Context - Freelancing

An extremely small niche within the web3 industry is trying to provide blockchain solutions to the freelancing industry. The valuation of freelancing in Web3 as of writing this article is <5M.

In 2021 a study revealed that of the 3.5billion total global workforce at the time, 35% were freelancers. Another study in the same year revealed that, based on average freelancer income applied to the global number of freelancers, there was a ~$23trillion contribution by freelancers worldwide to the global economy, and it is only predicted to grow further.

The freelancing industry is estimated at $374bn in 2021, and was expected to reach $455bn by the start of this year. The web3 freelancing industry currently is estimated at less than $10M.

The freelancing industry across the board, including Fiverr and Upwork, slap freelancers in the face with significant costs that cut into their commissions on jobs and tasks. Depending on the platform, these fees range anywhere from 5% to 20%, depending on the size of the commission. On top of this, they could see an additional cut from PayPal if payment is made through there at 2.9% - meaning in the worst-case scenario, a freelancer could lose almost 1/4 of his pay just because.

These platforms get away with it because they have such a large monopoly on freelance traffic. Those that have such an audience can take advantage and implement ridiculous premiums.

Blockchain implementations look to cut these fees to under 1% and offer the same kind of service as the major players in web2.

Content - The platform you should know about:

Hyve

What is it?

Hyve is an ETH based token that represents what is, currently, the only developed freelancing marketplace in web3 that makes use of blockchain mechanics.

Why bullish?

1. Fees

Arguably the biggest value that Hyve is bringing to the freelancing industry is the significant reduction in fees that end-users will deal with.

Platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr have taken over the freelancing industry and have implemented absurd service fees on every transaction. For instance, Fiverr charges a 20% fee on all earnings, whereas Upwork will range from 20% on lower earnings (<$500) to 5% on higher earnings (>$10,000). These are largely justified by the platform’ operational costs and other running expenses. Most transactions are done through PayPal which adds another 2.9% fee on top of this.

Hyve leverages blockchain technology to run its platform, and in doing so, is able to automate a majority of the platform’s operations through smart contracts. They reduce the base fee per transaction from 0.5% to 0.25% depending on whether users pay with the HYVE token. In addition to the significant reduction in fees for freelancers, Hyve benefits from the inherent nature of blockchain technology allowing for openness, auditability, and immutability, and removing the need for a middleman in this context.

2. Industry size

To simply reiterate the context section above; the global freelancing industry is worth hundreds of billions ($374bn in 2021). It is a rapidly growing industry, especially after the pandemic, people have realized how powerful working for yourself and creating your own brand can become.

Hyve is at $2.8m market cap as of the time of writing this.

Assume that the freelancing industry achieves its projected growth by end of 2023 ($455bn). Now assume that Hyve is able to secure 0.01% of that market share, they would then be worth $45.5m. Even that alone is a ridiculous return on your investment, and I’d argue that it could snowball from there because once it hits mainstream and Fiverr or Upwork(etc.) users realize that they can start earning 20% more if they start using Hyve, the potential pay bump would be too good for them to pass up.

3. Team

Web3 projects with real value propositions are only as good as their founders allow them to be.

There are two major green flags about the team behind Hyve.

First, Tudor Stomff, the founder and CEO, has a proven track record as an entrepreneur in the blockchain space. He founded Bountyhive and Codemelt, marketing and software development agencies respectively. The former has a portfolio of 150 companies which have raised $800M. The latter is run privately but has served a number of clients which you can read about here. Although none are particularly notable, it’s proof that he and his team have worked in blockchain for years as both companies were founded in 2017.

Second, the team is extremely active. The CEO is constantly monitoring the Hyve community boards and responding to users. He’s actively taking in feedback from users and implementing changes with it in mind. You can see a brief discussion I prompted with him here. Development updates and content is produced consistently every week, and it seems like they’re partnering with someone new or integrating a new token into their ecosystem every week as well. This is all happening during the bear as well - they don’t go quiet even then

Leadership is everything for a project. They set the pace, and if you follow this project you will see that they are working hard, and consistently at that.

4. First mover advantage

Hyve is the only tokenized Web3 project doing freelancing with an active community.

Their idea is to build and refine their product until they reach critical user mass, where they become completely self-sustainable and are able to monetize properly. When this happens, their plan at that point as articulated by the CEO in the Hyve community group chat, is to: