Freelancers play an important role in today’s job marketplace and the benefits of this work style are just leading it to grow year by year. Unfortunately, Freelancing comes with its own issues, and famous freelance platforms, such as Fiverr and UpWork, have failed to solve these issues.
Blockchain’s transparency and low-fee, instant transactions come to the rescue once more to make life easier for freelancers this time.
Freelancing: the ups and downs
Freelance growth has been quite evident in recent years and it doesn’t come as a surprise. According to Morgan Stanely, the famous American financial service company, better job satisfaction, shifting demographics, and digitalization could lead this market to grow even more in the coming years.
Freelancing is more flexible than traditional employment and gives you the ability to better manage your time. In today’s digital world, you can take on several projects from all around the world and don’t have to be limited to your local job market anymore. But like everything else, it’s not always shiny and rosy.
Low job security, lack of benefits and paid leave, and unpredictable income are some of the major concerns of freelancers. But with all the problems, many still consider freelancing a better alternative to traditional employment.
Freelancers represent 35% of the total U.S. working population and could represent more than half of the country’s workforce by 2027. Morgan Stanly
Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer.com: why do we need new platforms
If you’re a freelancer or have experience doing freelance projects, you’re probably familiar with Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com. These are some of the most famous freelancing platforms that bring freelancers and employers together.
These platforms are centralized and like most centralized platforms, come with high fees and delays. You can’t withdraw your money unless you reach a specific amount (mostly $100) and it always takes some time to process the payment (sometimes up to 14 days). More importantly, you’ll need a bank account to use these platforms which may be an issue for many unbanked people.
Biased and unfair disputes are another issue of these platforms. Centralized platforms are not transparent so there is no easy way to assure the involved parties that the dispute was fair and unbiased which may leave at least one party unsatisfied.
Therefore, issues such as high fees, limited and delayed payments, lack of access to bank accounts, and possible biased disputes make it essential to look for alternatives for these platforms.
Power of Decentralization: the union of blockchain and freelancing
Simply put, blockchain is a decentralized, transparent, and permanent record of events. It’s decentralized because the record is saved on different computers which are a member of its network. Everybody can view this record and that’s the reason we call it transparent. And last, no single member of the network can alter or delete the record which makes it permanent (immutable).
These features make blockchain technology a perfect solution for the issues we mentioned above. In addition, blockchain performs quite well in financial services and cryptocurrencies are proof of that. This technology is good at low fees, borderless, instant transactions and everyone with a crypto wallet can benefit from that.
CryptoTask: rethink work
CryptoTask is a decentralized freelance marketplace and has 3 different kinds of users: clients, freelancers, and reviewers. Clients offer a job that freelancers may apply for. Reviewers take part in disputes.
CryptoTask makes both clients and freelancers put deposits as a way to assure both parties. The client’s deposit insures that the freelancer is paid properly and on time after delivering the task. Freelancer’s deposit is used as a way to make sure that they will deliver on what they’ve promised and won’t waste clients’ time.
CryptoTask charges up to 3% fee which is quite lower than the 20% fee charged by centralized platforms, such as Fiverr and Freelancer.com.
CryptoTask uses a blockchain-based dispute system that ensures fairness. Review Panels are formed for each dispute and reviewers are randomly selected. Each panel consists of 10 reviewers but this number may change. Reviewers don’t know each other and will be punished if they try to communicate off-chain.
CryptoTask uses a two-phase voting mechanism: commit and reveal. In this way, no reviewer can vote after viewing how other reviewers voted. Everything from freelancer’s payment to review panels is managed with the help of smart contracts.
A smart contract is just a piece of code that enforces specific rules for us to make sure everything goes as planned. You can read our article to learn more about Smart Contracts.
How does CryptoTask Work
The process is quite simple:
- Clients post a job and deposit task value plus 10% more to cover the fees, in case a dispute is necessary.
- Freelancers have to put a deposit equal to the 10% of the task they applied for as well. In this way, both parties are providing an equal amount of value. These fees are used to pay interviewers should a dispute happen.
- Client and freelancer agree on the task’s final result.
- Freelancer completes the job properly and gets paid instantly. If the job is not completed before the deadline, the client gets a refund from the freelancer’s deposit.
- In case of a dispute, the panel will be formed and reviewers will be paid from the loser party’s deposit.
CryptoTask DeFi: earn by bringing jobs to freelancers
According to CryptoTask’s roadmap, users will be able to enjoy the middleman feature by Q2 2022. This feature allows freelancers to receive job offers from middlemen and pay 20% of their payment in exchange for their help.
Users can also buy CTASK tokens with DAI stablecoin and by providing liquidity, earn monthly rewards. If you like to learn more about stablecoins, you can read our recent Weekly Recap.
Endnote
CryptoTask is a decentralized, blockchain-based job marketplace with more than 30,000 users. This platform offers low fees for both employers and freelancers, instant payments with no limits, and fair disputes.