Decentralized Escrow for Remote Job

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Decentralized escrow to protect both remote developers and hiring organizations with cheaper fees and a fair/decentralized dispute settlement mechanism.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Socious is a fast-growing impact community with 1,000 MAU, supported by 500Global and Microsoft. The team has extensive experience in the impact sector and is comprised of experts in impact measurement, finance, data science, and blockchain development.

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Direct work contracts between organizations and remote developers may lead to disputes such as organizations not paying salaries, and freelancers not fulfilling deliverables. Centralized escrow services such as Upwork is expensive (up to 23% commission fees) and the decision is completely up to the platform.

Socious provides decentralized escrow to protect both remote developers and hiring organizations with cheaper fees. There are three benefits to Socious’ decentralized escrow mechanism: 

1. Decentralized decision-making: Socious uses our proprietary impact credentials “Socious Deeds” for governance purposes. Through on-chain governance processes, Socious Deed holders are able to vote on various aspects of organizational operations, allowing community-wide decision-making. Decisions on allocating funding, building new partnerships, verification of impact organizations, reviewing reported organizations/users/content, dispute resolution, and developing the platform can all be executed through this decentralized process. Socious Deeds are verifiable credentials, and therefore non-transferrable, in order to ensure that governance power is widely distributed and is in the hands of informed decision-makers. Only those who have an impact score above 700 are issued these verifiable credentials. Each Deed contains information on the user’s interests/expertise on specific social/environmental issues based on their behaviors on the Socious app. The voting power is proportional to their interests/expertise on the topic that is being voted on. For example, if the topic is about allocating funding to an environmental project, the votes of the users who have contributed their time/money to environmental projects and have posted/commented on content related to environmental issues will be weighed accordingly. In centralized platforms, these decisions are made by the company that owns the platform, which may lead to issues of censorship and abuse. On Socious, these decisions are made by a panel of three Socious Deed holders. For example, an organization submits an application to be verified as an impact organization in order to receive an array of benefits that come with the status. A panel of three Socious Deed holders will be randomly chosen to review the organization’s application and vote on whether the organization should be verified as an impact organization. The three Deed holders will receive THANKs as rewards for their contribution. Participation in the panel is completely voluntary, so Deed holders can opt out of the possibility to be randomly selected to participate. Deed holders also participate in dispute resolutions between the organization and the hired freelancer. For example, when an organization believes that a project was not completed, but the contributor claims it was completed. In this case, either party can submit a dispute; they agree to disclose certain information only to the panel of three decision-makers. When they submit a dispute, they need to stake a certain amount of THANKs for dispute settlement fees. The winning party will receive the refund/payment. The losing party will lose the amount staked and the judges will receive the staked amount. 
2. Automated payment: When the status of the project becomes “hired”, then the agreed amount will be moved to the “escrow wallet”, the organization can’t move the asset; When the status of the project changes to “completed” the fund is automatically transferred to the freelancer. If the project’s status changes to “canceled”, the fund is automatically returned to the organization. These transactions are done through smart contracts. 
3. Cheaper fees: a) unlike centralized platforms that use credit card providers for payment, Socious uses blockchain technology for payment, therefore eliminating the fees for the third-party company. b) because the dispute resolution is done by the community members, it reduces the operational cost of dispute resolution.   

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

The proposed solution addresses the challenge in the following ways:

The overall question to be addressed by the challenge is “How can we create a positive developer experience that helps the developer focus on building successful apps?”

Through our decentralized escrow system for work protection, we create a positive developer experience for freelance remote developers as well as hiring organizations. Our escrow system is based on a fair decision-making process supported by impact experts within the community. We also provide automated payment and cheapers fees for both freelance developers and hiring organizations.

Types of proposals include “Support structures” and “Incentivization structures”.

The proposed solution is squarely in these areas. We provide support structures for freelance work between developers and hiring organizations. We also provide incentivization structures to developers through our impact score and THANK tokens.

The project is highly relevant to the key metrics for the challenge:

• Number of developers actively building on top of Cardano. -> Because the developers’ work will be protected through the escrow system, we can attract more developers to the Cardano ecosystem. 
• A sense of community and conversations. Having people around to talk with. -> Because Socious is also a social networking app, developers can connect with other like-minded developers and build a sense of community, and strike conversations.  

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Possible challenges or risks to delivering this project successfully include:

Risk: Building escrow smart contracts to an existing mobile app rather than a web app. 

Strategy to mitigate: We will mitigate this challenge by learning and getting support from the Cardano and Gimbalabs communities.

Risk: Building escrow smart contracts for different types of payment schemes (project-based, hourly contracts, etc.). 

Strategy to mitigate: We will mitigate this challenge by learning from the existing escrow systems and getting support from the Cardano and Gimbalabs communities.

Risk: Time allocation; we may face challenges in allocating sufficient time to dliver this project in time. 

Strategy to mitigate: We have been carefully planning resource allocation among different projects. In addition to careful planning, we can mitigate the risk by leveraging our freelance resources; we’ve worked with 20 freelancers in the past who can contribute to the project if necessary.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

We expect that the proposed project can be brought to market within three months of approval of funding – no later than the end of 2022. We will be monitoring the results of the project for three months after the launch. We will submit the final report in the sixth month.

Target Milestones & Deliverables

September 2022

- Project approved by Catalyst voters

- Technical and market analysis of the project

- FInalize workflow

- Ideate and Create Prototypes for User Rsearch

- Conduct User Research using the Prototypes

- Compile and Analyse the findings

- Finalize the UI/UX Design/Technical Architecture 

October 2022

- Start Running Development Sprints

- Unit Testing 

- Integration Testing 

- System Testing

November 2022

- User Acceptance Testing 

- Final Adjustments

- Deployment

- Marketing

December 2022 - February 2023

- Monitor KPIs

- Prepare technical documentation

- Deliver the final report 

Deliverables

1. Functioning escrow flow for freelancers/organizations - Project-based payment
2. Functioning escrow flow for freelancers/organizations - hourly payment
3. Functioning flow of dispute settlement
4. Fully operational workflow of all three functions.

Technical Aspects (architecture, language, technologies):

Blockchain: Cardano/Milkomeda

Smart Contracts: Solidity/EVM

Frontend Mobile App: Typescript React Native

Frontend Web App: Typescript NextJS

Backend: PHP Laravel/Typescript Node.js

Database: MySQL

DevOps: AWS

Machine Learning: Azure

Agile tools: GitHub/Trello

Design Tools: Figma/Miro/Canva

Managing the workload of this and other proposals:

Here is a link explaining workload management.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xOIocF5W9Njsu60e5-aoWzVLpplktzvu3CA881n4kWE/edit?usp=sharing

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

The budget is segmented according to the identifiable items below at a ratio of $100/hr.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Socious is an impact gig marketplace powered by blockchain and AI. We are building an ecosystem to help socially conscious individuals contribute to social/environmental impact by visualizing and rewarding their efforts.

The Socious Team working on this project:

Founder and CEO:

Name: Seira Yun

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seirayun/

Position: Founder & CEO

Bio: Seira Yun is a serial social entrepreneur and an impact angel investor. He has worked in the impact sector since 2008 in the Middle East, Africa and Asia leading teams within the ICRC, UNHCR, and social ventures. He founded Discover Deep Japan Inc. in 2019, a social venture that focused on diversity and inclusion, which was acquired in 2021. Seira is a full-stack developer and holds a Master in Social Innovation degree from the University of Cambridge. His lived experience as both a migrant and a pansexual queer drives Seira’s passion for social change. Atala PRISM Pioneer Program participant

Name: Jayson Ilagan

Location: Manila, Philippines 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayson-ilagan/

Position: Senior Developer

Bio: 

Jayson is a web and mobile app developer with over 12 years of experience. He earned his degree in Computer Science from the Lyceum of the Philippines-Laguna. He accepted his school invitation to work for them after graduation to build systems and worked on developing a faculty performance evaluation system.

After spending six years working at Ivoclar Vivadent Inc. as an IT Global Software Developer, where his primary focus was project creation, he decided to move to Singapore for two years to join Direct Asia Management Services Pte. Ltd. As a web developer, he enhanced the Quote and Buy journey of the company portal that caters to motorcycles and travel insurance. He hopes to build an application for kids with curable diseases who don't have the means to pay for medications to help them access proper medical treatment. Atala PRISM Pioneer Program participant.

Name: Cristhian Tejada

Location, San Salvador, El Salvador

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristhian-tejada-a73844174/

Position: Blockchain Developer - freelancer

Bio: A blockchain developer/data scientist with 9 years of experience. Cristhian strongly believes that artificial intelligence and blockchain will play an essential role in sustainable development and social good in the coming years. He currently stands out as a data scientist and blockchain developer in several social impact projects using the technology as a main tool. He also works in the Open Bank Project developing blockchain-based solutions for the financial and banking sector. He has studied business and economics but the need to create tools that improve living conditions and solve environmental problems has driven me to develop skills in computer science. 

In the next few years, he plans to continue his doctoral studies investigating new economic models using Web3 technologies. Atala PRISM Pioneer Program participant.

Name: Raphael Hode

Location: Tokyo, Japan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphaelhode/

Position: Design Advisor - freelancer

Bio: Raphael is a Strategic Designer with a passion for social innovation and sustainability. After a few years in advertising agencies in Paris, Raphael moved to Tokyo in 2015 and joined Designit, a global strategic design firm. At Designit Raphael worked on growing a team and helping some of Japan’s most ambitious companies make innovation happen, leading him to endorse a variety of roles across UX design, service design, business design, and strategy.

In parallel, he has been passionately engaging in activities related to sustainability and social innovation: giving talks and workshops, mentoring early-stage social founders, and eventually co-founding a social venture. Today, he spends most of his time working with incredible social entrepreneurs to help them define, design, and launch visionary products that contribute to creating a more sustainable society.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Socious is planning to become a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) by 2026. In order to achieve this goal, we need to build an ecosystem that people love to be a part of in the long term. We will return to Catalyst to build necessary features that allow the core Socious team to gradually step out of the decision-making process and achieve a truly decentralized and fully autonomous organization. 

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

This project has four clear deliverables that will act as proofs of completion:

• The code of the decentralized escrow deployed and available on GitHub 
• The code of the decentralized dispute resolution mechanism deployed and available on GitHub
• A video of the full demo
• Anyone can through the flow

Our key metrics/ KPIs (until 2023 March) for this project will be:

a) the number of freelancers who found work through the platform: 2000 

b) the number of jobs that were matched with freelancers: 4000

c) the number of hours that freelancers worked through the platform: 8000

d) the number of organizations that found freelancers through the platform: 500

e) the amount of transactions on the platform: USD 160,000 

In addition, we will measure project progression against the Milestones & Deliverables plan above. Our progress will be reported in the monthly reporting for Catalyst and in the final project report. We may also present at Townhall and other community meetings on an ad hoc basis.

Furthermore, the team adopts Agile methodology based on the tools provided by Trello and GitHub. Besides the monthly progress reports, the progress will be tracked by Trello Kanban Board, Github issues, and commits. Intermediate progress will be reported as Sprint Burndown, a KPI metric that shows the progress in the percentage of each development sprint.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

The success of the project would involve:

• Users are able to use the escrow system to protect their freelance work.
• Users are able to submit complaints for decentralized dispute settlement.
• 4000 Completed freelance jobs on the platform. 

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

Entirely new proposal. 

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

This particular project directly tackles SDG8 “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”. In particular for the following sub-goals:

8.5 - By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value

8.6 - By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training

In addition, Socious brings more financial and human resources to impact organizations to accelerate social and environmental impact. While SDGs’ Indicator 17.17.1 “Amount of United States dollars committed to public-private and civil society partnerships” may be close to what we use, we specifically use the following indicators:  a) the amount of money donated to impact organizations; b) the number of impact organizations that received donations; c) the number of organizations that received time/skills contributions; d) the number of hours that were contributed to impact organizations; e) the number of people who contributed their time/skills to impact organizations

Socious also seeks to create a virtuous circle of giving, giving back, and pay forward through THANK tokens. While it is difficult to measure the impact of showing gratitude, we believe it brings joy and happiness to both the giver and the recipient. The indicators we follow include a) the number of times users thanked other users for their acts of kindness and b) the amount of THANK transferred as a sign of gratitude.   

Our long-term vision is to build an impact ecosystem that can transform the world. If we successfully implement our project, more people will contribute their time and money to social causes, which will accelerate social and environmental impact.