CHALLENGES

The traditional centralized freelance industry is faced with particular challenges. Freelancers and clients meet these challenges on freelancing platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr, PHP, and others.
- Freelancers don’t receive 100% of their revenue after completion of a job as 5% — 30% goes to the intermediary or platform. For example, Fiverr takes 20% off all the income made by sellers in every sale made.
- There are limited ways for users to receive their funds, most especially for users not in the US or Canada.
- Disputes are handing: this is a very trivial issue as disputes are bound to occur when transactions are carried out between the buyer and seller (freelancer and client). Disputes are resolved by single entities which question the objectivity of the resolutions made.
- Delay in funds clearing: Freelancers are faced with this challenge as they are forced to wait several days after completion and settlement of a job/transaction before their revenues are released to them. It is only reasonable for freelancers to want their funds released to them after completion of a client’s job. This is entirely understandable as getting paid online could be cumbersome.
With Fiverr, you need to wait for a buyer/customer to complete an order before the project is marked as completed, after which you would have to wait for another 14 days for funds clearance before funds become available for withdrawal.
Cryptocurrency payments are instant and having no limitations, even across international borders. This is useful to freelancers as cryptocurrency can be easily exchanged, so funds can be withdrawn and used as soon as transactions are marked as settled.
The blockchain uniqueness lies in its potency to tokenize any industry/market and the major problem which faced by buyers/employers and sellers/freelancers on the current platforms is the trust.
Cryptocurrency tokens and smart contracts can be employed in strategic ways to incentivize everyone to act professionally and reasonably at all times. Koilop aims to tokenize reputation, and assigning it a real market value on the Koilop platform. This will prove to be a more secure environment for freelancers and employers who would patronize the platform.
Decentralization can also mean fairer, distributed dispute resolution, leading to better contract outcomes, more accurate ratings, and less centralized authoritarian control.

Applicable problems and solutions
How do we tackle some of the pressing issues faced by freelancers and clients on current centralized freelancing platforms? An overview of the problems will be covered below:
- Difficulty in getting clients to close deals so freelancers can receive payment
- Clients leaving undeserved/negative profile reviews
- Unlimited, centralized power on current freelancing platforms
Case study 1:
“From experiences on different freelancing platforms, getting paid by your Client often proves to be difficult since they have to close a deal before payments are released. Is there a way payment for work done must be completed?”
Once a transaction has been put in motion, the Client’s money is frozen until the contract is fulfilled by the freelancer. If a client is not satisfied with work of the hired Freelancer, he has the option to request for a refund while the Freelancer has the same opportunity available to him in case he received an unreasonably bad review or feels the client is trying to cheat. Intentional bad reviews will lead to clients losing their accounts.
Case study 2:
“It is sometimes noticed in traditional freelancing platforms that Clients leave undeservedly bad reviews for jobs completed. Is there a way to deal with this problem?”
On most freelancing platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork, the only option open to freelancers after receiving an undeserved bad review is to contact CS, and in most cases, nothing is done about it. But on Koilop, freelancers will have the ability to contest wrongly addressed reviews for jobs completed, and we will have our unbiased review team address the issue quickly.
Case study 3:
“Unexplained suspension of a freelancer’s account without prior notice or explanation remains a freelancer’s nightmare on traditional freelancing platforms. How does Koilop handle this?
This problem causes the trust in freelancing platforms to deteriorate as freelancers are confronted with the reality that they can lose their source of income at any given time, making freelancing platforms too insecure to be a sole source of work for Freelancers. On the Koilop platform, this is an impossible occurrence because we don’t have a single authority who can suspend accounts unnecessarily without explanations and prior notice.