If someone were to tell you that within the next five minutes they could introduce you to the love of your life, how much would you be willing to pay for that introduction? Of course, placing a price on love might seem impossible - and the question itself is misleading because Covariance actually has nothing to do with match-making. But it does have to do with relationships, and more broadly - networks.

If you think back to the most impactful decisions you’ve made throughout your life, chances are many of them can be boiled down to an important person. Perhaps a coach or an advisor who suggested going to a specific university, or a friend who passed along your resume to a hiring manager, or a relative whose stories of living abroad made you want to do the same. The direction our lives take cannot be separated from our network and its impact on us cannot be denied.

The same can be said of running a business. An introduction to the right investor, advisor, or employee, can completely change the direction of a company and in some cases, determine whether it will fail or succeed. And yet there exist very few ways to attribute the value of these introductions.

Enter Covariance: the first curated business development and sales network for web3 professionals.

Covariance is addressing an important gap in the market by creating a mechanism to reward BD professionals for the value they create across their networks. Most BD professionals don’t just do BD for their full-time employer, they develop entire networks of professional connections who reach out to them for various needs. And this doesn’t just apply to BD strictly speaking - anyone who has worked in an industry long enough develops valuable connections which can be extremely beneficial to others in their wider network. By connecting projects that have specific growth-related goals with networks of individuals working in BD and growth, Covariance is building the first of its kind network-to-market platform.

Web3 provides a unique and indispensable setting to do this in. For one, it provides the ability to transparently reward the community for their contributions. Participants are rewarded for the value they bring to a project and are thus able to own part of the network. In its current form, Covariance is an online platform that connects projects and contributors. Its future form, which the team is currently working towards, involves integrating on chain credentials and reputation to leverage open protocols, which will allow contributors and projects to connect various social, financial and professional types of networks using publicly available on chain data.

Building on open protocols is paramount as fractionalized work becomes increasingly commonplace. It is estimated that 50% of the American workforce will be freelance by 2028. For gig workers, being able to easily showcase their previous work and their network (and decide what to show who) will become all the more paramount - and Covariance is helping make this a reality by tackling one part of the puzzle - BD and growth. But make no mistake, gig workers aren’t the only ones who will benefit from on chain networks. Few, even in full time roles, will be able to do those roles successfully without also being able to illustrate their other areas of expertise. VCs for instance already increasingly need to differentiate themselves by proving they can add value beyond material checks. Covariance’s long term vision is to enable the growth of thousands of projects by meaningfully connecting people across open-source ecosystems.

How does it work?

Covariance operates in seasons with a set amount of projects and contributors. Projects are onboarded first, define their KPIs, and then allocate a reward pool of tokens or future tokens. From there, contributors are invited to learn about projects’ value propositions and unique offerings, which will help them determine where, and how, they can provide value within their network.

In practice, providing value looks like submitting opportunities (ex: a design partner for a new DeFi primitive, identifying an integration partner to a project newly released SDK, etc) within the system. Projects will confirm whether or not the opportunity was viable, which will then be updated onto contributors’ profiles using third-party attestations. Once all of this will be on chain, other open-source information (such as social profiles, content written, etc) will also be leveraged on contributor profiles.

The main incentive for projects to use Covariance is to supercharge their BD efforts - both in identifying and accessing new opportunities, and the main incentive for collaborators is to put their network to use outside of their regular 9-5. The goal is for projects to grow at a faster rate and more intentionally than would be possible on their own, all the while contributors benefit by getting rewarded for the value they unlock. As such, Covariance helps unlock value by connecting projects with the people who can help solve their KPIs, and reward value creation.

The uniqueness of Covariance

Fractionalized work is common for work that is task based, but much less so for relationship based work, for the simple reason that measuring the quality of introductions and their impact - and therefore attributing a monetary value to them - is incredibly difficult. Fortunately, token based networks are finally making this possible.

The uniqueness of Covariance lies in the fact that it is applying network effects to advisory relationships. Most advisory models only benefit the person doing the advising and the project they are directly advising - there are no spillover effects. Ultimately, Covariance aims to be more than just another network (in the same way that community based DAOs are networks), and instead also act as a bridge of sorts between all existing communities. In the same way a Multi chain DEX aggregator can be said to provide the optimal opportunity to trade between multiple chains, Covariance creates optimal opportunities to provide value between different networks. The more interconnected networks become, the more liquidity supply increases, a phenomenon which applies to both financial and social based networks. We’re only just starting to see this materialize in social networks. At Covariance, we believe it is fundamental to the future of work.

Are you a project interested in finding out more? Fill out this form to get in touch.

Are you a contributor eager to put your network to use? You can get in touch here.

Covariance is currently running its first Season. Keep an eye on the site for more information on the next season!