LaborX is live – try out our flagship on-demand employment platform!

The trend towards remote working was well under way even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, but it has now become the norm for a large section of the population. More people than ever before are in a position where they need to find freelance or remote work opportunities.

With the launch of LaborX, we plan to provide a valuable addition to the on-demand employment sector – providing customers and freelancers with a range of powerful blockchain-based tools for posting and accepting jobs, and making and accepting low-friction, instant payments in crypto.

Employment on the blockchain

We’ve worked hard to make sure LaborX’s interface is as good as other remote work and freelancer platforms. It’s easy to log in – including using different social media accounts – fill out your profile pages and add relevant qualifications and experience. And browsing for jobs or freelancers is straightforward, thanks to the search function.

But under the surface, LaborX is powered by smart contracts hosted on the Ethereum blockchain. That enables us to build a number of tools and safeguards to improve user security and trust, as well as reducing unnecessary costs and increasing reliability.

The Contract module, which forms the core of the platform, allows customers and freelancers to organise work agreements with a digital contract. This can include key milestones and part-payments for work along the way, if required. And, while fiat-equivalent payments are set in these contracts, settlement takes place in ETH to ensure fast, low-cost and borderless transactions. Moreover, funds are escrowed when the contract is signed, so there’s no scope for the customer to disappear without paying

Reputation and Dispute Resolution modules

Two other modules provide particular safeguards for users, since the decentralised paradigm for LaborX requires a different approach to traditional jobs sites.

We have implemented a basic version of the Reputation module, which creates a decentralised rating for each user based on feedback from previous jobs and other key criteria, including blockchain transactions associated with completed work. This gives customers and freelancers a good sense of how trustworthy other parties are. It’s not possible to delete your account and start again from scratch, gaming the system to fake a good reputation (a major problem with centralised freelancer sites).

Secondly, the Dispute Resolution module enables users to reach a solution in the case of disagreements about work that has been completed. We have also launched an initial version of this, which we will iterate in future releases.

Thank you and good luck!

We want to thank our community for supporting us this far, and wish you all the best as you look for work at what we are all experiencing as a very challenging time. With the social distancing measures and economic downturn prompted by the coronavirus outbreak, we know that many people are looking for new sources of income.

We will be refining the platform and implementing additional functionality in the coming months. Meanwhile, we hope that LaborX will already prove a valuable resource to those who need it. Stay safe, and we wish you every success in your freelancing career!