HandShake

Inspiration

We have friends who do freelance work. They want to find freelance jobs to earn extra income, especially in the current Covid-19 situation. However, there is no guarantee that they will be paid in full when the job is finished. Therefore, they are often quite stressed during their work. As developers, we always want to bring technology to life to make it better. We were inspired to create a social network using Blockchain technology for users when there is a need to connect freelance work. This project is really built with a lot of love and motivation to help others, especially our friends, whenever having problems related to freelance work.

What it does

HandShake is a Freelancer Social Media where employers and freelancers can connect and have their own contracts to protect their interests using the escrow mechanism on the ICON network.

What sets HandShake apart from other sites is transparency and consistency. Commitment is created by making a deposit. Thanks to the application of the escrow mechanism on the ICON network, the parties can track the entire progress of the contract, such as the salary, deposit and stages of the contract.

HandShake also has a rating for both freelancers and employers so that both parties can get to know each other before signing a contract.

Target users

The object here consists of 2 components:

Employers in small/ short-term contracts.
Individual freelancers who have less benefits protection on their work all around the world.

When there is any need related to short-term work, freelancers and employers can use this platform to connect jobs with each other.

The basic flow

Both Employer and Freelancer have to transfer the amount of ICX to the contract when they decide to join the contract by signing their signatures.
Employer’s salary will be sent to Freelancer and Freelancer’s deposit will be refunded back automatically by SC when both sides have done their work and all agree with the result. At that point, the contract ends.

Working principle

The motivation for users to use this platform is: If you don’t cheat/hack/scam and follow the contract closely as your roles (employer/freelancer), you’ll get exactly what you want:

Employer: design/ file,...are collectively referred to as work results.
Freelancer: money/ salary.

Otherwise, your deposit and performance might be locked until the contract conflict has been solved by other mechanisms.

Limitations

Freelancers are charged 1% of salary. With other social networks they may not deduct any fee.
The value of ICX coin fluctuates over time and has a very large margin. Therefore, it is best suited for short-term contracts (lasting 1-2 weeks). With long-term contracts, this ICX salary control will be more difficult.

How can the platform make money?

Although HandShake is just a platform to connect jobs. But it also has the characteristics of a social network and monetization platform.

Specifically, when wanting to use this platform, the employer needs to put the entire salary as a deposit, and the freelancers will also make a deposit according to the agreement with the employer. After completing the contract, the freelancer will be refunded the deposit fee and receive the full salary after deducting 1% of the fee. 1% is the amount charged on each contract.

In the future, by calculating the deposit of all contracts and their deadlines, we can take advantage of these available deposits while the contract is in process for investment channels.

Mission

Create a great freelancer job ecosystem with trust in the quality of work as well as transparency in salary.

Vision

A world of work where people come together to exchange work in mutual trust.

How we built it

We know about the contest through Devera's fanpage. At first, due to limited human resources, we could not arrange to participate. But it's great that the Devera Blockathon is extended for 1 month. At that time, by chance we came up with an idea when we noticed that more and more people wanted to become freelancers, but they had trouble finding a safe job. We have always thought that technology can make life better, which motivated us to do it now.

Starting with brainstorming, our team has been developing since the beginning of January 2022 with 3 members. In just a short time, although we have maintained a full-time job with limited human resources, we have been trying to build and develop Handshake.

As the limitation above, we planned to have a minimum working demo for HandShake in 3 weeks:

First week:

Prepare for The sketch.
Design: We came up with a UI design idea. The icon of the HandShake is inspired by the shaking hands. It is a form of body language communication. It shows welcome, creates esteem and trust for those who come into contact with them. That's exactly what we wanted when we created the HandShake: to create a social platform for people to work collaboratively and trust each other. Besides, the UI layout design was inspired by the file bag - the tool that contains all the work information: notes, tags, papers, as well as contracts. It is especially necessary and important data for the two sides to track each other's working process.
Make the Front-end site/ do Back-end logic, and prepare a draft doc parallelly. We have a team of three and each person will be in charge of one of these tasks.

Second week: Integrate Front-end with Back-end.

Third week: Deploy HandShake to a public host. Then, record for a video demo and complete the final document.

For HandShake, we use Hana wallet to keep our private keys and interact with the ICON network by icon-sdk-js.

We hope that Handshake will be further improved in the near future.

HandShake guideline

A collection of tools and tutorials to help simplify the creation process for our users. Through this, you can also understand more about HandShake.

You can read HandShake Guideline for more information.

Challenges we ran into

We’ve heard about Hana wallet before but found nothing about its document. Luckily, we gave it a try to the ICONex wallet API set and it worked for Hana as well. Besides, we were a bit confused when we first worked with icon-sdk-js as well as smart contract on the ICON network. However, with some searching and trying many things, we found the implementation for our project.

Another challenge is the lack of time. With that said, we started the project by chance so there was very little time to finish it. To overcome this, we took advantage of overtime in the evening after work and shared the work together to complete the project in the best way on time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Along the way, we learned how to how to integrate Hana wallet, build and deploy smart contract on ICON Network and gather information from ICON tracker.

We are very proud to have accomplished our goal of creating a social media that connects work for freelancers. Although we have faced some problems these days, we have overcome all of them. All of these milestones made us very proud because we started creating a platform that could really help people.

What we learned

During the development of this project, we learned a lot. We know how to develop an ICON smart contract. Above all, we learned how to work as a team. Get together with our teammates every few days, Agile style, see what progress has been made and if anyone needs help.

What's next for HandShake

Long-term HandShake will be sustained by adding:

Additional valuable utility to HandShake: Divided by industry, salary range, city, ... for users to search conveniently.
Market expansion: Initially the platform will only be used to connect work on Handshake. However, we have ambitions to improve and integrate Handshake into other job sites that are already available globally. Those are websites that already have traffic. People can find jobs and combine using our platform to create contracts.
Accessibility improvements: Free version for users. Thus, with this free version, customers only need to make a deposit. After completing the contract, the system will no longer charge freelancers. To do this, we aim to use the deposit to invest in order to earn profits and bring back to maintain the platform. We will no longer charge user fees, so that freelancers receive full salary.

In the future, we hope to eventually reach a point where everyone can use Hana wallet proficiently, understand more about the escrow mechanism when entering a contract, and we can start helping people in everywhere.

Thank you

We would like to thank a friend who put the initial idea to our HandShake. Thanks to the HandShake members for working on this idea together, as the Handshake is a result of an amazing and unique cooperative spirit. And send thank you to all our friends and supporters.

To the organizers of Devera Blockathon Competition, we would like to express our gratitude for the opportunity to take part in the competition and for the perfectly organized event. Hope ICON will organize many meaningful activities in the future.

Many thanks and regards!