The org stuff looks interesting - the crypto stuff makes me more suspicious of it's present and future because of the possibility of a money grab.
An example:
UserA posts a great idea, and wants help to implement it. UserA is an MBA, has a business plan, a rough idea of execution, etc., but is not a programmer, or a graphic designer, or anything like that. UserA realizes she needs help, so she posts bounties - with features relative to the importance of the success of the project. "Need a landing page" might be a feature, with tasks broken out like "design a logo", "build a wireframe in Sketch", "convert Sketch wireframe to React frontend", etc. Each of those tasks will have a value, represented by Ether.
UserB, a graphic designer comes up with the perfect logo, which is worth 100 ether. User C, a frontend developer picks up the wireframe task, gets consensus, and then bangs out the React work, for a total of 250 ether. Other work gets done and an MVP is launched. The MVP was built, and a total of 5,000 ether were distributed as bounties were claimed and completed. User B has gone on to do a bunch of other graphic design tasks, and has a total of 600 ether, while User C left the project after completing the frontend work. The project's MVP launches, and makes $10,000 in profit. Because UserB has 600 ether, and 5,000 ether have been issued, UserB's share entitles him to ~12% of the profits, so he is disbursed a payment of $1200. UserC's share entitles him to $500.
As the project grows, UserB takes on more and more work, and more and more ether are issued. UserC doesn't ever come back on, but is still entitled to profits on the work they've done, though their share of ether will keep being diluted as the project goes on.
Hopefully I've been able to illustrate that the coin in this case is used not as currency itself, but as a representative stake in ownership.
Each colony's native tokens act as a representation of equity as described above (more or less), entitling holders to a 'rewards' disbursement periodically - but they also may be employed by the colony for mechanisms of governance in the case of token-weighted voting.
Additionally, whenever someone makes an amount of tokens, they also are awarded an equal amount of reputation, which cannot be transferred and which decays over time. This score also confers influence in the colony for voting and dispute resolution, if the members of the colony wish to make their voting reputation weighted, or some combination of reputation and token-weighted.
Finally, to claim rewards, a user needs to have both reputation and tokens - this means that tokens themselves don't immediately entitle one to rewards; only those who actually contribute meaningful work to the colony (as evidenced by their reputation score) are entitled to proportional rewards.
Oh boy another platform that can be gamed by a minority for their overwhelming benefit
> One organization should not be beholden to, or have to trust another, in order to confidently conduct their business.
>
> That’s why the Colony protocol is built as open source smart contracts on the Ethereum network.
In one breath, "We shouldn't have to trust any other organization" and then immediately after it's "built on the Ethereum network".
I wish this was not a requirement.
It showed both that a) code as contract is still too hard when even core contributors can't get them right, and b) the dev team is willing to shunt the underlying principles under the right conditions (eg, financial ones)
A central team that is willing to de-authorize specific transactions through control of the code base is at conflict with a decentralized network. Sure, the network didn't have to go along with it, but they also probably wouldn't have performed the change on their own, either.
A protocol token is part of the Colony roadmap, but they won't do a token sale until the product is ready, to minimize the risk that their token will be considered an unlicensed security by the SEC.
Protocol tokens or "app tokens" in general are really exciting, and a lot of the smart VC people are talking about them. The latest episode of the A16Z podcast is all about protocol tokens, for example.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150402004048/http://colony.io:...
It doesn't somehow recursively relate to Ethereum, doesn't over-rely on blockchain buzzwords, and can be explained in a sentence or two. While first reading the page, I didn't realize that it was even an Ethereum based project until the very end, which I liked. At any rate, I'm interested enough to read the documentation in depth now.
Don't ruin this by having some bullshit ICO money grab, though. It looks halfway decent (and if you read my comment history, I don't really say that about any cryptocurrency projects, really).