Braintrust’s Founders on How to Run a Decentralised Marketplace

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

• What was the aha moment for Scott with crypto?
  
  
  • Scott was aware of crypto early, but very skeptical. Saw that everyone was trying to decentralize just for the sake of it. But decentralization has costs. Centralized entities are often more effective in coordinating interaction.
  
  
  • His opinion started to change with examples of use-cases where tech was

... See more

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.

Whenever Fiverr and Upwork want to incentivize someone to do something, they have to dip into their bank accounts and pay in dollars. Want someone to tell their friends? $10 referral bonus! Need a salesperson? $100K a year. When the DAO that controls Braintrust decides they want someone to do something, they can just pay in their native token. Thes... See more

Braintrust is a clear distillation of an incredibly important point: good tokenomics can enhance a strong value proposition, but can’t replace a strong value proposition. 

Marketplaces win if they can more cheaply attract demand/supply then their competitors and are then able to extract the most value possible from the network without increasing churn. Upwork did this via the press. Fiverr did it via viral growth loops. Braintrust does it with crypto.