Every two weeks we will publish an update on the development of the Ethlance project, highlighting new features and the current state of our roadmap. Our goals in doing so are to achieve long-term transparency and to solicit as much feedback as possible from the community. So, without further ado…

Email Notifications

You can now receive notifications via email when you receive new job offers, proposals from prospective employees, and invoices. To utilize this feature, click the ‘My Profile’ link on the left sidebar, add your email address, and click Save User to broadcast your updated profile to the blockchain.

Connect LinkedIn & GitHub Accounts to Profile

Also new on the ‘My Profile’ page, is the ability to sync up your LinkedIn and GitHub accounts with your Ethlance profile. To do so, simply click ‘Connect’ and complete the secure OAuth login process. Linking your profiles in this fashion can save valuable real estate in your ‘Overview’ section, affording you more room to detail your skill set.

Multi-Currency Support

Freelancer rates/bids and job budgets can now be fixed to a fiat currency, to help avoid issues that could arise due to fluctuations in the price of ETH. When creating an invoice, a new improved form will help with all calculations to ensure you bill the correct amount of ether.

Ability to Cancel Contract

Freelancers can now cancel a contract after they’ve been hired but have yet to send an invoice. An example of a potential use case… A freelancer sends out 20 employment proposals and is accepted for 5 jobs. Now they will have the ability to cancel ones that time does not permit for without having to leave feedback for the employer.

Support for Salaried Positions

We initially launched planning to cater specifically to the freelance economy, but quickly realized there is interest in the community for the ability to add long-term salaried job postings as well. We have made some changes to the ‘New Job’ form to make submitting these types of roles more user-friendly.

What’s Next?

To bolster our reputation system, which will have the long-term effects of helping to prevent fraud on the platform, we are looking to add a uPort integration for identity verification. We are currently scoping out how to implement this feature best. Also on the horizon are internationalization options, search improvements, time tracking, automated invoicing, advanced payroll services, and chat functionality.

Want to learn more? Have any suggestions or feature requests? We’d love to hear your feedback! Check us out on Slack.