What is the Future of Work?
Weekly Summary: Saturday June 3 to Friday June 9, 2023
Think for a moment, what is the advantage of blockchain technology?
It is a kind of new life form. It is the next step in the evolution of human civilization, on a new material level that is not just biological but blends bio with tech. It is the materialization of the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. It is the materialization of invisible hand of the economy as Adam Smith put it. It is electrification of money, not just moving over the old system of trust onto a new medium, but reimplementing it from the ground up in the digital sphere.
Currently we are in the depths of a bear market, some are doubting again the usefulness of blockchain. At the same time Ai is astonishing everyone with it’s new advancement, how it is able to generate human level conversation and realistic images. The big thing that blockchain can do for the world is that it is the consensus mechanism for the world, one that is human and Earth centric and not recognizing any divisions by nations or religion. These are artificial divisions that no longer necessary in current time.
VayamAi: How we Work
The future of work is being location independent and working with partners all over the world. We no longer need to recognize artificial borders. The current digital nomads are the pioneers of the new way of life and work.
The biggest advantage of Ethereum is that it can program money, transactions can be very quick and trusted without a central entity. The applications of this are just starting to be discovered and implemented.
There are several trends happening right now, the number of those working remotely from different parts of the world is increasing, there are more freelancers, the creator economy is growing quickly and more Ai tools are improving productivity at an exponential pace. In order to increase the productivity we are all better off by working in groups, sharing knowledge and providing mentorship. ‘Vayam’ means ‘We’ in Sanskrit and this is the ethos of this protocol to build tools that support an ecosystem that puts the we at the center.
Introducing “VayamAi” a platform for bringing the future of work. There is a new way of working, it is the creator economy, and combine this with crypto payments, escrow, nomad and Ai centric community of mentorship. This is the platform that is cultivating a new way to work and where individuals can get a start on freelancing and for the experienced ones to grow their freelance business. This is for programmers, designers, writers and other professionals to find jobs quickly and easily. Interaction with this is very simple and you can get started in a few minutes. There is no bank account needed. All you need is an Ethereum wallet and you are ready to set up a profile in seconds and start taking freelance jobs. Payments are done on-chain using Smart Invoice, a battle tested escrow and invoice protocol. Reviews and ratings are securely submitted on chain and can be trusted.
Our team has built this MVP of this protocol and are launching it soon.
This is how it works.
First connect with your MetaMask wallet. Then register by creating a Client or Provider account. Clients are freelancers and providers are those looking to hire freelancers. Enter your information for your profile. Then you are able to create a job posting. Click “Add Job” and fill out the form.
Next freelancers will be able to find this job on the listings page and send a job proposal with milestones.
When you find a job proposal that you are satisfied with you can click ‘Accept’ proposal. Then the Freelancer on his end must click ‘Create Deal’ on the job. The freelancer enters the expected duration in days for the project, and the accepted currency: either USDC or DAI. Here the first on-chain interaction happens and the Smart Invoice is deployed. To start the job officially the client must go to the job detail page and click “Acknowledge” to start the job with a 10% payment. This will require first to give approval to transfer the tokens first.
This deploys the job on chain and launch
es the Smart Invoice, which is a battle tested protocol that handles the escrow and milestone invoicing on chain.
When the freelancer completes the milestones hey submits the work to the client and the provider releases the milestones and tops up the invoice with the next milestone payment.
When all milestones are completed and payed, the freelancer and provider both submit a 0-5 star rating and a short review to close the job.
If a freelancer earns ten or more five star reviews he is automatically air dropped a ‘Mentor’ soul-bound NFT that grants them a special status on the platform to be a mentor and to publish articles on the mentors page.
See the whole product demo here.
Mentorship is very important to this community. Both mentor and mentee benefit from this exchange. This creates a flywheel where more freelancers are onboarded onto the platform, become members and provide more support to onboarding new members to this platform and this lifestyle. The interactions in this exchange make is such that both sides are more engaged and build more bonds with the community. This is a novel mechanism not seen in other job platforms, whose culture is more about isolated individual pursuits. It is our philosophy that the internet can give us much more by connecting us together and bringing us to the people that have the knowledge and skills we want to acquire and to facilitate the exchange of services for money and the free exchange of knowledge. These are the first building blocks of a new kind of economy and world. We are evolving from outdated XX century ways of work, that existed before the internet. Now we not only have the internet which allows us to work from anywhere, but also internet native programmable money and Ai tools that magnify our productivity. If we can create a community around this, we will all benefit and together build better. We spend most of our lives in work, from 8-12 hours per day 5-6 days per week, this is the biggest chunk of our lives. With the new tools of internet, crypto, and Ai, we are building a new common platform for working together, sharing our knowledge and evolving.
We submitted this project to DevX Polygon Hackathon. See the detailed submission here.
From Bali to Shenzhen to Wuhan
Our time in Bali has come to an end. The last few days I spent working on my freelance contracts, hackathon and enjoying the time here. We submitted the VayamAi project to DevX Polygon hackathon. In the morning I went running and surfing by Kuta beach. This was the first time I surfed in many years and it was a good experience.
On Sunday at 4:30 AM we left our villa to the airport. We took off to Shenzhen for the trip across China. The reason for this trip is to explore China, meet friends here and continue a balanced life with daily remote work. So far after a week, I can say it has been well worth it and a very memorable experience. We landed in Shenzhen and were met by a friend that is a Chinese web3 developer and digital nomad that I met in a ETHTokyo hacker house.
The really great thing about traveling and doing a lot of Ethereum Hackathons is that you meet the most interesting people from all over the world. I believe that this is the strength of this ecosystem and the biggest value it provides. Ethereum is not about getting rich, it is about connecting the world and building a new dimension of our civilization, one that is free from artificial divisions, but unites us as stewards of this one planet. This is what we seek to build with our startups like Squad Goals, VayamAi and more to come.
In Shenzhen we met with a new crypto founder friend. The daily routine was to work out in the hotel gym, the grab lunch, then co-work in a cafe, then get dinner and go to a bar to work more. On the last day, Wednesday, we stayed late at the bar and socialized.
Overall getting around China is not easy for foreigners but it is well worth it. This country is really mind boggling big and very interesting.
On Wednesday we took the bullet train to Wuhan. Getting on the train is really fast, only going through the gate by scanning your id or passport, unlike the security lines in airports. We got on the train from the taxi within a few minutes. The ride was about 4 hours. We passed through Changsha, a city I once visited before in 2019. I texted my friends from there a photo of the city from the train. They were very surprised that I came back. I hope to see them again sometime soon. They are very good developers. We arrived in Wuhan and continued the similar routines as in Shenzhen. Our hotel is right next to a big mall with a Starbucks that is comfortable for co-working and many restaurants with good value. We tried the hot dry noodles that Wuhan is famous for. At night we went to the center river front. We walked around looking for a bar. Luckily we found a very quiet and newly opened jazz bar. The waiters and waitress were very cool and nice. We stayed there until 2am working.
Video Content
Drone film from Ubud, Bali Monkey Forest.
Drone film from Shenzhen.
Closing
Next week the plan is to go to Beijing, Kuala Lumpur and then Ho Chi Minh City. Lots of adventures to come. Wish you good health and happiness friends. Until next week, peace.