How Backable protects you
The whole system in one page, written for someone who has never used crypto.
Backable is a place where anyone on the internet can raise money for a project, and anyone on the internet can back them. There is no application, no review committee, and — this part is important — nobody checks whether the teams are real, honest, or capable.
That probably sounds dangerous. On most platforms it would be. So instead of trusting a committee, or trusting the teams, Backable is built so the money itself is protected by three rules that run automatically, in code, with nobody able to override them.
Rule 1 — During a raise, nobody has your money
When you back a raise, your money doesn't go to the team. It goes into — a program that holds it until the raise ends. The team cannot touch it. Backable cannot touch it. It sits there.
Example Coffee Co
LIVERoast-to-order coffee with a market-governed treasury
Rule 2 — If a raise misses its goal, you can take your money back
Every raise sets a goal. If it ends below that goal, your money is still yours: you come back to the raise page, press claim, and the escrow program releases it to your wallet in full.
The claim is a transaction you send yourself, so nothing lands in your wallet until you ask for it. That is the one bit of work the system asks of you, and in exchange nobody — not the team, not Backable, not a support queue — can approve, delay, means-test or refuse it. There is no deadline and no expiry.
Rule 3 — If a raise succeeds, the team gets a budget, not the money
This is the part that makes Backable different from every crowdfunding site you've used. When a raise succeeds, the money goes into the project's , and the team can only draw a fixed from it — an amount they published before the raise opened, enforced onchain.
Want to spend more than the budget? Issue new tokens? Sell the project's brand? Every one of those needs a , and proposals aren't decided by the team, by a committee, or even by a vote. They're decided by — traders putting real money on whether the idea helps or hurts the project.
Meet Maria
Maria roasts coffee in Lisbon and wants about €40,000 to buy a bigger roaster and go direct-to-consumer. No bank will touch her. Here is her raise on Backable.
Maria's Coffee DAO — a worked example
One number that confuses everyone: committed vs raised
Popular raises get more commitments than their goal, sometimes wildly more. A raise with a $240k goal can attract millions in commitments. The project does not receive millions. Here is how that money resolves.
| What | Amount |
|---|---|
| Committed during the raise | $15,300,000 |
| Raised — received by the project | $240,000 |
| Claimable back by backers | $15,060,000 |
Committing more than the goal doesn't hand the project more money — it competes for a share of a fixed allocation, and the excess stays yours to claim. That's why Backable headlines the raised number once a raise closes. .