Gate.io AMA with Braintrust-Access the World’s Best Jobs

2023-04-28, 07:24

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![](https://gimg2.gateimg.com/image/article/16826664591.jpg)
**<font size=4>Time: Mar 1st, 2022, 13:00 UTC
[Gate.io](https://www.gate.io "Gate.io") hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Adam Jackson,Co-founder of Braintrust in the [Gate.io Exchange Community](https://t.me/gateio "Gate.io Exchange Community").
Official Website: https://www.usebraintrust.com/                         
Twitter: https://twitter.com/usebraintrust                   
Follow Braintrust on [Telegram](https://t.me/braintrustofficial "Telegram") and [Discord](https://discord.com/invite/rgUS9aHFCB "Discord")
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**Guest**
![](https://gimg2.gateimg.com/image/article/16826666322.png)
**Adam Jackson — Co-founder of Braintrust**
## Q&A from Gate.io
### Q1: Please tell us, why was Braintrust founded? And why on blockchain?
**Adam**: Happy to!  I'm a big fan of Gate.io!

I’ve been building and investing in web-enabled marketplaces my entire career.  The model is broken, though -- they have to raise billions in VC $ to subsidize one or both sides of the marketplace and build liquidity.

If it works, they come out the other end of a completely investor-owned network and those investors (rightfully so) need a return and that return comes from high fees on the marketplace.

That creates misaligned incentives between the people who make their living on the network and the people who own it.  People try to disintermediate, network effects erode. I thought there had to be a better way --- and that’s what Braintrust is.  We inverted the model, giving ownership and control to the users on day 1, to keep incentives aligned.

Braintrust is controlled by its users, who are all over the world.  Stock in a traditional corporation is an obsolete way to govern a digitally-native, global network.  Blockchain tokens are immutable and anyone with an internet connection can possess them. They’re a perfect tool to represent ownership and control of a global network.  It's important to note that by ownership I do not mean a right to profits - Braintrust is a non-profit network - I simply mean control over the future of the network and its rules.
![](https://gimg2.gateimg.com/image/article/16826666523.png)
Here is a little bit more about why we founded Braintrust:
https://www.usebraintrust.com/blog/why-braintrust-was-founded

### Q2: Great,thanks Adam for the explanation. And how is Braintrust different from other talent marketplaces?
**Adam**: What makes Braintrust unique is its model: the marketplace is decentralized and user-controlled. Other platforms like Toptal, Upwork, Fiverr, etc, take 20-40% of what the talent makes on the platform. And ownership is highly concentrated among a few people and investors.

Braintrust takes 0% of what the talent makes, and it’s controlled by its token community. This approach enables Braintrust to attract and retain higher-quality talent.

Blockchain technology is what enables Braintrust to cut out the middlemen and keep incentives aligned. This dramatically reduces costs for clients and increases the earnings of talent, and therefore attracts the best people in the world while distributing value more equally to the talent in the network.

### Q3: Taking a step back into more general industry concepts, can you explain to the community what is the difference between a Web2 and a Web3 network?
**Adam**: For sure. If Web 1.0 built the readable web, Web 2.0 created the interactive internet we know today. 
These technologies enabled unimaginable information abundance and wealth creation, but also generated huge fees and gatekeeping intermediaries.

This drove most internet activity to consolidate around a handful of Big Tech companies — namely Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter — lining the pockets of their investors, but not of the ordinary users who give these networks their value.

In contrast, Web 3.0 is the decentralized and user-owned web, enabling a distributed model that returns value to the users that create it.

It is made possible by blockchains that serve as immutable public ledgers of both value and the people producing it, allowing for peer-to-peer transactions that obviate the need for fee-extracting middlemen.

###  Q4: Got it, this is a concept that is often thrown around in discussions and it is good to go back and remember the basics of it so thanks for that. Goin back to the project, how exactly does governance work on Braintrust?
**Adam**: Governance at Braintrust is a system that allows anyone to propose an idea that can improve Braintrust.

It all starts with an idea that materializes into a “proposal,” which is a write-up of the idea in more detail with some de_script_ion and argumentation to make the case.

Members from the community then express their opinion on the proposal by voting on it with the BTRST tokens which will act as votes signaling voting power to their vote. The more BTRST tokens you have, the more voting power you will have when casting your vote.

If the results of the voting process for a proposal are favorable, the proposal gets executed via code on the blockchain and a new governance of Braintrust goes live!
![](https://gimg2.gateimg.com/image/article/16826666624.png)
A great example is the community developed Fee Converter smart contract which recently passed: 
https://www.usebraintrust.com/blog/community-led-fee-converter-spurs-growth

### Q5: Can you also please share some of the network's success to date?
**Adam**: Since coming out of stealth in June 2020.
-Gross Services Volume (GSV) grew by 34x, from $1.2M to $42M+. Thanks to the Fee Converter smart contract which takes the 10% client fees, purchases BTRST on the open market, and sends it to the Braintrust DAO, over 222,000 BTRST have been purchased to fund community programs like Grants (and that's just since January). https://fees.btrstinfo.xyz/

-The number of enterprises (Clients) jumped from 63 to 500+ including Nike, Nestle, Airbnb, Mastercard, Walmart and LinkedIn.

-Talent joined the platform growing from 2,194 to 46,000+.

-And the network’s Community grew 70x from 10,000 to over 700,000.

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<div>Author:** Rio Fu.**, Gate.io Community
<div class="info-tips">\*This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
<div>\*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.
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