We are excited to announce the launch of the GigApps Alpha release. During the month of April, we are running real world testing with some hand selected customers, partners, and development teams.
Here’s a quick preview of the GigApps platform.
GigApps is a blockchain development marketplace that connects teams of developers with customers. GigApps itself is a decentralized blockchain app (dApp) and will be the first marketplace available on the GigEx platform. You can read more about the GigEx here.
The customer experience
During the Alpha, customers submit development projects using GigApps. These projects are split into milestones and saved into smart contracts stored on the Ethereum blockchain. Each milestone smart contract has acceptance criteria, which must be met before the funds from the smart contract are released to the development team who worked on the milestone. What this means is that all aspects of each project, including payments, are managed by smart contracts (with no intermediary party). All transactions and interactions are made directly between the development team and the customer.
The milestone smart contract Screenshot:
Bring on the Development Teams
On the developer side, the GigApps dApp facilitates groups of developers to come together. They can form development teams that work on milestones, utilizing the best skill sets from each member of the team. Teams are free to choose their own agile development process/methodology, such as Scrum, Kanban, etc. The platform facilitates such processes, but does not impose strict rules in this regard.
The team accepts milestone projects and creates tasks. Each task is payable out of the funded milestone. When team members sign up to work on a task, they already know how much they will be paid (payment amounts are set by the team leader). At the moment the milestone is delivered and accepted by the customer, funds are released from the smart contract directly to the team members, matching the value of the tasks they completed for the milestone.
Development Team Dashboard Screenshot:
What this all amounts to is an extraordinary opportunity for developers to work on exciting blockchain projects and earn cryptocurrency or traditional fiat in the process.
Payments designed for the mainstream
Up until now, most Ethereum blockchain apps require users to install the MetaMask Chrome extension and pay with Ether. We believe this is a major barrier to adoption. While we do provide this method of funding as an option, we have also made it possible to fund each milestone through traditional credit cards. This means users will no longer be restricted to using specific web browsers or cryptocurrency browser based wallets. When payments are made with credit card, we do the conversion work for the users on the backend so that the smart contract gets funded with Ether.
GigApps Project and Payable Milestone Screenshot:
Accepting traditional payment methods was a high priority for us, as we believe in providing a seemless user experience for those who are new to blockchain dApps.
We will share more information about the product in future posts and keep everyone updated on the Alpha as we progress. For more information, questions, or inquiries, you can contact us here.
