[birk]

Thank you! Excellent feedback and completely aligned with the intent here.

> It also means that money is committed upfront by the companies, i.e. the money is real and exists, has been set aside for this thing and in case of a dispute polar can make decisions, etc

Glad to say, that's how it works already. A pledge is paid upfront and the capital resides within the Polar platform account with Stripe until the issue is marked completed. Then it's transferred to the maintainer minus fees (10%). Or refunded to the backer after 6 months (a timeframe we'll experiment with). We're going to build a "Polar balance" so individuals or companies can top-up their account, automatically disperse it etc too.

So the only question is whether it needs to be abstracted into a "token" concept or can simply continue to be $ upfront. Definitely some advantages and opportunities with "token" vs. money though. Just a bit mindful of the associations people have with "token" specifically from the crypto world.

> they also might want to put tokens in a pot the maintainer can access to "spend" on issues they want to prioritise for the project or allow them to "spend" tokens at a specific rate

Love this! https://github.com/orgs/polarsource/discussions/858