Open Source Collective is disabling crypto contributions for member projects with immediate effect.
Eighteen months ago, Open Collective announced that they were offering limited support for cryptocurrencies on the Open Collective platform. Open Source Collective was the first host on Open Collective to offer crypto fundraising tools to its member projects. Today we are disabling them.
Crypto was and continues to be a polarising subject for our users and our member projects. We chose to accept crypto as some of our projects were telling us they needed it. We accepted the justified criticism about crypto's effect on our planet, and we continued to monitor contributors' use of crypto'.
Today's decision comes as a practical and pragmatic one, but it is also justified by data. Our provider's account was closed due to a transaction from a nation sanctioned by OFAC, rendering the service unavailable, and we're choosing not to (immediately) fix it.
Since September '21 Open Source Collective has accepted nearly $19m in financial support for our projects. In that time we have accepted $272k, or 1.4% of those contributions in various crypto assets — assets that are liquidated and attributed in USD to the projects that accepted them. Given the administrative and technical cost required to reimplement the feature, and the risk that this could happen again, we are choosing to disable support for crypto indefinitely.
Users who need to accept donations in crypto should contact [email protected] to make alternative arrangements.
Thanks
Ben
—
Executive Director