Sandton based pan-African law firm, Bowmans will launch its own cryptocurrency – BowMoney – in July.

BowMoney, it said, is the cryptocurrency that will underpin the innovative new Blockchain-backed reward and recognition system for Bowmans employees in Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

“Bowmans’ staff will be using BowMoney to reward fellow employees who exemplify the firm’s values,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.

“Although a traditional system with a database and web server might have been far simpler to implement, driving internal blockchain awareness is an ongoing initiative at Bowmans, aimed at creating further innovative blockchain applications for the firm and its clients,” said Daren Mudaly, head of innovation at Bowmans.

How it works

Mudaly said that employees can use this system to nominate their co-workers for reward and recognition when they demonstrate the firm’s values in the workplace.

“They will do so by transferring BowMoney, the firm’s private blockchain value token, from one employee to another via a user-friendly web front.”

Mudaly said that, along with this transaction, the person doing the transfer chooses the applicable corporate value, and provides a brief motivation for the nomination.

A running leader board is displayed on the same internal website showing the employees with the most BowMoney per corporate value. This leaderboard is reviewed every quarter and the top nominees are awarded prizes.

The underlying Ethereum blockchain serves as the immutable public ledger upon which the nominations are recorded, said Chris Martinus, the lead developer on the project. The value token, BowMoney, is the cryptocurrency mined from the private blockchain and used for employee nomination.

Geth is used as the Ethereum client and the integration point with the firm’s internal corporate network context and systems.

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