Bounty0x Platform Interview with CEO Angelo Adam
I sat down with Angelo Adam, who is the co-founder and CEO of Bounty0x to discuss their platform. Bounty0x is an awesome service that allows bounty hunters to complete tasks in order to be rewarded with cryptocurrency. It is a great platform to use for those that want to increase their income without committing to an additional full-time or part-time job. Here are the highlights of our interview:
Joshua: Thank you for taking time out of your day in order to talk about the Bounty0x platform. Can you tell me a quick summary about the Bounty0x project?
Angelo: The Bounty0x project launched over 18 months ago when we decided that bounties were going to be increasingly utilized by the cryptocurrency community. Because they had been a major part of the cryptocurrency community ever since the first cryptocurrencies and altcoins launched, Bitcointalk forum was the main venue for folks to search for bounties and complete bounties and we thought that wasn’t the most optimal place to complete the bounties and search for the bounties for a lot of reasons. Bitcointalk forum had a lot of limitations. But it had been used for a long time by a lot of different projects, so we felt that it was something that was long lasting and a major part of the cryptocurrency community. So we decided to launch a dedicated platform that was specifically targeted and developed for the bounty use case both from the perspective of the companies posting the bounties and also from the perspective of the bounties hunters who were completing the work. We launched our alpha around October of last year, we launched alpha 2.0 in February of this year, and then we launched our beta around September. With each release we added new features but essentially the primary part of the platform is that it allows companies to post jobs and certain subtypes of jobs called bounties, which are technically unilateral offers. Unilateral offers are open offers for anyone to complete work without getting prior approval from the company to post the work. Once the completed work is submitted, as long as the work meets the requirements it is eligible for receiving the reward. The platform lets companies post jobs and receive thousands of submissions. With that, there is the issue of the company to review all of those submissions and make sure all of those submissions are meeting their requirements, so we developed a system that enables third parties called sheriffs or in some cases we have automated that system so that it’s not extremely time consuming for companies to receive all of this work and then go through and review it. So the Bounty0x platform allows companies to post jobs, receive lots of submissions for work, and then it lets bounty hunters submit work and then receive payments. Another platform feature is that it’s token agnostic, so that we don’t require companies to pay in any specific token. Companies can pay in their own ERC-20 tokens or they can pay in NEO, EOS, Waves, Stellar, and we’re adding some new blockchains. So that’s a little about the platform, it’s a freelancing marketplace where payments can be made in cryptocurrency.
Unilateral offers are open offers for anyone to complete work without getting prior approval from the company to post the work. Once the completed work is submitted, as long as the work meets the requirements it is eligible for receiving the reward. The platform lets companies post jobs and receive thousands of submissions.
J: That makes perfect sense. There’s a few other freelancer work environments that are already out there. I think of Upwork, Freelancer, things like that. How do you see Bounty0x fitting into that freelancer work environment with the platforms that already exist?
A: There are a lot of different freelancing platforms that are out there, both in the cryptocurrency space and also in the non-cryptocurrency regular space. So I think that the freelancing platforms are such a big marketplace and there’s a lot of specialization within that category of companies. Some freelancing marketplaces focus on short term work, like quick tasks, others focus more on long term work, like full time employment, or project based employment. Some marketplaces focus on marketing tasks, others focus on software development tasks, some marketplaces are such that the person who is the employee is the person advertising their skill set to potential employers. In other cases that is flipped, where the employers are advertising the jobs and employees then apply to those jobs. So there is quite a bit of variation in the space. Then you have the crypto/non-crypto. So there are a lot of differences and sub-niches and sub-categories. Bounty0x is a little bit unique in that it has categories of its own and sub-niches so that our clients and our companies that post on our platform usually primarily at this time are seeking to have tasks completed relating to growing their community. There are also other marketplaces like BugCrowd or HackerOne. There are tons of other bounty platforms in the cryptocurrency space. Our feature set gives us a unique niche area that companies come to us for specific use cases that they are seeking to hire people for and that wouldn’t necessarily be optimal for them if they were to go to Fivrr or Upwork. So I think that there’s a lot of differentiation and it just depends on the type of work they want to complete and the same if for the freelancers and their skill sets.
J: Right. It seems that a lot of the bounty hunters on Bounty0x are already involved in cryptocurrency, so it makes sense that you guys are a little more specialized for cryptocurrency as opposed to Fivrr or Upwork. Is there any potential to expand outside of cryptocurrency?
A: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the services that we provide to our clients would be beneficial to companies regardless if they are cryptocurrency companies or not. I mean, we could support bounties with USDT or some other stable coin and then a company would simply come to our platform, they would fund their campaign with USDT or another stable coin and purchase the funds to pay the bounty hunters with. Companies don’t need to have their own token or their own cryptocurrency in order to use the platform in order to post jobs on it. The jobs and types of jobs that they post would be helpful for companies regardless of if they are in the cryptocurrency space or not. Most companies have a website even if they aren’t the cryptocurrency space or not. With that website, they want to make sure that it is safe and secure, so they want to hold bug bounties or other types of software development bounties, hack download bounties, rate our app bounties. There’s plenty of different types of work that companies could use our platform for, even if those companies aren’t in the cryptocurrency space.
Companies don’t need to have their own token or their own cryptocurrency in order to use the platform in order to post jobs on it. The jobs and types of jobs that they post would be helpful for companies regardless of if they are in the cryptocurrency space or not.
J: That makes sense. Is there potential for them to use Bounty0x as their payment method, for companies that are outside cryptocurrency?
A: I just want to clarify your question. So you’re asking that if a company is outside the cryptocurrency space, and they want to use Bounty0x as the payment method to pay other bounty hunters?
J: Yes, that’s correct.
A: Yes, we support paying in cryptocurrency and they could pay the bounty hunters after the work is completed. They can just click a button on our site, there is a pop up where they can purchase BNTY through our partners Airswap and they can use that BNTY to pay bounty hunters with. So they can post the job that says someone downloads my app and reviews it or finds a bug in it and we pay them 10,000 BNTY and they post the job, they receive a bunch of submissions, people meet their requirements, then they go ahead and pay them by sending them through their dashboard their tokens. So they can do that pretty easily with Airswap, it’s just a widget. They don’t have to go to an exchange to purchase the tokens with, you can just do it directly through the interface on the platform. We are going to be supporting the ability to purchase our tokens with Visa or Mastercard through the platform so that a company once they use the platform and don’t want to go through an exchange to pay people with can just easily purchase our token by clicking a button on our platform. Then using that token to pay folks who’ve completed work for them.
J: Nice. I’ve used your platform and played around with it, and it’s very easy to use and I haven’t really noticed any problems with it.
A: Oh, I’ve noticed many problems.
J and A: (both laugh)
J: Well maybe I need to use it a little bit more (laughs). But it’s good that you are noticing that. If you thought everything was perfect, then there might be an issue. So you know I’ve noticed when going through and looking through some of these bounties that there is a really wide range of the amount of money that you can earn. Obviously you are being paid in tokens, and I’m referring to the USD value. I’ve seen some that are $2 for a task, and I’ve seen some that are in the thousands. So based on that, what would you say the average amount that a bounty hunter receives per month on your platform, and do you know what the most a bounty hunter has received in a given month?
A: So the earnings amount for each of the bounty hunter varies on the task that they are completing. There are a lot of factors that are involved in the pricing that is set for any given task. So you have simple tasks that are like retweeting which pay significantly less, like $1 or $2, and more complex tasks, like creating a YouTube video or writing an article or finding critical security bugs. Those types of tasks usually pay significantly more. Also we have a pricing system which is dependent on the quality of the work is submitted. So in the case of a type of job where some folks complete work and submit higher quality work than others are eligible for receiving more, so that also plays a roll in the reward amount. So if it’s a low quality article that someone writes on their blog that no one reads, maybe they will receive a lower amount. But if it’s a much higher quality article on a major publication like CNN or Forbes, then the reward is higher. So the reward is tiered based off of a lot of different factors. That are some of the reasons why the price ranges for some of the tasks exist. Also another factor is the type of token that is used for paying out the work. We just distributed a bounty over 16 ETH, which at the time was maybe over $5,000 to 600 people, that was around $6 on average. So we also regularly pay out bounties in ERC-20 tokens which aren’t highly liquid or highly tradable. So in those cases when the hunters are performing the work, the company posting the job hasn’t generated the tokens. In those cases, the reward is generally higher to take into account the added risk that the bounty hunters have because there is added risk in terms of liquidity, added risk in terms of value. Generally, companies pay more for that added risk to offset that. Those are some of the factors. It’s hard to say an average how much bounty hunters earn. It depends on what types of bounties they are completing and their specialty area.
Some people are doing it full time. Their full-time job is completing bounties on our platform. So it’s helping a lot of people around the world who are earning money as a full time job doing this type of work.
J: That makes sense. I could definitely see it being a pretty big range. Obviously there is potential to earn quite a bit through completing bounties regardless of your skill set. Now I know also that you guys sent me over an invite for the sheriff program and I’ve kind of peaked around it a little bit. With that program starting, how do you see this improving your platform and really evolving the quality of how Bounty0x works?
A: So yeah, we are happy if you give us some of your feedback and some of your thoughts on how we can improve on that interface and that functionality. So the sheriffing is used on the platform to review the submissions made by the bounty hunters. In order to be a sheriff, you need to stake the BNTY token, then you unlock the ability to perform a certain number of reviews, so you either approve or reject the submission. If you reject it, you give a reason why. Then the stake is locked up for a period of time. We have an appeal period and then if the hunter appeals your review then we’ll take a look at it and potentially take away the stake if we deem the review was made incorrectly. We’ve launched that feature back in September and we’ve been in closed beta with a handful of folks testing it out. During that period, we collect user feedback and made some improvements to it. There are now plans and what we recently have done to expand that beta testing group, so we’ve sent out more invites, and as you have mentioned you are one of the people that have volunteered to help us with that. We’re going to continue to test it and making sure that it is safe to use and that all the bugs are worked out and we will continue to invite more people to try it. The whole point of it is to have the ability to support a whole lot more reviews and submissions. Currently, when a company posts a bounty and they receive 10,000–15,000 submissions, our team is going through all of those submissions. In some situations we have automated some of the bounties but in other cases our team has to go through them one by one and take a look at them and review them. So if we have a larger group of people that are doing that, then it speeds up the process so that the companies can get a quicker turnaround time from when they receive the work to the time that work is approved. It also makes it more scalable so that we can receive many more submissions and still be able to keep up with the reviewing and all. Currently, we have a little bit of wait time between the time the submissions are made. Sometimes we have a turnaround time of a week or two from the time the bounty is ended until the time it has been completely reviewed and is ready to distribute. If we can have more people reviewing their submissions, we can speed that time up and that makes for a better user experience and makes it more scalable. That’s the reason why we need to have this sheriffs program. Does that answer all of your questions on how all of that works?
J: Yeah absolutely. It also seems that it is really going to create a higher sense of quality between the bounty hunters and the companies, so both sides are really happy with the work done and the bounty received. Is that correct?
A: Yeah, absolutely. We frequently get complaints from bounty hunters saying their submission has been pending for 3–4 weeks and are wondering when it’s going to be approved. They ask us when a certain distribution is going to happen, so we tell them that we are working on it, so it will make the bounty hunters a lot happier to get that feedback immediately on the work that they have done and then be able to send them their earnings more quickly. That’s the goal of the sheriffs and I think it will make the bounty hunters happier, it will make the user experience better for all parties.
J: Absolutely. I’m excited to dig more into this sheriffs program, I just need to send over some BNTY and stake it and I will be digging into it. It seems pretty exciting. Otherwise do you guys have any major updates or plans with the Bounty0x platform that we haven’t really covered?
A: Yeah, so we have the hunter staking. We just talked about share staking and we’re introducing staking on the hunter side very soon in that is going to be in the next couple of days, probably early next week. That is going to enable the bounty hunters on the platform who complete work to stake our token. By doing so, they can reduce the fees that the platform charges them. So let’s say the bounty hunter completes work and earns 1000 tokens. If they stake some of our tokens, then they keep a higher percentage of those 1000 tokens that they have earned. So by default, we currently have our platform fees set at X amount and if they stake Y amount, let’s say 5000 tokens, they can reduce their fees by, let’s say, X minus 5%. We will have a few different levels of fee reductions depending on how much is staked. So that is an upcoming feature that we will be introducing, which I think is going to increase the interest from the bounty hunters who are looking to reduce their fees. I think it will make them happy. So that’s one of the features. We’re also introducing a lot of other features. We are going to be revising the process of creating new bounties. Currently, a host creates a new bounty they click create new bounty and it should drop down, and then there is a kind of complicated process, so we are going to remake that process a lot simpler and quicker. So that’s one of the new features. We have quite a long list of things that we are actively going to be working on in the future that we will be adding. There’s a lot of new things that we have coming up over the next few weeks and months, so we’re always working on new features and refinements of the platform.
J: That’s awesome to hear. It really is a great platform and I think that for people that are really into cryptocurrency and want to stay involved in the space, it’s a good platform to earn some extra money, especially during a bear market. I think it’s good for some people that invested at the wrong time or they just want to increase their investment in general when the market is kind of down. So you know, it’s a really good thing that you guys have going on here. Again, from what I’ve seen it works really well and there’s a lot of ways to earn money from it.
A: In the cryptocurrency space, there’s a lot of talk of investment, so there’s a lot of companies and exchanges and people involved with investing money to exchange money from fiat to crypto. That is, I think, divisive because not everyone has a lot of money that they can use to invest in cryptocurrency so if you are someone that doesn’t have enough money to purchase cryptocurrency with but they want to be involved in the space but they have their labor, you can complete work and then earn directly in cryptocurrency instead of, let’s say, use your labor to earn money in fiat, and then using an exchange to exchange the labor that you earned in fiat into crypto. So it’s a way to directly earn crypto. And then that can usually, as we talked about earlier, multiply the earnings that you can make. So if you can make $5 USD doing a task and paying in fiat, sometimes that same task be worth much more, can be paying out a much higher price being paid in crypto. There are people that have their labor that want to earn money, and they don’t have the money to purchase crypto, but they want to have crypto. So I think there is a very large market of people that fall into that category and it works for folks all over the world. Some people are doing it full time. Their full-time job is completing bounties on our platform. So it’s helping a lot of people around the world who are earning money as a full time job doing this type of work.
J: Yeah, it makes sense. If you are creating jobs for people, it’s always a good thing. Also, something that I just thought of, is that there are a lot of bans on marketing for paid advertisements with Google and Facebook and things like that. Are you really seeing a lot of companies benefiting from more organic growth through the marketing tasks that are involved here? And also hiring bounty hunters through the platform as opposed to the fact that they can’t use Facebook or Google at all? I mean with Facebook, you can but you really can’t, they say that you can but it’s not realistic. So is this something that companies are kind of utilizing more for their marketing and using their paid marketing budget into because Google is not an option?
A: Yeah, sure.
J: Okay. Yeah that makes sense.
It’s a way for companies to grow their community and have ambassadors join their community who want to build from a grassroots level to help the company grow as opposed to buying a banner ad on a site like Google Adwords or through Facebook ads or Twitter ads.
A: Yeah absolutely. It’s a way for companies to grow their community and have ambassadors join their community who want to build from a grassroots level to help the company grow as opposed to buying a banner ad on a site like Google Adwords or through Facebook ads or Twitter ads. It can be much more effective or as an alternative to a fully paid marketing plan, to have a balanced marketing plan to have many components to it. It’s probably not the best to have just one component, but better to have multiple different strategies. So one of those strategies is through user growth and grassroots marketing. That is one way to do that. Like you said, some of these companies allow cryptocurrency ads at all, and so grassroots alternatives, like bounties, where you just have folks complete tasks for you, is often times an optimal or preferable alternative.
J: Absolutely, it seems to be a lot more effective with marketing anyway. It’s pretty great. Do you have anything else you want to add?
A: No, I appreciate your time and thank you for sitting down and doing some research on our platform and asking us questions.
J: Of course, thank you for your time.
I was really happy to be able to speak with Angelo and gain some insight into the Bounty0x platform. As you can see, it’s a really amazing platform with a lot of earning potential for hunters, and plenty of great work available for hosts. I’m excited to see what the team will do with updates and how this platform will evolve over the next few years.
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