Chinese e-commerce giant JD rolled out today a crowdfunding platform dubbed Coufenzi (“whip-round” in Chinese), tapping into yet another field just one week after launching a Travel Channel. Altogether 12 crowdfunding campaigns are launched on the platform now, of which 7 are smart hardware projects, including ZIVOO Box which we featured before, while the rest are pop culture projects for movies and concerts. But it seems JD is entering the crowdfunding battlefield at a time when most of its domestic rivals are trying to avoid the crowdfunding concept and pivot to pre-sale platforms. Pre-sale website for smart hardware seems to be a balance point that Chinese crowdfunding sites found for the model in China. Several leading Chinese crowdfunding platforms like DemoHour and Knewbi started to re-brand themselves as smart hardware pre-sale platforms.