Yannick Koitzsch and Harry Hu, NekoHit co-founders, joined Neo Global Development’s AMA series, Neo Live, on Thursday, Nov. 11. NekoHit is a platform designed to connect content creators with individuals who can offer funding on a per-project basis instead of the subscription model used by other solutions such as Patreon. NekoHit also recently joined the N3 Early Adoption Program.

In the AMA, the co-founders discussed the basics behind the per-project crowdfunding model, how the NekoHit Work Contract Agreement functions, establishing a stable price for the CAT token, launching a DAO and NEKOIN governance tokens, and collaborating with other Neo ecosystem projects.

The full transcript can be found below: 

Sam Wang (NGD marketing): The NekoHit project seeks to bring a crowdfunding model for content creators to the Neo ecosystem. However, instead of using the subscription model common among other solutions, such as Patreon, NekoHit is designed to connect content creators with individuals who can offer funding on a per-project basis.

NekoHit focuses on eliminating trust problems between content creators and their sponsors, using blockchain technology to give more control to both parties. The project’s model employs an insurance mechanism based on the NekoHit Work Contract Agreement. The WCA is a smart contract designed to give both creators and sponsors more control over the crowdfunding process. To start a project, a content creator must stake CAT tokens and open a WCA. Sponsors can fund projects by transferring tokens to the corresponding WCAs. If a creator fails to meet their deadlines, their sponsors can receive compensation from the staked CAT tokens.

Yannick Koitzsch is a full-stack software developer who discovered Neo shortly before the start of the first hackathon. Since then, he has been very enthusiastic about creating dApps, and eager to bring many more to the Neo ecosystem.

Harry Hu is an undergraduate student majoring in Computer Science, and a Java developer and blockchain enthusiast. Now he is focusing on building applications on the blockchain which can support real-world use.

Yannick Koitzsch (NekoHit co-founder): Hello, everyone.

Harry Hu (NekoHit co-founder): Hi, it’s nice to be here!

Q1: What is NekoHit?

Yannick: NekoHit is a crowdfunding platform that integrates blockchain. We want to offer people an easy and secure way to fund their projects with crypto. We invite content creators, artists, entrepreneurs, and many more to use our platform and get started right away. 

NekoHit is fully decentralized, meaning that the smart contracts handle all the logic such as managing projects, keeping track of their progress, and taking care of the funds. NekoHit is open-source, and we offer detailed documentation for developers. For non-developers, we created a simple-to-use UI at https://www.nekohit.com, which is currently under construction but will be finished soon.

The NekoHit platform uses two different tokens.

CAT: used for funding projects and will have a stable value of $0.5. 

NEKOIN: it is going to be our community DAO token. However, the NEKOIN token is still a work in progress.

Q2: What is NekoHit’s vision?

Harry: The goal is to build a fully decentralized crowdfunding platform natively on the blockchain. Everything will be on-chain and doesn’t require any centralized entities and services to keep this platform running.

Unlike centralized platforms, we have to deal with the ‘zero trust’ problem since it’s decentralized, and you shouldn’t believe anyone. But, if you don’t trust anyone, then how could you fund others’ projects? For centralized crowdfunding platforms, if the project owner didn’t finish his job, you can let the platform handle the refund for you, or even you can prosecute the project owner. But it won’t be possible on-chain.

We solve this problem by asking the project owner to stake CAT tokens first, then allow users to fund the project. If the project owner fails to deliver the project, they cannot receive their staked funds and will permanently lose them. Also, during the project, users can request a refund at any time. Though, the patron can’t receive a refund after the project is finished. We have detailed rules to protect the project owner during the refund, and we have tried to be as fair as possible. 

If the project owner creates updates for milestones they didn’t meet, patrons can immediately initiate a refund. NekoHit smart contracts will process refunds in the same transaction without delay and a centralized moderator. Blockchain and smart contracts are the solutions.

Q3: What do you think about Neo N3? What can Neo N3 bring to your project?

Yannick: From the experiences in the last few months, the first impression is that Neo N3 offers an excellent programming experience for developers. We wrote Java a lot, but if you’re a fan of Golang, C#, or some other languages, you can start writing your code on N3 right away without needing to learn other languages. And, Neo N3 has many great features that protect the average developer from some nasty bugs, which makes the programmer’s life much easier when it comes to security.

Besides the coding, I think Neo N3 also brings an exciting ecosystem. It’s hard to do everything in one project, but on N3, we can work with other projects. For example, with Flamingo swap, we can offer more choices of assets. Or, the LyreBird project can help NekoHit provide a stable value for the CAT token. And, we can’t wait to see more impressive projects and find out the infinite possibilities.

Q4: How do you see your project fitting into the Neo ecosystem?

Harry: The Neo ecosystem offers NekoHit a group of excellent projects to work with. And beyond that, we want to be helpful in the Neo ecosystem too. 

As a crowdfunding platform, we can help build other projects by offering a native funding service. Is it too expensive to deploy a contract on the MainNet? No problem, you can create a project using GAS as the funding assets, then stake a small amount of GAS. Now users can fund GAS for your project. When your project is done, you will have enough GAS to deploy the contract.

This is only one such example of how the project can be used. With a lot of creative community members, we think the possibilities are infinite.

Q5: What utilities does NekoHit provide compared to other crowdfunding platforms like Patreon?

Yannick: Generally speaking, we offer more control to both the project owners and the supporters.

Crowdfunding platforms like Patreon and Kickstarter give more power to content creators. The creator can decide when to update and what to update on Patreon. And you never know what you will get unless the creator states them clearly on their page. 

For Kickstarter, you need to hope the project owner can finish the project and make the delivery. If the creator didn’t finish it, then it will be a long path to recover the initial capital.

With NekoHit, the project owner must clearly define all necessary milestones when creating a project. And they must stake some token before everyone can fund them, which forces the project owner to be responsible for their project. If they don’t follow through, they will lose their stake. 

For supporters, all project details will be distinctly shown before you fund them, and if you don’t like how they implement the project, you can quit at any time, just make a refund. In the future, we will implement a simple DAO mechanism to allow supporters to vote to accept or decline the project owner’s requests to change project details, which adds flexible options for unexpected events.

For more control in the long-term, we aim to build this project to be community-driven, which means every holder of the NEKOIN token can decide what features we’re going to have and how we implement them in this project. That’s the control that other platforms never offer to their users.

Q6: Will it be possible for the creator to extend the time frame or raise the target amount?

Yannick: Increasing the target amount is not possible at the moment. If the first funding round is successful, the creator can start a second funding round if more funds are necessary to move forward. Extending the time frame can also not be done in the first version, but content creators could explain to their supporters that they need more time than anticipated.

Also, as we mentioned, project creators can suggest a change to the protocol and create a proposal. NEKOIN holders can then vote, and we would implement this feature request.

Q7: Did you consider community feedback during the development of NekoHit? And, who is NekoHit’s ideal user?

Harry: The community will be our great source of feedback. Recently, we began a pre-release beta testing event to test our existing codes with real-world users, and we have already got a lot of feedback on where we can improve and what is good to have. The feedback has been essential and will make this project gradually better. Now you can submit your ideas or feedback in our Discord server, or create an issue on GitHub. 

After we roll out the NEKOIN DAO token, the community will decide the direction of this project, such as implementing features, rather than just offering feedback. At that time, we hope this project will be fully community-driven.

And for the ideal consumers, we seek traditional content creators who use Patreon or Kickstarter, or anyone seeking to build a project and don’t like using the centralized platforms. 

However, getting those users to the blockchain is still not that easy. We are specifically waiting for Flamingo swap. But if you’re already familiar with Neo and use the blockchain, and you want to build something, then you can have a try.

Q8: What are NekoHit’s short-term roadmap items?

Yannick: Our current target is to make it on the Neo N3 MainNet. Then, the first goal is to achieve a stable value for CAT. As a regular content creator, you don’t want too many uncertainties in the value of your sponsorship. 

The second one is to accept multiple tokens. If the stable coin is the only sponsorship you get from the blockchain, that will be too boring. So, we plan to introduce various choices of tokens, where users can select what assets they want to use in their project.

We already have a basic implementation for those two goals and will be tested on TestNet soon. Based on their performance and feedback from the community, the first release may or may not include them. 

The deadline for those features is January 2022.

The long-term goal is to build a solid community. In the beginning, we are the developers deciding what to have and how to implement, but we can’t cover all users. And, we like to be open and transparent, so we want to build a solid community where everyone’s voice matters and everyone can help shape this project and make it better. The way we do that is by introducing the NEKOIN DAO token. 

We estimate that it can be achieved before 2023.

After we have built a solid community, then we can start trying different new ideas. There are tons of spaces that we can improve based on the community feedback, and there will be infinite exciting ideas from the community.

Q9: How can donors choose which projects to fund and how can they be protected from malicious projects?

Harry: Anyone can declare a project on our platform. And there might be potential scammers, but we have some features like update cool-down time, which limit the frequency on how fast the scammer can update milestones. The token is only accounted for and transferred after the last milestone is finished. So, the patron will have plenty of time to notice the scammer has finished milestones that they actually didn’t. At this time, you can start a refund without any worries, depends on the project status, you will get a full refund or a partial refund. 

More details can be found n the Neko Hit whitepaper link below:
https://github.com/NekoHitDev/whitepaper/releases 

Q10: Will the NekoHit crowdfunding platform accept other tokens in the future?

Yannick: The contract will accept any token, but we restrict the choice on the website to CAT and GAS tokens for now. Project creators can propose to whitelist a new coin on the website and NEKOIN holders can then approve or reject this idea. All coins except NEKOIN have the sole purpose of funding the projects. NEKOIN is the community DAO token.

You can also exchange GAS for CAT at the moment. More information can be found at the link below:
https://github.com/NekoHitDev/Fasusa 

Sam: We would like to thank Yannick and Harry. It was a pleasure having you with us today. We are looking forward to all the great things to come from NekoHit!

Yannick: Thank you! It was fun!

Harry: For all questions not being answered here, please join our discord server and ask there.

Note: Some edits have been made for formatting and readability.

The full Neo Live AMA can be found at the link below:
https://t.me/NEO_EN/211978 

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