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Part II — PlatformChapter 10 / 21·····

🤝 Crowdfunding (クラファン)

Some things break faster than any market can repair them. A community with a funding engine rebuilds them anyway.

When the Noto Peninsula earthquake struck in January 2024, it hit one of Japan's most concentrated pockets of living craft. Wajima is the home of 輪島塗 (Wajima-nuri, a lacquerware tradition refined over centuries of layered urushi work) — and in a single morning, workshops, tools, and stock built up over generations were gone.

Insurance rebuilds buildings. It does not rebuild a craft economy: the apprentices, the customers, the reason to reopen. That is the problem Matsuri crowdfunding (クラファン, kurafan) was built for. A 輪島塗 workshop-recovery campaign is the flagship example of the model: the community funds the rebuild, backers are rewarded in MTC at a boosted rate, and when the workshop reopens, its first class can appear on the Matsuri calendar automatically. The same platform that carries an offline Disaster Lifeline in every pocket carries the economic layer that funds what comes after.

matsuri.group — crowdfunding campaigns in production
6%Flat platform fee2% referral + 4% operations
3.0×Disaster-relief multiplierapprovable per campaign
100%Auto-refundif an All-or-Nothing goal is missed

🎯 All-or-Nothing, by design​

Matsuri campaigns run All-or-Nothing (AoN) by default: a campaign sets a goal, and if the goal is not reached by the deadline, every contribution is automatically refunded — no partial funding, no stranded backers, no half-built projects limping along on a fraction of their budget.

This is the honest shape for cultural projects. A workshop that needs ¥10M to reopen cannot reopen on ¥4M — AoN means backers only pay when the thing they backed can actually happen.

Funding model
All-or-Nothing — if the goal is missed, every contribution is auto-refunded
Platform fee
6% flat = 2% referral commission + 4% operations
Max per transaction
¥1,000,000
Max per user, per campaign
¥3,000,000
Max contributions per user, per day
20
Why the limits exist

The per-transaction, per-user, and per-day caps are fraud-and-safety rails, not growth constraints. They keep any single wallet from dominating a campaign and keep the refund guarantee cheap to honor.

🪙 MTC cashback: backing culture pays​

Every contribution earns MTC back. The base rate is 1% of the contribution, then two multipliers stack on top — your GCF membership tier, and the campaign's own multiplier.

Crowdfunding cashbackMTC = contribution × 1% × GCF-tier multiplier × campaign multiplier
GCF Member
1.2× tier multiplier
Gold
1.5× tier multiplier
Platinum
2.0× tier multiplier

The campaign multiplier is 1.0× for a standard campaign — but special campaigns such as 災害復興 (disaster recovery) can be approved at up to 3.0×. A Platinum member backing a Noto recovery campaign earns 1% × 2.0 × 3.0 = 6% of the contribution back in MTC.

The economics of solidarity

The multiplier is deliberate policy, not a promotion: when disaster strikes, the platform steers its reward budget toward the campaigns that need velocity most. The community that shows up first is the community that earns most. The full tier ladder lives in GCF Membership and Levels & Tiers.

🎁 Rewards: from early-bird tiers to NFTs​

Campaigns offer structured reward tiers with real inventory logic — stock limits, early-bird pricing, and per-user purchase limits — so a "first 50 backers" tier is actually enforced, not just promised.

Reward tiers

Stock-limited and early-bird rewards with per-user limits, plus fulfillment tracking after the campaign succeeds.

NFT rewards

Campaigns can natively attach NFT rewards — a permanent, Solscan-verifiable proof that you backed the rebuild.

GCF early access

Members-first windows before the public round: by default 48 hours for GCF members, 72 hours for Platinum.

Stretch goals

Goals beyond the goal — funding milestones that unlock additional scope as the total climbs.

Early access is enforced server-side: during the exclusive window, non-members are simply refused. Priority backing is one of the concrete, verifiable perks of the GCF membership ladder.

💳 Three rails, one verified ledger​

Backers contribute through any of the platform's payment rails:

Stripe
Cards and Apple Pay
Solana
Phantom / Solana Pay — with on-chain contribution verification
MTC balance
Contribute straight from your in-app MTC balance

Solana contributions follow the platform's iron architecture rule — apps never touch Solana directly; every transaction flows app → Django backend → Solana, and the backend verifies the contribution on-chain before it counts toward the goal. A crypto pledge is therefore exactly as trustworthy as a card pledge: confirmed, recorded, refundable. See Why Solana for the rail itself.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 A campaign is a community, not a countdown​

Between launch and deadline, a Matsuri campaign behaves like a living project page rather than a static pledge form.

  • Updates — creators post progress reports to their backers.
  • Comments and Q&A — public questions with creator answers, on the record.
  • Polls — backers vote on real decisions (which color, which date, which stretch goal first).
  • Collaborators — campaigns can be run by a team, not a single account.
  • Live streaming — a live stream can attach directly to a campaign, and reward drops can be pushed to viewers mid-stream.

Backing a campaign​

  1. Discover a campaign
    Browse campaigns in the app or on the web. GCF members may see new campaigns during the early-access window, before the public round opens.
  2. Accept the backer terms and pick a reward
    Choose a reward tier — stock, early-bird pricing, and per-user limits are enforced automatically. Your terms acceptance is recorded.
  3. Contribute
    Pay via Stripe, Solana (verified on-chain by the backend), or your MTC balance — within the ¥1,000,000/transaction and ¥3,000,000/campaign safety limits.
  4. Follow the campaign
    Read updates, ask questions, vote in polls, and watch stretch goals unlock as the total climbs.
  5. All-or-Nothing resolution
    If the goal is reached: rewards enter fulfillment, NFT rewards and MTC cashback are credited automatically. If not: every contribution is auto-refunded.
Back a project from the released iOS app

Creating a campaign​

Creators build in a dedicated Creator Studio — a wizard that assembles the story page (key features, timeline, testimonials, team, FAQs), reward tiers, stretch goals, and collaborators — then submit to a human review pipeline before anything goes live.

  1. Build in the Creator Studio
    Draft the campaign page, define reward tiers and stretch goals, and invite collaborators.
  2. Connect payouts
    Onboard through Stripe Connect so funds have a verified destination before the campaign can settle.
  3. Submit for admin review
    Platform admins approve, reject, or request changes — every decision is logged. Admins can also pause or resume a live campaign if something goes wrong.
  4. Run the campaign
    Post updates, answer questions, run polls, go live — and watch the early-access window hand your first backers to you.
  5. Settle and fulfill
    On success, payouts move through their own approval workflow, and reward fulfillment is tracked per backer until everything has shipped.

Creator access is rolling out in stages — invite-only first, then GCF members, then public — so the campaign catalog grows at the speed of trust, not hype.

🔍 Trust: escrow, audit, refunds​

Crowdfunding runs on trust, and trust runs on records. Under the campaign pages sits deliberately boring infrastructure:

Escrow ledger
Contributions are tracked in an internal escrow ledger from pledge to payout or refund
Audit log
Admin actions and money movements are written to a dedicated crowdfunding audit log
Refund workflow
Structured refund requests with policies and supporting evidence — not a support-ticket black hole
Backer terms
Explicit terms acceptance is recorded per backer, per campaign
Idempotent fulfillment
Reward and cashback crediting is idempotent — retries can never double-pay

🎟️ Campaigns that unlock events​

A campaign can gate an event: the event sits in a pending_funding state, and the moment the campaign succeeds, the event unlocks automatically for booking. Fund the 輪島塗 workshop's recovery, and the workshop's first hands-on class appears on the calendar the day the goal is met — the crowd doesn't just donate to culture, it summons culture back into existence. The event side of that handshake lives in Experiences & Events.

This is the full arc of the Matsuri thesis in one feature. Disaster breaks something irreplaceable; the Disaster Lifeline keeps people safe through the acute phase; and crowdfunding — All-or-Nothing honesty, boosted MTC cashback, verifiable on-chain contributions — funds the long rebuild after the cameras leave. 温故知新 (onkochishin, "learn the new by studying the old") is not a slogan here. It is a funding model.