Snowdrift.coop is essentially trying to solve the same problem in a different way. Instead of changing the product price as more units are sold, they ask folks to finance its fixed component directly, using a game-theoretic mechanism that increases total contributions superlinearly as more people choose to contribute. (This boosts the effectiveness of any single user's contributions through a "matching" effect). However, there is no distinction between "earlier" vs. "later" contributors; they're all treated the same. The underlying goal is to generalize the successful assurance-contract mechanism to goods and services that do not have a well-defined 'threshold' of feasibility, especially services that must be funded continuously over time.
It's an interesting idea but I'm not sure it has the psychology behind crowdfunding right. It seems to be constructed to minimize the risk donors carry in the event of a failed campaign, and to maximize the perceived leverage of small donations; but it does that at the expense of bragging rights and fine-grained control, which might make a lot of donors leery. I think you could probably tweak it to solve those problems, though.
It also does nothing at all to solve the accountability issues of traditional crowdfunding, but that's a hard problem. I wouldn'...
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