Braintrust: Fighting Capitalism with Capitalism

But there’s a long way to go to achieve the vision and pull all talent network business onto its protocol. Braintrust has done $37 million in volume all-time. Upwork, a Web2 talent network, did $904 million in its last quarter alone, Fiverr did ~$260 million. Deloitte did $50.2 billion in revenue in 2021. In all, companies spend trillions of dollar... See more

Instead of increasing the fees you charge all of your users, Gurley recommends that marketplaces figure out other ways to make more from those users who want more from you. Back then, he brought up advertising as an example. If you can get some of the suppliers in the marketplace to pay for ads, you can effectively earn a higher take without needin... See more

Braintrust is a user-owned talent network that is growing fast and reaching real scale just eighteen months after launching the public beta of the protocol last June. $37 million in Gross Service Value (GSV) – what Clients pay Talent – has flowed through the network, with nearly twice that contracted for the coming months.

If the need to issue tokens as rewards outstrips token buybacks, Braintrust will still pay out of the treasury, but if they’ve designed the system right, that means they’re only increasing the circulating supply when participants are doing what the network wants them to do even beyond what client fees can afford to pay down...  It’s like if Ub... See more

Braintrust pays for everything the network needs through the money it’s raised, the 10% fee Clients pay, and BTRST tokens from the treasury.

The simple idea behind Braintrust is that it is a talent network that charges Clients an industry-low 10% fee and actually pays Talent a negative take rate by rewarding them with tokens, and that the only way for those things to change is for the users who would be impacted to vote to change them.

Braintrust’s market cap is $315 million, its fully diluted market cap is $896 million, and in December, it announced a fresh $100 million token sale to Coatue, Tiger, and existing investors to fund grants to grow the ecosystem.  

one key way that a user-owned network can outperform a purely investor-owned one: by giving away something that’s more valuable to recipients than it is to anyone else.

-Bid Staking. Clients and Talent can stake BTRST to stand out to the other party and prove that they’re serious; if an applicant no-shows an interview, for example, they lose their tokens. This is the web3 replacement for the advertising models that web2 marketplaces graduate to. -Career Benefits. This one is a little hand-wavey for now, but the Br... See more

Because Braintrust relies on a protocol for things that humans might do in a normal marketplace, and because it can pay for work that other marketplaces would need to use cash for with tokens, it can keep fees lower (but will need to make it up by giving away ownership). Giving away ownership might actually create more long-term value, because thos... See more