Low fees happen when you have a user-owned, decentralized network: a community with a shared incentive to solve your problems.
Other marketplaces try to extract value from you, taking as much as 20 to 40 percent of your revenue in fees. Braintrust tries to give value, by eliminating the middlemen so it can charge zero fees on talent — while also handing them ownership of the network you make your living on through the BTRST token.
SKALE is trying to rid the world of extractive fees too that unnecessarily dampen innovation and suppress demand. And, just like Braintrust, it’s doing so by creating real world applications for crypto.
Join the Braintrust + SKALE AMA hosted by Braintrust Co-founder, Adam Jackson and SKALE founder, Jack O’Holleran on Thursday, October 7 at 10am PT. Register here.
Eliminating the middleman (traditionally, banks) has always been a core selling point of using blockchain technology to facilitate financial transactions. The original Bitcoin whitepaper spelled this out clearly, with Satoshi Nakamoto writing that “the cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size.”
Unfortunately, blockchain networks haven’t quite eliminated transaction costs yet. In particular, Ethereum gas fees — the price crypto miners charge for facilitating on-chain transactions — have been volatile, often skyrocketing overnight.
The reason is simple supply and demand. As interest in and trading of Ethereum has skyrocketed, the transaction highway has gotten congested. Because miners can choose which transactions to validate, they prioritize higher-paying transactions, leading fees to spike when there is more activity.
The Ethereum network is currently built as a Proof of Work (POW) system, which also raises fees because it requires miners to sell their coins to validate transactions, requiring much more energy. Ethereum 2.0 is expected to shift to a lower-energy, lower-cost Proof of Stake system, but isn’t estimated to go live until well into 2022.
SKALE drastically reduces gas fees by providing a gasless, subscription-based decentralized network of Ethereum-compatible elastic side chains.
We all know that there is talent everywhere, but that talent often doesn’t get the chance to realize its full potential due to a lack of opportunity. And far too often, a zip code becomes a destiny.
Eliminating fees helps even the playing field for talent, no matter where they live. The network is able to transcend borders by connecting jobs from hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies with thousands of Talent, with 50% based in over 100 countries outside the United States.
By using the token and blockchain technology, Braintrust is able to programmatically distribute ownership and control to those who contribute to its growth in a fully permissionless way.
BTRST is Braintrust’s method of distributing governance, with each token representing one vote on the future of the network, and is primarily earned by building the network through referring clients and inviting and vetting new talent.
That incentive structure creates a powerful reward flywheel, one in which users are encouraged to build the network because it gives them more say over the future of the network — especially since connectors can earn 1% of the talent they refer to the network’s earnings in BTRST tokens.
Unlike Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies, the token isn’t a mere store of value. BTRST’s primary purpose is to empower users, who, in addition to being able to vote on key network decisions, are also able to access free or discounted software, products, career resources and other community perks.
The token also has practical uses for both talent and clients hoping to stand out in the Braintrust marketplace.
Talent can make their job proposals more attractive by staking BTRST tokens as collateral, which they could lose if they fail to fulfill the terms of their contract effectively, showing their seriousness.
Clients can also make their job offers more attractive by staking BTRST tokens, which would be distributed equally to all applicants if the client receives a qualified candidate but does not go through with the job order anyway — assuring talent that they will be compensated for the time it took to submit their proposal.