SpringRole: A blockchain-based system for professional profile attestation

bonanza-kreep (66)in #springrole • 6 years ago (edited)

The modern world depends on the collaboration of countless individuals and organisations that initially only know each other on what information they are willing to volunteer. This is especially true for companies, which are often forced to rely on resumes and perhaps social media profiles to determine whether or not to hire a particular job hunter. Many qualifications presented in this way are either exaggerated or outright false, but they are impossible or prohibitively difficult to effectively verify, and so employers are forced to make a subjective judgment call and hope for the best.

https://springrole.com/

Of course, they are not the only ones who suffer from this. Their prospective employees are also hampered by this low-trust environment, where hirers can have reasonable doubts about any claims they make. Besides, existing professional profile and resume platforms have other problems besides inaccuracy: they can be very inflexible and inconvenient to use, and have flawed business models that fail to encourage the users who are crucial to their success. SpringRole, Inc. offers a new solution to the problem of attestation (verifying claims), based on the eponymous platform.

How will the SpringRole platform work?

New users will be able to import or create profiles on the platform, including their education and work experience and any useful skillsets. Each of those points would then need to be verified by the appropriate parties. Education and work experience could be confirmed by universities and companies, respectively, as well as by other entities when appropriate (like online course providers or individual professors or employers). Their own credentials will be confirmed through DNS verification. Skills, meanwhile, will be endorsed by other users.

The SPRING token is essential to the platform's function, and will be awarded for many kinds of activities, such as completing a profile, receiving attestations and referring other users. The tokens can be used to obtain access to validated resumes or to endorse another user's skill. Those skill endorsements are weighted based on the skill level of the endorser, and can be accepted or rejected by the user, with rejection being punished as the cost of endorsements increases and its value decreases (this is done to discourage frivolous endorsements and spam). Accepted endorsements are rewarded with tokens based on the ratio of their reputation. A user's skill score will be the sum total of all endorsements received on that skill. As a user's skill level changes, so too does the level of all those they have endorsed. This interdependency makes it harder to game the system.

There are plans for further expansion of the platform to turn it into a hiring portal, allowing companies to seek out prospective employers, offer jobs and create freelance projects, participating which would also be rewarded. All information and all transactions on the platform will be recorded on the blockchain.

How can SpringRole help you?

It will be directly useful to potential employers who will be able to rely on the ecosystem to verify resumes for them, saving themselves a lot of time and trouble, and to potential employees whose resumes, if they receive the proper attestation, will appear this much more credible. Constructing a network of reputations based on transparent and interdependent endorsements should have a broader beneficial effect, fostering a more trusting professional society and making it easier on everyone who wants to play fair instead of gaming the system. Further expansions to the platform could make it easier for companies to find qualified employees, and for ordinary people to get jobs that suit their (attested) abilities.

What are SpringRole's advantages?

The SpringRole team has significant IT experience and includes crypto industry veterans who have been involved in the field since 2011. It has identified some major problems in the current process of job hunting and verification and came up with a solution that plays to the principal strengths of blockchain technology: transparency, immutability and security. This would give the SpringRole platform a unique edge when compared to other professional social media and resume sites. Another edge is that active and good faith participation in the system is strongly incentivised through the platform's token economy, while well-considered measures exist to discourage fraud and spam. Finally, their idealistic objective of creating a more trustworthy online environment also corresponds to the pragmatic needs of companies and job seekers, which factors into their business plan of encouraging early entry into the system among US companies and Indian developers.

https://springrole.com/

Token sale details

The SPRING token pre-sale ran from 1st to 15th June, 2018, while the public sale will take place over the course of July 2018.

Blockchain LinkedIn?

Both the SpringRole project team and (to an even greater degree) its supporters tend to draw a comparison between LinkedIn and SpringRole, suggesting that the latter will be able to replace the former by remedying its core deficiencies (such as its lack of serious incentives for participants to be active and honest). That seems unlikely, at least in the short term. While the project has good design, to truly take off it will require the participation of a significant proportion of users from every segment of its intended ecosystem (which includes universities, companies and professionals). Even then, taking over LinkedIn's place in the market will require long, sustained growth.

However, more transparent and honest resumes are certainly an appealing idea. So even if replacing LinkedIn will remain a future prospect, in the short run it may be possible to create an alternative to it. Ultimately, SpringRole is a project that relies on the appeal of its values and ambitions. Perhaps that appeal will prove strong enough, in which case it could eventually change something as basic and as important as the way we look for work.