[Top Builder 2024]: Bitcoiner Freelance

[aaronkopplin]

🏗️ Top Builder 2024 Application Form to track progress through Round 1 - 3 ~ Currently in Round 1

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The Team

• Project: Bitcoiner Freelance
• Founder: Aaron Kopplin
• Team Background: Aaron is a software developer from Michigan, with a degree in Computer Science and 3 years of experience as a developer.
• Bitcoin & Lightning Involvement: Aaron has been interested in bitcoin since 2015 and involved in local Bitcoin meetups since 2022, here he came up with the idea for Bitcoiner Freelance. He believes that circular economies are critical to Bitcoins success, and he wants to build out the infrastructure for the Bitcoin circular economy..
• Origin Story: Aaron was at a Bitcoin meetup when he came up with the idea for an online freelancing marketplace that only accepts Bitcoin. The goal of Bitcoiner freelance is to cater only to the bitcoiners who scoff at the idea of shitcoins. Youll never see a single dollar sing on the site because all gigs are priced in sats. The reason for a marketplace is that users can both spend and earn sats, facilitating a circular economy, and allowing bitcoin to be used as a medium of exchange.

💡 The Idea

• Project Overview: Bitcoiner Freelance is an online freelancing marketplace where users can list freelance services for sale, priced in sats. Bitcoiner Freelance allows users to spend and earn in Bitcoin, facilitating the Bitcoin circular economy. Bitcoiner Freelance is currently custodial, but is transitioning to P2P. Users can use their LNURL Pay addresses (satoshi@walletofsatoshi.com) to send and receive payments.
• Website: bitcoinerfreelance.com
• GitHub: https://github.com/aaronkopplin
• Project Stage: Bitcoiner Freelance is currently openly available to anyone. 118 users have signed up, with 35 gigs posted and available for purchase. No orders have been made on the site yet.
• Proof of Work:
  • announcement post with 51K impressions
  • announcement - adding explore page
  • announcement - adding edit and delete buttons
  • example - Milad's profile page
  • example - Milad's "Data Analysis" gig priced 100K to 1.5M sats
  • explore page

📚 Additional Information

• Additional Links/Info: Bitcoiner Freelance Telegram (75 members)

📌 Submission Type

• [ ] Initial Project Creation

🚀 Current Project Progress

• Progress Made: MVP is built out and functional with P2P lightning payment enhancement in the works.
• Challenges Faced: Legal issues with custody, Lightning payments and invoices, as well as escrow of services while trying to maintain a safe and reliable environment.
• Future Roadmap of what's next: P2P lightning payments is the most important thing right now. Once that is build out, Marketing then becomes priority number 1, to validate the idea and generate revenue.

⏳ Round 1 Milestone

• Keep in mind that completion will need to be by February 10th, 2024.
• First-round milestone the team has set for themselves: P2P lightning payments for gigs.

📝 Submission Complete

• All required information has been provided above.

📅 Top Builder Program Structure

Registration Opens: Monday, December 18, 2023

• Application: Interested teams apply for Top Builder.
• Selection: Teams will be chosen based on their application. See FAQ for details.

Round 1: January 13 - February 10, 2024

• Workshops: PlebLab weekly workshops start, available live and online.
• Chat Access: Selected teams join the PlebLab internal chat.
• Mentorship: Begins for teams.
• Project Milestones: Teams are set and judged on their first-round milestones.

Round 2: February 10 - 24, 2024

• Team Reduction: PlebLab cuts half of the Top Builder teams. (Only half continued in Round 2.)
• Project Milestones: Teams are set and judged on their second-round milestones.
• Workshops: PlebLab weekly workshops continue.
• Mentorship: Continues.

Round 3: Starting February 24, 2024

• Team Reduction: PlebLab narrows down to 6 Top Builder teams. (All will be pitching in Austin.)
• Final Milestones: Teams set final project milestones for the last round.
• Preparation: Teams prepare their pitch in front of judges. Final teams are contacted to come to Austin for Startup Day.

Final Round at Startup Day: March 14, 2024

• Preparation: Teams work on their final pitches at PlebLab.
• Presentations: Final teams present before judges on Startup Day.
• Deliberation: Judges decide during a happy hour.
• Announcement: The winner of Top Builder is announced at Austin BitDevs.
• Celebration: After-party for Top Builder.

[aaronkopplin]

Progress update:

Bitcoiner freelance is now fully peer to peer. All published gigs (35 gigs at the time of the update) have been reset to 'draft' status. this means that the gig is not visible on the site, and is saved to the users account. Before the gig can be made visible again, the user must add their lightning address. We have also provided a guide to users to show them how to get a lightning address if they dont already have one. So far, one user has added their lightning address and re-posted their gig:

https://bitcoinerfreelance.com/gig/96

if you click continue on a package, then click 'pay now using lightning' youll see a lightning invoice generated, which represents a payment directly to the sellers wallet.

Link to the twitter announcement: https://x.com/bitcoinrippin/status/1752163764097470495?s=20

NEXT STEPS:

We are updating the revenue model for Bitcoiner Freelance. Under the previous model (custodial model), Bitcoiner Freelance took a 10% cut of each transaction. Going forward, all transactions will have NO FEE. Instead of taking a fee, Bitcoiner Freelance will charge sellers using lighting to 'boost' their posts and appear higher in search results.

We will be displaying the total boost in sats on the gig its self for all users to see. This has multiple benefits:

1) Buyers can see that the sellers have skin in the game and are invested in delivering services to buyers 2) Sellers can see exactly how much it would take to achieve a given ranking in the search results. this allows sellers to bid for the spot they want, resulting in an efficient market for ranking posts. 3) It will take more proof of work to spam gig postings because they simply will not rank if they dont have the sats to bid for that ranking 4) Better post quality: Sellers will invest more in perfecting their postings because they are already investing in effectively buying a page ranking spot. 5) this model makes it 100% transparent how gigs are ranked to users.