Please describe your proposed solution.
Our proposed solution addresses a persistent issue in the remote work landscape: disputes arising from direct work contracts between organizations and remote developers. Problems often surface as delayed payments or incomplete deliverables. This issue has significant implications, as a survey by the Independent Economy Council shows that 74% of respondents experienced delayed payments, and 59% are owed $50,000 or more for completed work.
Currently, escrow services offer a buffer to these issues, securing payment and protecting both remote developers and hiring organizations. However, these centralized services, such as Fiverr, tend to be expensive, with commission fees reaching up to 25%, and maintain total control over the dispute resolution process. Our unique approach challenges this status quo by decentralizing escrow services, thereby reducing costs and ensuring a fair dispute settlement process.
Socious will significantly impact two primary stakeholders: remote developers and hiring organizations. The platform's design encompasses three core benefits:
1. Decentralized decision-making: Socious champions community-wide decision-making, utilizing on-chain governance processes and its unique "Socious Experts Certificates". These credentials, issued only to individuals with an impact score above 700, are non-transferable, ensuring that governance power is widespread and held by informed decision-makers. The Socious Experts become the decision-makers in dispute resolution, motivated to make impartial and fair decisions due to their active involvement in the Socious platform.
Every "Socious Expert Certificate" serves as a dynamic record of a user's passions and proficiency in distinct social and environmental issues, tailored by their actions within the Socious app. The certificate's influence, in terms of voting power, is calibrated according to the user's interests and proficiency relevant to the matter at hand. To illustrate, if a vote is required to allocate treasury funds for an open-source project aimed at combatting climate change, the ballots of Socious Experts who have invested their resources - time, expertise, and finances - into environmental projects would be given proportional weightage.
The role of Socious Experts extends to mediating dispute resolutions between organizations and their contracted remote developers. Unlike centralized platforms, where decision-making rests with the platform owners, potentially raising concerns of censorship and bias, Socious ensures democratic decision-making facilitated by a selected panel of three Socious Experts. In a scenario where a developer has completed their assignment and provided the code, but the hiring organization disputes the completion and withholds the escrow funds, the developer has the opportunity to submit a dispute. An agreement by both parties to disclose specific information to a panel of three Socious Experts helps facilitate the process. To initiate a dispute, each party stakes a designated quantity of tokens as dispute settlement fees. The party whose claim is upheld will receive their staked tokens along with the refund/payment, whereas the unsuccessful party forfeits their staked tokens, which will be awarded to the adjudicating experts.
The Socious Expert status is exclusively available to individuals demonstrating active use and contributions to the Socious platform, inherently instilling a commitment to fair and unbiased decisions. This prerequisite ensures a network of trusted experts working towards the collective good of the platform and its users.
2. Automated payment: Socious' decentralized escrow mechanism includes an automated payment system implemented via smart contracts. The agreed-upon amount is transferred to an escrow wallet once the project status turns to “hired”. The organization can't move the asset, and upon project completion, the funds automatically transfer to the freelancer. If a project is canceled, the funds are automatically returned to the organization.
3. Cheaper fees: The use of blockchain technology for payments eliminates third-party fees often seen on centralized platforms. Also, community members handle dispute resolution, significantly reducing the operational cost associated with it. While centralized platforms charge 25%, Socious only charges 7%*.
This solution is uniquely relevant to Cardano, as it leverages the power of blockchain to build a community-oriented platform. It aligns with Cardano's commitment to developing decentralized solutions and fostering innovation in the industry.
As the escrow mechanism project has already been successfully funded and completed in the Catalyst Fund 9 Developer Ecosystem Challenge, our focus now lies in decentralizing the dispute resolution process, thereby allowing community members to make decisions rather than the central Socious team. The aim is to create an ecosystem that genuinely values and implements community decision-making. Our solution's impact will be demonstrable by the increased resolution of disputes and the cost-effective, streamlined experience for both hiring organizations and remote developers.
The escrow smart contracts have been developed and deployed to Mainnet. You can find the open-source smart contracts here: <https://github.com/socious-io/socious-smart-contracts/blob/main/contracts/Escrow.sol>.
To see a product demo, click here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sY-AF3DPxq6fiVHVN2kw_qP1xB72Eog7/view?usp=sharing
For step-by-step tutorials, visit: <https://socious.notion.site/Socious-Mastery-Guide-ae3745be82ad4845b6e1521694fa5ed8?pvs=4>
If you would like to test the escrow smart contracts, please follow these instructions: <https://socious.notion.site/Socious-Step-by-step-Guide-for-Beta-Testers-b0da1432dd254888a6438fdbb3bebe6f?pvs=4>
For verified impact organizations. To see the details of pricing information visit: <https://socious.io/fees>