I stumbled across Gems during my routine blockchain research and was instantly impressed by what I saw; the idea, the team, the vision of it all had me excited. I love seeing new projects utilising the blockchain for real world applications and significantly improving on existing applications. This is what the blockchain was made for and it is refreshing to see in a climate where projects are being created simply to take advantage of the money being thrown at ICOs recently. Gems is different. Gems is truly aiming to utilise the Ethereum blockchain to provide a highly efficient protocol for contracting workers to perform micro tasks.

What are Micro Tasks?

From the Gems whitepaper, Micro tasks are small tasks that require human judgement, can be completed independently over the internet, and are part of a larger unified project. Micro tasks aid organizations that need humans to complete tasks computers otherwise cannot. Micro tasks are used in a wide range of large scale distributions and by large companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Ebay, and Linkedin. The market for micro tasks is growing each year, with billions of them being completed each year.

So what’s the problem?

The big players in this space currently are the centralized marketplaces, Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and CrowdFlower. Unfortunately, these marketplaces are currently wrought with problems. Both CrowdFlower and MTurk charge requesters who submit tasks to be performed (up to 40% in some cases), severely impacting the amount workers can be paid.

There are also obstacles in the way of participating in the existing micro task economy. Current marketplaces require stringent ID checks which can bring upon delays or stop people from registering if they don’t want to disclose personal information.

Furthermore, the payment processes on these existing platforms are not conducive for the unbanked. To receive payments on MTurk, workers need to have a bank account for transfers, be willing to wait for checks, or be willing to be paid in some form of gift card that is not necessarily useful for their current situation. CrowdFlower utitlises Paypal for its payments, however these result in sizeable fees which reduces the amount of money workers earn. These problems limit the amount of workers in the network as there are many countries in the world with access to good internet but poor banking systems.

Gems’ solution

Gems solves the problem with fees as Gems does not charge a centralized fee for transactions on the platform. The only cost on the Gems Platform is gas used on the Ethereum network. This is huge as this means that both workers and employers can benefit from having no fees. Employers can pay less per task and workers will still receive more than what they would have under current systems. Having no fees on the platform will enable a more efficient marketplace for both miners and requesters.

On the Gems Platform, users do not need to verify their identity to complete tasks. The Gems Protocol, and specifically the staking token mechanism, makes the Gems Platform less susceptible to malicious actors from abusing the network. Workers must stake their tokens in order to ensure that there is a clear incentive to do the task correctly. Qualified verifiers will check that the task has been accomplished correctly and the stake will be released, increasing the worker’s trust score and paying the worker.

As Gems is utilising blockchain technology, the barrier for participation from the unbanked can become a thing of the past. Workers are rewarded for successfully completing a task with GEMs, the ERC20 token of the Gems Platform. The use of an ERC20 token as reward means there is no requirement for bank information, allowing those who are unbanked and would like to participate to easily do so. This will enable significantly more people to participate in the network. With increased use of platforms such as Kyber Network and 0x, the transfer of GEMs to other tokens should be an increasingly simple task.

Who is behind it all?

The team behind it are largely the two brothers Rory and Kieren O’Reilly. The young entrepreneurs have already been successful in their ventures, dropping out of Harvard to found gifs.com. Both are Forbes 30 under 30 recipients and Thiel Fellows. They’ve delivered in the past, and with their all-star team of advisors, I don’t see why they won’t be able to deliver again.

Conclusion

This is one of the more exciting projects I’ve come across in recent times. It is a breath of fresh air to see a young team come up with a blockchain solution to a real world problem. I think it can make a seriously big impact on this space this year. I will be following this project closely over the coming year that’s for sure

I’d advise anybody who is interested in the project to visit their website, read their whitepaper and join their Telegram to learn more.