Economic and social nature and legal form of crowdfunding relations

The manifold increase in the speed of the information processing and transfer by means of newest digital technologies and the Internet, resulted in completely new economic relations and created a digital economic infrastructure that covers Internet trade, web advertising, crypto-currency, usage of digital signatures for making agreements and other «digital relations». The digitalization of the economy could neither escape influencing the investment sphere; there were introduced conceptually new ways of raising investments at early stages of a business-project, usually presented by way of a start-up. The article presents economic, social and legal aspects of crowdfunding, i.e. collective financing. A conclusion is made about the self-sufficiency of the legal construction of crowdfunding relations and about the importance of their legalization in the Russian legal space.