This Stipend Update will be one of the longest and the team is considering doing a live stream in the upcoming week(next Sunday) to cover everything in this update in detail with a Live Q&A at the end.
Subscribe to the project Youtube channel so you don't miss this stream: https://bit.ly/3e9SO1N
1. Let’s Talk
As a team, we admit that we lacked both transparency and communication when it came to progress and internal struggles, but since the first day in the project we never considered abandoning the project and kept working on it even during the harshest days of the past years.
And before going any further I can’t stress enough that the team never made any money off the project and most of its members invested more than what they should have as we believe in the solution, the project but also the community. If you have any questions about the team expenses outside coin buyouts we are keeping an Excel spreadsheet detailing all the project expenses from listings, marketing to development…
And before going any forward I can’t stress enough that the team never made any money off the project and most of its members invested more than what they should have as we are believing in the solution, the project but also the community, if you have any questions about the team expenses outside coin buyouts we are keeping an Excel spreadsheet detailing all the project expenses from listings, marketing to development…
We hope that this update will clarify everything moving forward but also highlight everything (and there is ALOT) we’ve been doing since to push the next generation of freelancing and micro-service to the grand public, and to be clear no matter the situation we will finish the project whatever it takes, and we are glad many of the community members joined the team and started seeing things from our perspective both on the dev and listing/marketing side.
Thank you again for your support.
2. The Team
The team went through many changes since the last update and even if some core members left we ended up with many new members and hires.
— Who left :
Our old Blockchain dev “NickS” left the team without any notice after some months of inactivity we ended up struggling to fish for logins and details, even lost the Stipend Explorer code we worked on for months. In the process of things happening the project ended up gaining more than before and talented new devs joined the project.
— Who Joined :
We are lucky to count numerous talented members joining the team from Blockchain to Front End dev, pushing both the technological agenda and team performance overall.
Lead Smart Contract Dev
We are proud to announce that Youssef Elallali a Smart Contract developer specialist has officially joined the team, he worked as CTO on a number of B2B token networks and has shown interest in the project both as an early adopter but also as an advisor before now joining the team and contributing to the project as the Main Smart Contract Lead.
We can now focus on producing the Stipend Token Bridge & start working on the Stipend Enterprise Edition Smart Contract Layer Tools afterward.
I want to wish him a warm welcome, and thank him as we were missing Smart Contract expertise since the start of the project.
Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/youssef-el-allali-6978b053/
Community Manager & Listing Relations
We are proud to welcome Yuri to the team officially, as one of the most dedicated community members who believed in the project since day 1.
Yuri will be both in charge of the community management, listing relations, and team support.
Lead Blockchain Dev
We are glad to announce that Casey joined officially the Stipend Team as the main blockchain developer, he will also be advising on platform-related tasks and architecture.
We want welcome him and thank him for the support he showed towards the project and team.
Lead VueJs Dev
We are happy to announce that the VueJS & NodeJS positions have been filled by a full-time developer kicking the dev of the V1.0 and what comes next to be delivered faster, it’s something we as a community struggled a lot with, david987 was helping in his free time but between work and family, there isn’t much time he could put towards the project but his inputs were always very valuable, we take this opportunity to thank him and hope he can still find time to contribute to the project!
The dev is VueJS oriented and so far the introduction was very smooth.
Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zakaria-el-hialat-01b807155/
For a full list of the team, you can follow this link to the new website: https://bit.ly/3gRQ7n1
3. The Project Since
The Stipend project lacked funds after the IDAX Scam (10BTC paid in full) compared to other projects in the crypto space (ICO/IEO..) that rely on a deep pocket since day 1, the project needed funds not to pump the price or market but mostly backbone development, which the team was focusing on since day 1. So far the team skills cover most of the project needs, we did some seed funding prior to the covid situation in Milan(Italy) during the Feb of 2020 but you all know what happened a couple of days afterward. Investment talks are still ongoing with many institutions as we are dedicated to get Stipend onto the Seed investing run very soon.
The project also faced internal issues of members wanting financial results fast, and had to part ways with the team. But the main team members never considered at any moment abandoning the project and kept either trying to raise money to finish the platform or recruit new team members to help push the project further.
4. Freelance Market Study
During 2020 we did some market research to better push the use-case of the project. We were quite surprised as most of the known platforms bumped their commissions higher.
Buyer perspective :
a Fee of 10% is applied to the client the moment the order is paid :
Freelancer perspective :
a Flat Fee of 20% is applied to the Freelancer when the order is completed:
Amount received :
Amount of the order(not including client fee) :
To sum up :
Order amount: 400$
Client paid: 440$
We received: 320$Paypal commission : 16$(Paypal’s poor commission rate)
Time to receive funds (18 days so far and still counting)
Total Commission: 32% and from 2 to 12 Weeks to receive funds.
5. What Changed
The team was fully restructured with a better task distribution allowing for a better workflow and noticeable progress. We are also defining the scope of the project with achievable end goals we could reach in the upcoming years.
1. Stipend is a fully decentralized Freelance & Micro-services with blockchain geolocalisation capabilities.
2. Stipend Bridge will allow for wSPD(Wrapped SPD) to jump to any BEP20 or ERC20 compatible chain, both for easy Dex Listing and Smart contract interoperability.
3. Stipend Platform will allow companies to establish their own SmartChains on top of the EVM Blockchain Protocol of the Stipend Chain.
4. Stipend Invest will allow anyone holding funds in the platform to earn daily stakes from the network.
5. Stipend Referral system will be integrated since day 1, helping both in marketing and user acquisition (more details down below).
More things and details are planned but we are happy to hold a steady progress feed so far.
6. Website
We are happy to announce that the new Stipend website is online for over a month now, http://stipend.me as a first step towards the Platform V1.0 Marketing push.
The website still needs some updates as we go forward with the integration plans of the Stipend Freelance Platform, Stipend Invest Platform and Stipend Bridge, and EVM(Etherium Virtual Machine) integration in the Stipend Codebase.
Contact the team if you have any feedback about the website at: neal@stipend.me
7. Platform
Before listing anything related to the platform, I want to take a minute to thank David987 for his support and work whilst we were looking for new devs to integrate the team allowing us to have substantial progress since.
A large amount of work was done on the platform since the last update both on the Front End and the Back End, we still need a full refactor of the code and considering a database transfer as things are getting a bit bigger for the current infrastructure, but so far only positive things and progress to list :
Everything added below contains a Direct link to the platform to visit the feature.
Reworked Footer :
The footer of the platform was reorganized into multiple sections to better allow visibility and introduced new menus we didn’t have before, we also added a discord button and minor tweaks and details.
BEFORE
AFTER
Entreprise Edition Page :
A page for companies to apply to the Enterprise Edition Tools, as we are planning to release the first set of tools a couple of months after the V1.0 Release.
Platform Link: https://dev-platform.stipend.me/enterprise-edition
Referral System :
We wanted to build a referral system in the platform to both promote the project but also acquire new users.
Platform Link: https://dev-platform.stipend.me/referral-system
Referral Dashboard User (Unfinished FE):
One-stop to view everything related to the Referral system :
Platform Link: https://dev-platform.stipend.me/dashboarduser-referral
Stipend Coin Listing:
Stipend Platform will host monthly(not every month) votes to list new coins inside the platform both offering visibility and possible exposure to the platform.
Platform Link: https://dev-platform.stipend.me/coin-listing
Platform Payment Module
David / Casey / Neal and Felix were working for a couple of weeks now on implementing a good structure for the payment module that would be both secure and provide the maximum flexibility to what the platform is trying to achieve.
Module architecture is needing a huge amount of work because of the initial structuring we had. Casey provides help to design it and we need some more meetings to fully integrate it by reworking our BE organization and refactoring a lot of things.
One of the last stones before the release of the V1.0.
Stipend Portfolio System
One of the last features left on the freelancer side, we should be able to finish it today or early next week.
Review System
The Review system is finally working properly and allows users to leave reviews to each other once the job is done, a more detailed review system will be elaborated based on communication/punctuality/quality…
Hundreds of tasks were achieved in the past months and listing them would make this update impossible to read this is why we’ve only listed a couple of the most important items.
8. Listings
We are running a large listing campaign going forward and checking all listing platform information, both Hosting/Coin & Project details and Exchanges.
We are trying to reach out to small exchanges before finishing the bridge and wSPD, if you have any listing offer please reach out to : yuri@stipend.me
1.ihostmn.com
2.Pecuniaplatform.io
3.masternodes.biz
9. Bridge wSPD Dev
wSPD Minting Explanation
wSPD is tethered to SPD as 1 to 1 so the only way to create wSPD is by sending SPD (“or peg-in”) to a multi-sig address managed by the token bridge. The SPD that arrive at that address gets locked, and proof of that transfer is fed to the Bridge smart contract. The smart contract then mints corresponding wSPD tokens and sends it back to the user.
wSPD Burning Explanation
To redeem wSPD for SPD (or “peg-out”), the user sends the tokens to the bridge contract which burns them and unlocks an equal amount of SPD coins, and sends them back to the user.
for now, we will be focusing on swapping only on the BSC chain but in the future, we can easily integrate with any EVM-based blockchain (with minor code changes).
The bridge project will take approximately 3 months:
- We will be able to deploy the first version of the token bridge in 5–6 weeks (on staging env to get your feedback on it)
- We will need another 2 weeks to handle any changes/hotfixes
- The rest of the time (1 month) will be spent working on creating the APIs
Detailed Timeline down below
10. Conclusion
The progress speaks for itself, the team has been hard at work we didn’t touch down on investment and other points as the update is long enough and would rather share more details once there is substantial progress on that regard.
We thank you as always for the support you showed and we are closer than ever to one of our common objectives.
Expect the platform to be changed alot during the next weeks and whilst we refactor everything.
Stipend Core Team
