BlockTalks x WorkQuest AMA Transcript!
Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted an AMA with WorkQuest, on March 14th at 03.00 PM UTC. Many of you might have participated or many of not. But we make sure no one missed out from the knowledge shared by Andrii Kotsur, Founder & CEO at WorkQuest, so here we are up with the AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this blog post will be a saver & feeder of knowledge for them.
Introduction Questions Asked By Team BlockTalks
Q1. Could you please introduce Work Quest to our community in layman’s term?
Ans — To start with, Work Quest is the online Marketplace and decentralized Payment Provider connecting employers with employees anywhere in the world powered by Smart Contracts governed by DAO.
The platform incentivizes employers and employees to deal honestly and prudently using its Rating System with all the feedback is stored in a blockchain. As platforms act as a facilitator of transactions between employer and the employee, different DeFi products available for platform participants, such as Savings, Retirement & Disability Insurance.
The main features of the platform includes running employment agreements on smart contracts, eliminating the middleman; running organization using DAO principles and allow DeFi features for all the participants on the platform (e.g. Insurance fund).
Q2. What are the advantages of Work Quest to other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
Ans — That’s very good question, indeed. So first of all, comparing to other blockchain projects, we really utilize function of blockchain and especially smart contract which is the main technology behind our platform to address the main problem currently between emploer and the worker — trust problem.
From the traditional industry competitors like freelance exchanges, we do not see real competition, because they are all centralized and old school. In the world of Web3.0 and Industry 4.0, there will be no place for centralized parties.
To sum up, we have our unique product and vision and we do not want to compare ourselves with other industry players — there is always place for the new technology and user segment in the market.
Our plan is simple — we want to develop fully trustless platform with simple UI (employers and employees should not really know how blockchain works to use our platform). Then we will be able to run our first pilots with our friendly employment agencies and then people will see how it simple and bulletproof. Only after these stages we will start normal B2B and B2C marketing campaigns to enrich our userbase.
Regarding the benefits for the employers and the employees there are number of them. Let’s focus on the main benefit which is trust. You can not disagree with me that the main disappointment is when employer or the employee completed their part of the deal and have not received the payment.
For other benefits, we allow our users to participate in DeFi activities and pools so they can increase their earned funds through number of pools and staking activities.
So to sum up for the benefits part for the employers:
1) Trustless system — if you paid for the work and it was not done well, your money is protected.
2) Smart matching. Employers will find best candidates in the market, because we use a lot of data points and these data points are relied on open rating and secured reviews system.
For employees;
1) They will always receive payment if they done their job in a good way
2) They can increase earned funds by participating in DeFi activities
3) They can protect themselves from the insurance disability fund
Q3. What are the major milestones Work Quest achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?
Ans — I will answer from the product point of view as it’s my favorite and most important part in this project:
Achieved: Customer Development has been made and all the critical requirements from the employers and employees have been collected to justify the platform development. This actually means that we utilized our real on the ground experience in the recruiting field, collected feedback on the customer interviews and developed current “simple concept”. We have also developed the whole User Journey which you can find in our Whitepaper and our website and right now working on prototype finalization which will be available on the web very soon (matter of next weeks).
Regarding our goals for short term and long term:
Short term: Proven PoC with all main features released enough to start testing pilots with recruiting agencies
Long term: Working platform with a lot of data points such as ratinsg, reviews and agreements run on smart contracts
As I’ve mentioned earlier, User Journey for regular recruiters and Project leaders is very important, because they should not have any difficulties, otherwise they will choose current non blockchain solution. It takes time to think through all the little details!
We want to make such a user journey so people will not “face” scary blockchain in any way. They will just push buttons, however they will be protected through smart contract
Questions Asked on Twitter For WorkQuest Team!
Q1. The legal regulations of the countries can differ according to each other. How does Work Quest plan to overcome these legal challenges in order to provide a flawless infrastructure service?
Ans — So first of all, I’d like to highlight that there are already a lot of people and companies who settle between each other directly in crypto and governments can not fight with it by force. Just imagine how many people already doing their job and got settle in USDT directly to their wallet. This is our step 0. So we start focusing only on current companies and contractors which are payable in USDT already. Then, of course, you can find in our Roadmap expansion in many countries legally, especially in USA.
We also have established company and crypto exchange licenses in Estonia, which allows us to operate freely in European market. Also, just to be clear, we do not very dependent from jurisdictions and governments as we will not need to open bank accounts in each of the countries. Most card withdrawals will be done by local PSPs, acquiring companies, and payment providers.
Q2. Choosing and hiring someone online is very complicated. As a company, I definitely want the best job seeker recruitment results, with talent, responsibility and trust. How does Work Quest ensure that job seekers are truly trustworthy and responsible? Regardless of the curriculum, can I meet my employees through (KYC)?
Ans — Thank you for this question, this is extremely important both for freelancers and for employers.
First of all, we are collecting a lot of datapoints in our platform. We will use ML algorythms to find best and bad actors.
At the same time there will be KYC function integrated with one of our partners (possibly Sum & Substance). We do not think that this should be must function because people can build their decentralized reputation and keep their anonimus profile.
I mean, if you do not want to disclose your personality, but you have a lot of good feedback and good rating, why not?
Q3. How efficient the review system going to be on WorkQuest platform, there can be manipulation! have you thought of adding UTU Protocol for the review?
Ans — First of all, we are fully decentralized. That means that we will not do any forks or data replacement if there will be malicious data, we will just mark that this is a malicious data.
This is why we will be first validators of the platform before full DAO transition. We will see patterns and learn how to detect bad actors. However, we believe that since majority of employers will look for the workers who passed KYC, cost of risk playing malicious data game is big for the potential workers since we will ban them forever (We will easily identify them since we will have their KYC profiles).
Also do not forget that we will manage the UI, so we can blacklist some users.
Same as black bitcoins currently marked as a “black bitcoins»
Q4. Another important feature of the WorkQuest Platform is the ability of employees to create a retirement savings plan. So how can employees get involved in this plan? Also, will they be able to leave whenever they want?
Ans — After completion of the work, each user of the platform can use the retirement accumulation program, where he chooses a percentage of the sum, which will be automatically deposited to his savings account with interest rate.
We will combine staking efforts here with flexible savings rate. Retirement is really important and we will always educate and remind our users that it’s probably not a good idea always to spend 100% of the earned funds. What will happen when they’ll not be able to do their job?
Regarding the full list of Terms & Conditions we will issue them after the platform launch. This is important feature, but it’s not critical. And of course we will consult with our users because we’re building product for them!
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to WorkQuest Team!!
Q1. Could you please tell me just a little more about the team and some of their backgrounds? I have personally seen many projects launch with inexperienced team members, and some of those didn’t go so well due to easily avoidable mistakes.
Ans — Andrii Kotsur
Founder&CEO
Andrii’s expertise and experience include knowledge of digital currency, how to manage a highly skilled team, building relationships, and driving the company forward. Founder and main ideologue of the project concept. Andrii founded and managed an employment agency in various European countries. Where he got a clear understanding of the difficulties people face in finding a job. This is what inspired him the creation of the Work Quest project, a platform that will make the hiring process quick and easy. At the same time that this process was cheap and completely decentralized. Andrii also has experience in developing IT products and participated in the implementation of IT products for companies in the role of creating and managing a team of developers.
Seshu B Kanuri
Chief Information Officer
Seshu is a tech professional and business strategist with strong experience Banking, Financial Services and Insurance. Established the core solutions methodology and data architecture functions at Paypal, Citibank, BofA, California State Fund, Chase, Morgan Stanley, Discover Financial Services, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and many more. Seshu is an Angel Investor and a serial entrepreneur based in silicon valley with many successful exits. Currently the Co-founder and CEO of netweb Group, Inc., owns pay2mate.com and deepiotics.com an AI company.
Alexandr Khozhanov
Chief Technical Advisor
Alex is a Tech Entrepreneur with experience in Blockchain for more than 4 years. He founded a Crypton Studio — blockchain development company, consulted and advised several startups, companies that want to use blockchain in their projects.
Amim Baradaran
Advisor
President of “Attis group”. He promotes the Company’s initiatives and projects globally, cooperates with large international investment structures and business communities, big oil and gas market players, and provides complex worldwide oil products trade transactions with high efficiency and reliability. His long-term and successful experience in implementing the most ambitious projects with multi-million investments allows the Company to implement its strategic objectives.
Lovska Myroslav
Chief project designer
Experience in graphic design, UI/UX, Branding, marketing strategy, Marketing research, communications and Social Media advertising.
Myroslav skilled at managing social innovation and product development initiatives across both brick-and-mortar establishments and electronic platforms.
Q2. Getting a job is always a difficult task and even more so when you have just graduated and have no experience, how WorkQuest helps those users with no experience to find a job?
Ans — We will have smart search, so employers who do not need really experienced workers will see all the people with no experience (smart matching based on data points and search request)
Q3. Smart contracts are prone to bugs, How efficient and secure is your smart contract. Have you ever been audited through external parties, so we are sure that this project is safe and good for the future of investors?
Ans — Great question. We will definitely audit our smart contracts when they will be finalized, as I mentioned earlier we still in the concept development process
Q4. Could you give me 2 or 3 key points to convince me and other angel investors invest in #workquest project for the long-term?
Ans — 1 Real use of blockchain and smart contracts
2 Huge market which is growing globally (you can check our medium articles)
3 Early bid as we have lowest valuation as of now
Q5. Nowdays So many Rug Pulls and exit scam happening . How Users can trust #workquest project and how you are different from others?
Ans — We will put part of the raised funds into the liquidity pool and we will develop our project step by step keeping actively communicating with our community and making solid partnerships.
Q6. do you say that Work Quest is Ultimate Online Job MarketPlace as a worker or freenlacer can have a tokenized monetization through decentralization and online work?
Ans — Great question, I think you win in terms of # of buzzwords in 1 sentence :D
We’re eliminating middlemen and increasing trust both for workers and employers. But I can say as you like :)
Q7. i want to know about your DAO voting system. will every token holders can vote? or any special criteria for it? can u explain it detail?
Ans — We will soon release a detailed article with DAO principles in the first version will be applied. They will also be subject to change, as we will release our product steadily, gathering feedback from our users
Q8. Explain your plans on global expansion,
Q1) is it only market you are focusing All the time?
Q2) Or you focus on building or developing and getting customers and users, or partnerships?
Ans — For me globalization is about having more users both workers and employers from different countries (Going to USA market for example is acquiring more employers from USA which will bring more local workers)
Q9. Ethereum gas costs are really high but for example binance smart chain gas prices are so small and it is faster. In the future can you implemented bsc?
Ans — We are considering BSC for the token, however in the future, we are not dependent from the Ethereum or Binance as we will need to develop our own blockchain (based on Cosmos SDK — you can read about it in our whitepaper)
Q10. Most DeFi projects especially those ones offering yield farming are driven up by hype and scarcity, so when the hype dies the project dies. What’s the key to sustaining Your Project yield farming ?
Ans — That’s why we’re not chasing big valuation and focusing on real market and product.
Here are some important links of WorQuest👇
🌎 Website: https://workquest.co/
📱Twitter: https://twitter.com/workquest_co
📢 Telegram: https://t.me/WorkQuest
