you will spend no more than you have committed.
* Become known to those you support - and potentially be rewarded for it.

*We do not yet provide a service to support with cash or credit/debit, so if that is what the creators you support want or need, we are likely not the right solution for them, or you!*

#### For Creators

There are many options in the cryptocurrency ecosystem to monetize your work and make an income regardless of where you are and what you do - CryptoPatronage simply tries to provide a more human and considerate approach, based on the needs of real creators, instead of assuming all of your work can be tokenized as an NFT.

CryptoPatronage is similar to token streaming protocols that already exist, but with permissionless discovery that allows potential supporters to discover your profile and support you on-platform, alongside ways to link directly to your profile from off-platform, similarly to our non-blockchain-based equivalents.

By default, we take no platform fees, and you only pay blockchain transaction fees when pulling your earnings from supporters - which, on the networks we operate on, are negligible, even for creators not based in affluent locales.

If you want to have an experience similar to traditional crowdfunding websites, we (will soon) provide automatic payment execution as an always-optional, fee-added service, at a rate that outcompetes all comparable non-blockchain-based equivalents.

*We do not yet provide any service to cash out your crypto to fiat money, so, in practice if you do not already have affordable channels available for you to do so, we are likely not a solution that is right for you!* CryptoPatronage is more useful, however, if you are based in any jurisdiction that has ready access to physical ways to cash out your crypto, has a community that accepts crypto for payment, or you simply want to get paid in and hold cryptocurrency instead of cash.