Blok (BLK) will try and revolutionizing the global on-demand workforce through blockchain.
Opportunity
The market opportunity that Blok is trying to explore is in the gig economy. As you know, more people are working independently than ever. In fact, more than 160 million people are working independently. Additionally, for every 6 people that work in the normal 9 to 5 schedule want to become independent by joining the gig economy.
Gig Economy
So, what is the gig economy?
The gig economy is referring to temporary work or temporary employment (also called oddjobs). This type of employment results in a working arrangement that is limited to a specific period of time that depend directly on the needs of the employer. In the gig economy employees are seen as freelancers because they do not have the benefits of tradition industries workers, such as healthcare, minimum wage, working hours and the potential to unionise. Basically, being employed in the gig economy means that the compensation that people receive comes from a single key performance indicator. For example, in the case of Uber the number of taxi lifts handled. However, there are advantages of course, such as the freedom that you get from working for yourself, which allows you to for example refuse to take an order.
Thus, this is what Blok is trying to tap on.
Solution
Blok's solution is to try and change the old workforce model. They want to create the so called Blokpreneurs, whom are the freelancers in the gig economy, and offer them the possibility to browse for work offered by gig economy companies, assign gigs to themselves, mark them as complete and get paid in BLK tokens.
Blok is planning to use smart contracts in order to eliminate friction regarding time, cost, quality, and transparency in matching workers and employers.
In a way, Blok wants to be the Upwork in the decentralized products world. They want to leverage the blockchain to create a transparent and trustworthy connection process, rather than a centralized one.
BLK Token
Let's have a look at the role of the BLK token. In essence, this token will be used to guarantee payments for successful gigs. Thus, it will be an utility token that will make sure that the payments will happen quicker than on traditional services such as Upwork or Fiverr and also guaranteeing that the given and received by the blokpreneurs represents actual business transactions.
They have chosen to build this decentralized product in the Ethereum blockchain, since they claim in their whitepaper that it's the most mature existing smart contract platform. However, they do leave the door open to migrate to NEO or EOS if the Ethereum team fails to meet its objectives to improve the scalability and throughput of the network.
That's all about Blok. In summary they want to leverage the blockchain and create the Blok platform, which will serve as a means to connect employers and freelancers in the new gig economy. By using the blockchain and smart contracts they will reduce the complexities of payments and guarantee trust and transparency between the people doing the transactions. Thus, they want to improve the efficiencies in the gig economy.
- Web: https://blok.network
- Whitepaper: https://blok.network/assets/blok-whitepaper.pdf
Let me know what you think about this product and as always, thank you for reading and I'll see you next time :)
#blok #revolutionizing #gig #economy #oddjobs #cryptocurrency #crypto #blockchain #decentralized #products #ico #market #business #strategy #technology #tech