TalentLayer: Infrastructure for open labor markets

TalentLayer is an interoperable backend and reputation layer for freelancing. TalentLayer Indie is a tool that allows freelancers and their clients to review each other and growing their reputation.

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Inspiration

Verifiable work is the bedrock of reputation. This is why you have the strongest reputations with people you have worked with directly or with a few degrees of separation; it is easy to find people to attest that you have the ability to deliver - they’ve seen you do it or know the person who’s seen you do it. Unfortunately, these sorts of reputations don’t scale beyond Dunbar’s Number.

This is also why freelancing platforms have been able to create such powerful reputation networks; reputations are based on almost exclusively verifiable work that has been done within the platform ecosystem. The platform itself becomes the attester that you have delivered work - because people trust the platform, these reputations are more scaleable, but also more vulnerable. At the will of a company’s internal policy change, your work reputation can be obliterated from existence.

Is it possible to scale reputation past Dunbar’s number without a middleman? How can we prove without a doubt that work has been done, in a way that is universally recognized?

The solution to this issue involves a paradigm shift in how we treat work reputation.

TalentLayer proposes a new way of treating work identity, based on self-sovereign ownership of reputation and interoperability. TalentLayer is composable, decentralized, open-source infrastructure for talent markets; allowing anyone to easily build interoperable gig marketplaces. TalentLayer will function as an interoperability layer that allows you to grow one reputation by completing work on many job platforms.

TalentLayer Indie is the first tool built on TalentLayer; a reputation tool for independent freelancers and their clients. TalentLayer Indie allows two parties to agree on the terms of a job and leave mutual reviews for one another after work is complete; growing each party's reputation similar to how they would on freelancing marketplaces.

What it does

TalentLayer Indie is a reputation tool for independent freelancers. Similar to how you can build up a reputation over time by completing work and receiving reviews on freelancing platforms like Upwork or Freelancer.com, now you and your independent clients can create verified reviews to signal one another’s trustworthiness.

On TalentLayer Indie, you can... Create Your Soul-Bound Identity Your TalentLayer ID is the core of your identity when interacting with TalentLayer-integrated marketplaces and freelancing tools. Your TalentLayer ID is associated with reviews that people you have worked with leave for you, and represents your overall, work-based reputation in the ecosystem.

Optionally, you associate a Proof of Humanity identity with your TalentLayer ID via a verification step. This allows you to qualify for the emergency recovery feature.

TalentLayer IDs are soul-bound ERC-721 NFTs. They can not be moved from your original wallet unless you qualify for emergency recovery.

Set up your ID

  1. Connect Wallet: Visit the and click “Connect Wallet” in the top right corner.
  2. Connect Proof of Humanity (Optional): Associate your Proof of Humanity identity to your 3. TalentLayer ID. This step is necessary to participate in emergency account recovery.
  3. Choose Your Handle: Check if a handle is available. Choose your handle.
  4. Create Your ID: Confirm the creation of your ID and pay a transaction fee.
  5. Save Your Recovery Password: If you have associated a Proof of Humanity ID to your account, you will receive a recovery password. Store this password in a safe place!

Create or Agree To a Job Create a job

  1. Visit Admin Center: Log into TalentLayer Indie, and go to the Admin Center.
  2. Create Job: Use the Job Creation Form to input Job Title, Job Description, Keywords, whether you are hiring or being hired, and the TalentLayer ID Handle of the counter-party.
  3. Counter-party Accepts Job: The counter-party that you invite to the job will now be able to view the new job invite in their Admin Center by clicking the View New Jobs button. They can accept or reject the job invite. If they reject the job invite, the job is invalidated.

Good to know: TalentLayer Indie does not offer payment remittance facilitation or verification at this point. TalentLayer Beta will include an escrow system, nativly integrated with the TalentLayer Identity System.

Post Mutual Reviews Initiate a review

  1. Select a Job: Log into TalentLayer Indie, and go to the Admin Center. Click “Initiate a New Review”.
  2. Initiate a Review: Using the Initiate New Review form, you can input a Rating, Review, and the Transaction associated with the job that was completed.
  3. Counter-party Settles Review: The counter-party that on the job will now be able to view the new review invite in their Admin Center by clicking the View Pending Reviews button. They can leave a review for you.

Emergency Recover Your Identity Account recovery allows you to request that your TalentLayer ID be associated with a new wallet, and verify that you own the new wallet via a cryptographic proof.

In order to initiate a TalentLayer ID recovery, you will need to have three things:

  • Your TalentLayer ID handle
  • The original wallet address you minted your ID into
  • The Recovery Password that was provided to you when you created your TalentLayer Id.

If you do not have access to your Recovery Password, there is unfortunately not any way to recover your TalentLayer ID.

Good to know: Currently, TalentLayer ID recovery is only possible for users who associate a Proof of Humanity identity with their TalentLayer ID during account creation.

How we built it

The Graph Solidity: We have 3 smart contracts deployed, one for job creation, one for ID creation, and one for reputation NFT minting Frontend DAPP

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a full and useable DAPP for crypto-freelancers to agree to jobs, leave reviews, and view other people's reputations.

What's next for TalentLayer

Next, we'll move on to building other components necessary for TalentLayer Alpha, including our escrow system and dispute system (built on Kleros), and expanding our decentralized jobs repository. We'll be getting TalentLayer ready for the first full marketplaces to build on it.

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