In a survey done in Q3 2017, 69 percent of gig workers admitted that they wouldn’t opt for a full-time job against the gig they were involved in. This was a up from 65 percent as registered in Q2 2017.The world is changing and in this new age everything from ordering food to ordering taxis to booking hotels are just a click away. A new economy called gig/sharing economy has emerged in its wake and it is said that by 2027 more than 58% of the USA population would be a part of this economy. Visit any of the beach destinations and you will find the new age ‘Digital Nomads’ furiously typing away on their keyboards giving little or no attention to the women or men around. Internet has become a must for cafes and ‘surf’ and ‘turf’ has been replaced by ‘work’ and ‘surf’.
While most of us who work in the real world secured jobs envy these freelancers, these freelancers often face a different kind of problem. With growing numbers, these people often have to face exploitation in the hands of the middle vendors that they solely depend on for work. The freelancers have little or no protection and it is seen that governments in a few nations like France have been coming down hard on these host platforms.
Till now workers have faced a lot of problems but the major ones being high commission rates (20-50%), expensive marketing and advertising costs(google/Facebook/AdWords are extremely expensive from a freelancer point of view) and lack of security(get paid as long as you are employed). Unfortunately, the freelancers have to depend on tech giants and other hosts for work which fully understand the need, and often exploit the fact that there is a pool of skills willing to do a particular job for as little as a beer in a local café. While these legally hired independent contractors all fully understand the exploitation, they often succumb to it for a simple reason, supply is greater than the demand.
Till now no one had thought of a solution or to protect the interests of these workers, but things are about to change. The Blue Whale Foundation’s has come up with a blockchain-based “WORK” (Worker Optimized Reward Keeper) System of smart contracts. Not only it promises to eliminate the problems being faced by the workers but also aims at dislodging the power from the hands of the few tech giants who command the maximum power in the gig /sharing market.
To solve these very three problems blue whale has come up with –
Contribution Activity Manager or CAM that has been specifically designed not only to distribute the rewards earned via contribution but also take care of user specific activities like referral, lead generation, curation , verification , Arbitration and Reputation
The second is the Decentralized Associated Network ( DAN ) that collects data from online traffic similar to media giants like Facebook and google however its main purpose is to build a decentralized advertising network as a business model for Blue whale network ( details of it can be read at Pg. 17,
https://www.bluewhale.foundation/assets/Bluewhale_White_Paper_ENG_V.pdf)
The third and most important of them all in the authors view is Rewards Bank or Reba where the Blue whale network shall keep 20% of its initial coin offering and 60% of the net profits coming from freelancers as a fund to take on activities such as pensions, paid leaves , sick leaves . In case the coffers deplete then the network will issue new coins based on consensus.
What Blue whale network is wanting to achieve is phenomenal but to succeed it needs to gain trust amongst its peers alike. Blue whale believes that block chain is a solution for that where transparency will automatically help in building the trust. Once freelancers understand trust will automatically come of course stringent security measures have been put forth to secure Reba that forms the backbone of the blue whale network Work program .
The Blue whale token sale begins on 24th May with initial coin pegged at .0010 $ it is going to grow from there . More information can be found at
https://www.bluewhale.foundation/ .
