WHIRL’s vision is a world that’s inspired to support one-another in an endless loop of giving and generosity. It is to make an impactful difference on a massive scale in how people’s dreams, projects, passions, and necessities get funded, removing the need to take out expensive and often never-ending loans from banks, ship rewards to backers, or beg friends and family for donations.
It is to usher in the next generation of crowdfunding platforms with a product that’s truly global, blockchain-based, and dramatically increases campaign funding success stories. It is to be at all times socially driven, with an emphasis on helping nonprofits access a game-changing source of new capital. Ultimately, WHlRL’s vision is to create a whirlwind of good.
INTRODUCTION
WHIRL is a socially driven, pay it forward crowdfunding platform that’s built on the blockchain. On WHIRL, you can only create a fundraising campaign after you’ve already contributed to others, inspiring a positive feedback loop of generosity. WHIRL is not a typical crowdfunding platform tacked onto the blockchain; it offers key improvements and innovations over legacy crowdfunding platforms.
First, WHIRL introduces a points system called karma, a unique method of rewarding backers for contributing to campaigns. Karma eliminates the need for campaign creators to ship rewards or ask their friends and family for charitable donations. Karma maintains a fair and transparent campaign queue. And karma incentivizes giving to drive pay it forward, positive societal change.
Second, WHIRL is designed to make every single campaign that lists into a success story. Over time, as the number of crowdfunding campaigns has increased around the world, their already-poor success rates have declined further (e.g. Kickstarter reports a 36% success rate, down from 44% a few years earlier). WHIRL focuses the entire community’s attention on only a limited number of campaigns at one time. Limited campaign placements, when combined with the karma points economy and the platform’s global footprint, will ensure that every campaign that goes live finishes with a successful raise.
Third, WHIRL is a truly global platform. Because it’s built on the blockchain and accepts cryptocurrency, anyone can create a campaign or participate in a campaign without worrying about regional banking restrictions, which are inherent to legacy crowdfunding platforms. WHIRL’s fair queue does not discriminate by region or limit members to see only projects from their region, enabling campaign creators to connect with an audience of international backers. All these points are critical because much of the growth in crowdfunding has been and is projected to be outside the United States.
Fourth, WHIRL is the first major consumer crowdfunding platform that’s built on the blockchain. Unlike other blockchain projects, WHIRL isn’t empty, future hype. The platform is working today after more than a year of development, and portions of its technology have been in development for three years. Being on the blockchain, WHIRL’s fees are far lower than other platforms and chargebacks and fake donations are no longer a problem. WHIRL is a secure platform with novel anti-hacking methods like automatic cold storage wallet transfer. Rather than being tied to one specific blockchain, which may not even exist a few years from now, WHIRL transacts with a dozen major cryptocurrencies, a rare feat among blockchain applications.
WHIRL is revolutionary, but also rooted in history. It is inspired by community giving funds, where members of ethnic and regional groups donate to a common pool that’s used to help the people most in need. But WHIRL is open to everyone, everywhere!
WHIRL is more than a bold concept and a sharp whitepaper. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our 40-person team, spanning a year and a half of development, our platform will launch on the first day of its token sale.
WHIRL: TOKEN ECONOMY
WRL will serve as the primary means of payment across WHIRL. By supporting a campaign with WRL, backers earn 10 Karma per dollar (or dollar equivalent). Otherwise, supporting a campaign with partner token KICK yields 8.5 Karma per dollar, while any other cryptocurrency yields 7 Karma per dollar. With this incentive structure and the ease with which members can purchase WRL on exchanges, we anticipate that WRL will dominate platform payments.
WHIRL charges a platform commission of 5% on all payments. For payments done in WRL and KICK, the tokens received will not be retained or sold on an exchange; they will be burned. Eventually, once the platform is established, only 50% of commission-received tokens will be burned (initial estimate is 2020).
WRL tokens will also be accepted as payment on partner projects, beginning with KICKICO and the FlogMall cryptocurrency store. Negotiations are pending with othersuccessful and credible blockchain projects.
WRL will have the necessary technical hooks to integrate with the Bancor network.
To seed and promote a community, in addition to raising funds for global expansion, WHIRL will host an initial Token Generation Event (TG E). The TGE will be conducted simultaneously on tokensale.whirl.com and kickico.com in order to maximize the amount of the raise and the number of participants.
WRL tokens will be generated in advance of the TGE. For now, they will utilize the Ethereum ERC-20 standard, but eventually they may be transferred to another blockchain, like EOS.
WRL's initial exchange sale price will be set at $0.0013. The same price will be set at the start of the token sale, with bonuses listed below.
WHIRL: DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP
WHIRL: TEAM MEMBERS
Since their inception, crowdfunding platforms have given the world a new way to raise capital. But these platforms are beginning to plateau and stagnate, for three reasons:
First, campaign success rates are declining and the vast majority of campaigns finish unfunded. Too many campaigns launch every day and backers can’t keep up. They are also more skeptical than ever, following widespread incidents of campaign delinquency, neglect, and fraud.
Second, crowdfunding platforms don’t properly incentivize backers, leading many backers to lose interest in crowdfunding altogether. Rewards-based platforms, like Kickstarter, offer only the promise of a product months or years in advance and often never come through; they become risky pre-orders. Charity-based crowdfunding platforms, like GoFundMe, give nothing in return. In the past, the novelty of crowdfunding drove adoption, but now that the novelty has worn off, people are demanding more for their contributions.
Third, crowdfunding platforms are highly segmented by geography; different countries have their own platforms and they all transact in fiat currencies with global banking restrictions. This fragmentation means quality backers are excluded from investing in quality campaigns.
The Solution
WHIRL will usher in the next generation of crowdfunding by creating a novel solution to the pain points listed above. Its limited campaign placements ensure a 100% fundraising success rate. It will energize and attract campaign backers with a unique Karma points system that offers a third, more immediate and compelling alternative to rewards-based and donation-based crowdfunding. And it will be truly global because the platform accepts cryptocurrency (in addition to fiat) and doesn’t discriminate by geography.
