Our Game's Crowdfunding Was a Success, But Because the Platform's Payout Was So Slow, Project Development Was Delayed by a Month.

We are a small independent game development team. After six months of hard work, our new game project, "Echoes of the Mist," successfully raised its $100,000 goal on a well-known crowdfunding platform.

The moment we succeeded, everyone on our team hugged in excitement. We felt one step closer to realizing our dream. We immediately contacted our pre-arranged art and music outsourcing teams in Poland and Japan to pay the upfront fees and officially kick off the project.

However, the crowdfunding platform informed us that the $100,000, after deducting their platform fees, would go through a "30-day review and settlement period" before it could be transferred to our bank account.

A full 30 days!

• Our outsourcing teams made it clear that they couldn't start work without receiving the upfront payment, as they also needed to pay their artists and composers.
• We are a small team with no savings to advance this hefty upfront payment.
• We could only watch as time ticked by, day after day, with the project unable to start.

A month later, we finally got the money. But during that month, we had to repeatedly explain to our eager backers in the community why the project hadn't started. The community's trust and enthusiasm were slowly eroded during this long, meaningless wait.

This experience taught us a profound lesson: the speed of fund settlement is directly related to the speed of project execution and community trust.

Later, we learned that some emerging crowdfunding platforms designed for creators use a completely different fund settlement method.

• They are based on an efficient, modern payment network. The moment the crowdfunding is successful, backers' funds can be cleared immediately.
• The platform can deduct its commission and release the remaining funds to the project owner's wallet in the form of digital currency (like stablecoins) within minutes.
• The project owner can then immediately use these funds to pay partners anywhere in the world.

The entire process, from "funding successful" to "funds available," is shortened from 30 days to 30 minutes. I learned that to achieve this kind of instant, efficient fund flow, a powerful underlying payment architecture is needed. The programmable and instant settlement features of protocols like BlockATM make it possible to build this kind of "zero-delay" creator economy platform.

Our game was eventually developed. But we lost a precious month and the trust of some of our early backers. Next time, we will definitely choose a platform that lets us "hit the ground running" immediately after success.

To all independent developers or project creators, have you also had your project execution hindered by slow platform payouts? How important do you think a platform with "instantly available funds" is to your project's success?