The Paradigm shift of the GIG economy: The Case for the blockchain Technology( series I)
“The gig economy is based on flexible, temporary, or freelance jobs, often involving connecting with clients or customers through an online platform.” Investipadea.
The popular saying of work from home became very popular due to the recent COVID-19 epidemic even in some sectors where this was once perceived as a taboo, the drastic adjustment came out of necessities giving room for the gig economy to blossom.
The gig economy is not left without its own pro and cons, however, the pros have proven to be more valuable in helping entrepreneurs (startups and large cooperation)run on a lean spending model by cutting on overhead costs that will usually be expended on maintaining permanent staff and other office expenses.
The market size of the gig economy or ‘freelancing Economy’ or ‘Sharing Economy’ is projected to be 347.8 billion by the end of 2021. The market is projected to experience 100% growth in the next five years with a forecasted value that it should get to $455.2 billion by the end of 2023
The gig economy has been categorized into four major sectors according to Mastercard whitepaper which include:
in this article, our interest is how the Blockchain( Internet of value ) is changing the narrative in the professional services sector by building an ecosystem where gig transactions can flourish upholding the values of decentralisation. Since DEFI summer 2020, We have seen more and more DEFI projects helped investors to earn interest on their capital through yield farming and providing LP(liquidity providers).
An innovative project like Gitcoin is changing the narrative and placing focus on labour rather than capital, this project has successfully placed a dichotomy between the internet of jobs and the gig economy or shared economy. The fallout of the internet of jobs is that the centre of focus is always tilted in favour of the heavy investors or ‘Whale” (capital,) and less in favour of labour, a typical example is a model that most car ride businesses currently run.
The Gitcoin project fully implemented a concept called quadratic funding. Quadratic funding is a subset of quadratic voting the concept describes a more optimal way of matching funds to public goods and open source projects. In this concept, the power of many small donors counts more than a large single donor.
How does Quadratic Funding work:
From The above diagram the matching model incentifies Contributors C over Contributors A and Contributor B. This is because the total number of contributors in C is 20, while that of Contributor A and Contributor B is 5 and 2 respectively. We can conclude that quadratic funding incentifies more contributors, no matter how small the value or size of their contribution in $ value is. The size of the Matching pool assigned to Contributor C is $7407.41, which is 7.4 X of the contributed amount. Although Contributors C gave the highest $ value that is $500 each. They were allocated $740 simple because the model follows the quadratic funding principle
A quick Overview of Gitcoin.
You can either earn for providing service on Gitcoin, Gitcoin is a safe haven for developers to earn, learn, connect. It allows the flexibility for developers & creatives to choose the project they are passionate about for good pay. In other words, allowing them to break free from 9–5 to work on open source projects that matter.
On the Other hand, it also allows funders to contribute to an open-source or public goods project they are interested in. The size of the contribution can be as low as $1. Funders get incentified with Airdrops in the native tokens $GTC. In the last airdrop conducted some users of the platform got to the tune of $100K. The project runs a Grant series to accept donations. The current grant phase is 10.
To participate Set up your Bitcoin Account
- Create a Gitcoin account:
2. Create or connect via a GitHub account
How to improve your Profile Trust
https://gitcoin.co/profile/trust
1. Get a github.com account and look for followers
2. Login into gitcoin.co account with your GitHub account
3. Connect your eth wallet
4. Verify the following account in gitcoin.co
a. BrightId
b. POAP
c. TWITTER
d. Google account
After all these steps, you get 150% verification which makes your account a qualified human for a better and rewarding user experience.
As we wrap up we have considered how the gig economy is been disrupted by Decentralised Automised organisations helping gigs to be better motivated, through better remuneration, flexible working conditions, community participation etc. Thereby creating an optimised model that is democratised, adaptable and scalable.
Further Readings
https://cryptograph.co/Cryptograph/Vitalik-Buterin-Quadratic-Funding
