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The Agency vs. competitors in the Web3 freelancing space
The 2022 Recap and 2023 Roadmap Medium post is scheduled for March, however a pitch deck floated across one of our old emails today so I thought it would be interesting to do a quick comparison analysis. We will be taking a look at Braintrust, Cryptotask, and Jobzura as the main competitors and analyzing their different approaches to a decentralized freelance platform. 2 protocols were not included since I couldn’t find enough information on Ortjob and Human protocol is more focused(atleast for now) on data labelling and micro tasks than complex freelancing work like producing art or coding an app.
Overview — Braintrust
Braintrust is clearly the least “decentralized” platform of the group, and this is not a misrepresentation as I have confirmed it with them in their Discord. The jobs management system is completely designed as a web2 platform with only governance voting handled onchain. Braintrust has great reviews with companies and freelancers generally having a good experience. According to them the main selling points are:
Lower Fees (Although it remains to be seen how they will keep the fees low without using blockchain to offset the structural costs of the business)
On-chain governance using their BTRST token
Overview — CryptoTask
CryptoTask is the oldest platform of the group, with the largest userbase and most developed web3 backend. They also have a great advertising plan by offering a 0% fee. What they hide from this is that you lose any security of your funds since without a fee you are not able to utilize their escrow service. Overall their platform has received controversial reviews due to their confusing fee tier levels, time to fully develop the decentralized components, and lack of clear requirements in job descriptions.
Overview — Jobzura
Jobzura is a soon to be launched platform that has raised some money but not yet released their MVP. Their initial MVP dapp aims to support a basic on chain job management system with 3 levels for jobs of increasing difficulty and an onchain messaging system. In this initial version it will not include onchain dispute management but will allow users to rate each other after each completed job. They have raised around $40k to date for their product and are actively seeking more investment.
Manual verification (Braintrust) — This approves freelancers based on the company conducting a manual review creating a highly centralized bottleneck. Eventually the goal is to decentralize this process and allow users staking BTRST to verify job seekers.
Utility Token Staking (CryptoTask)— This bases reputation on a highly centralized “stock” like token where the initial large purchasers or large funds will always easily hold 50–90% of the total token supply. There are numerous articles about DAOs which use governance based on utility tokens so I will simply link two of them:
Soulbound tokens (Jobzura) — Reputation will be tracked via reviews which are attached to your accounts soulbound token. This will contain your overall rating, number of litigations received, and all of your reviews from previous jobs. This is similar to the reputation systems on web2 services and does nothing to prevent the attack vectors prominent on those platforms where users pay for their own jobs and leave themselves good reviews.
Decaying reputation tokens (The Great Reset) — Reputation will be tracked mostly by a given rank assigned by an amount of staked reputation tokens. There will also be reviews and previous jobs visible on the profile page. Since reputation tokens can only be earned by jobs which are community verified to contribute in a meaningful way to The Great Reset DAO they cannot be earned unless a user actually does verified work.
Braintrust — A Jury Arbitrator is selected using the off-chain governance and serve for 6 months. They are responsible for randomly assigning 3 Jury Members(BTRST token holders) from the total pool to vote on each dispute. Jury Members serve 1 year terms and may be called to be eyewitnesses(weigh in on subjective claims). Jury Members and the Jury Arbitrator earn 5 BTRST tokens for volunteering and an additional 50 BTRST for completing a training course on Braintrust Academy. Should Jury Members or eyewitnesses be called to make judgments on a dispute, they earn an additional 100 BTRST tokens for each case. Jury Arbitrators earn an additional 300 BTRST tokens for each case.
CryptoTask — Dispute resolution is handled by a group of atleast 10 and they are paid out by the Freelancer or Client depending on who loses. They earn 10% of the total job cost. The 10+ reviewers are not selected based on any form of reputation and instead are based on proof of stake of the utility token. (The reason they give for this is that it would be impossible without a number of users having initial reputation and reputation distributed initially could only be distributed arbitrarily. Our reputation token is initially distributed for completing tasks so it is not arbitrary.)
Jobzura — In the initial release which will be soon available disputes are handled by a centralized entity. However the goal is to eventually decentralize the dispute system.
The Great Reset — Disputes will be resolved by voting on a first come first serve basis by 11 stakers of the reputation token. The conclusion they come to can be disputed by other stakers starting a new round which needs to reach 11 votes again. Voting rounds will continue until a conclusion stands for 48 hours then any of the rounds voters who voted incorrectly will be slashed.
Braintrust — 10% Fee
Cryptotask — 3% Fee with escrow. 30% Fee with job matching
Jobzura — 4% Fee
The Great Reset — 0% Fee
Advantages of Braintrust
Greater funding — Braintrust has raised over 120 million dollars making them extremely well funded.
More token usecases — The BTRST token has more usecases than any of the competitors have developed yet including — Free and discounted software, Training courses, Making jobs more visible, and rewarding job seekers who aren’t selected for a job.
Advantages of CryptoTask
First to market — Launching in 2019 and purchasing a previously successful web2 freelancing platform, CryptoTask has by far the first mover advantage and the most users.
Referral Program —Users can earn 20% of the fee from escrowed jobs their referrals make through the platform or 10% of the fee from each day their affiliates are subscribed to Visibility package. This gives people a significant incentive to refer others.
Advantages of Jobzura
Referral Program — Users who refer others not only earn money from the fees their referrals generate but also earn money from the fees from the people referred by their referrals(up to 3 levels deep). By structuring their referral system a lot like a multilevel marketing company(pyramid scheme) their customers have a massive incentive to recruit people under them. I wouldn’t call them a true pyramid scheme like Amway since there is no upfront cost to use their service and I believe most freelancers will make money from working not from referrals.
Advantages of The Great Reset
Stronger Reputation Management — By using an innovative decaying reputation token with the already somewhat successful review system employed by web2 freelance platform customers can feel much more safe trusting our freelancers reputations. This will create a flywheel: greatly improving customer retention and making more job listings which in turn leads to more freelancers working on the platform since they know they are more likely to find work.
Lower Dispute Resolution Cost — Since our users are rewarded by minting our reputation token for dispute resolution there is no cost to the client/freelancer.
Closing Thoughts
There is clearly a lot of work for us to do to be able to meet the capabilities of our competitors. Systems like referrals and guilds are on our roadmap for V2 and will make the Agency much more competitive. However even without these systems we offer a unique approach to reputation management which I believe will be the most resistant to every attack vector. Our reputation system is resistant to Sybil, Economic Concentration, and Fake Job attacks in ways that the other systems are unable to address. It also creates a wolf pit where participants are extremely motivated to root out any bad actors since everyone’s reputation is constantly under decay. The true repercussions of a decentralized reputation system will likely be felt in the coming years, as all forms will be put to the test by people who want to make money fast and with as little effort as possible(including cheating the system if they can find a weakness). Overall the space is projected to grow at a rate of 15%-20% and with over 50% of Gen Z currently freelancing that rate could grow even faster. There is ample opportunity for many competitors in this market but which ones will attract and retain their talent has yet to be seen. As always thankyou for believing in the spirit of decentralization, I hope to see The Great Reset DAO prove to the world what crypto is all about:
Inclusion and Empowerment
