A revolution in the talent ecosystem won’t come from better data processing (AI/ML) but rather from a different alignment of incentives. To take the talent ecosystem to the next level, we need to rebuild it such that we are all incentivized to expose our most vivid professional stories. We (grappa.xyz) are building a system that incentivizes everybody to work together and trust each other, not because they are altruistic but because it is in their best interest.

To align the incentives in the talent eco-system we are using concepts from game theory and building on top of Blockchain/Web3 rails. In game theory, there is a concept of “repeated game”, where players play multiple iterations of the same basic interaction. The concept of ‘Reputation” in repeated games captures the idea that a player will have to take into account the impact of his or her current action on the future actions of other players. In a repeated game (that is played a non-finite number of times), the best strategy is to cooperate and play a socially optimum strategy.

Today the talent eco-system is structured as a single non-repeating game between the talent and the hiring manager. If you interview with a hiring manager that isn’t fluent in your background (she comes from a different industry, different country, or doesn’t have context on your previous role), you will struggle to tell your story. You will want to explain your successes, show your strengths and explain why you are a unique fit for the role. The hiring manager, on the other side, will struggle to understand your story without a very long recruiting process, independent testing, or backchannel phone calls. She will struggle to trust your description of yourself, because she only has the one interaction with you and not a recurring interaction. She will many times prefer not to take the risk and hire someone from within her network or industry that she can easily understand. In this eco-system, the best self-marketers and networkers prevail. This lack of trust and understanding reduces the efficiency for everyone and aligns all players in a sub-optimal equilibrium. This problem isn’t just for hiring, the same is true for an entrepreneur raising money from a VC, a salesperson selling products, or a contractor pitching for a job.

Grappa is changing these interactions by building a recurring game within the talent ecosystem. We bring together the people that want to learn about talent (recruiters, investors, customers) and the people who best know the talent (employers, educators, peers, etc.), making sure they are incentivized to cooperate in a mutually beneficial way. Grappa’s system does this by creating a reputation for the reputation givers, incentivizing them to provide information that is valuable for future employers while ensuring their trustworthiness. By building a connection between the reputation consumers (we call them Engagers) and the reputation issuers (we call them Badge Issuers), with the Talent in the middle, we are realigning the talent pipelines.

So how does it work:

1. Throughout your career, you collect badges that represent your professional story. The issuers of these badges attest to the roles you held, the projects you participated in, and the recommendations you received from peers. You own the badges, and they are bound to your identity (soul-bounded).

2. People find Talent based on their badges and pay tokens to engage. Grappa is building a search engine to organize the badges (which are open, transparent, and publicly viewable). When hiring managers or recruiters find talent and want to reach out to them, they use tokens to send an on-chain message.

3. The talent receives an encrypted message and a percentage of the tokens. The engager’s message is encrypted such that both the content of the message and the identity of the sender and receiver are kept private. The talent receives a percentage of the tokens.

4. The Issuer of the badge receives a percentage of the tokens. The Issuers of the badges receive a percentage of the tokens based on an attestation model embedded in the smart contract. The tokens that the Issuer receives act as a reward for their role in the ecosystem. The flow of tokens also acts as a public reputation indicator for the popularity of the badge. The flow of tokens builds the reputation for the reputation giver and creates a reputation graph for all badges.

We are starting by building this reputation graph for a crypto-familiar community of developer talent. We are facilitating issuances of soul-bound tokens (badges)  for reputation indicators that are many times overlooked in traditional resumes like hackathon winners, Bootcamp graduates, and DAO contributors. These are reputation indicators that are hard to understand and assess and would benefit from a reputation graph.

We’re excited about our early adopters - a community of developers, recruiters, talent collectives, and institutional issuers of reputation signals. As we transition to building in public to our alpha community, we’re curious to get feedback on what’s working - and what isn’t - from our family and friends in web3.

Fill out this Typeform- or reach out to contact@grappa.xyz, if the future of unbiased reputation moves you to philosophical debate or build mode - we’d love to have you in our private alpha.

FAQ

1. Is this a social credit score?

No! The user needs to claim a badge for it to show up in their wallet. No airdrops. That means that the only information you have is the one you want. It also means that there will probably be very limited negative information about people. We think that is great.

A credit score is a piece of information about you that you don’t control. People trust it because you can’t change it. It is holistic but not sovereign. On the other end of the spectrum is your Linkedin. You fully control it and can write whatever you want, but because of that people don’t trust it. Linkedin is fully sovereign but not holistic. We believe in bounded sovereignty. The User can say whatever they want about themselves, but only from the pool of things other people say about them. You can trust the information is true, but the User is still in control.

2. Can’t Issuers just issue a lot of badges and collect reputation?

To ensure accountability of the system we have built into the reputation a mechanism that disincentivizes redundant and low value add information. This incentivizes the Issuer to provide only information that will benefit the Engagers. In essence, the Issuer is notarizing information about the Talent and staking their reputation on that information - if it is valuable, they get reputation points if it isn’t valuable, they lose reputation points.

In practice, we do this through a depreciation model, meaning that if you aren’t collecting reputation, you are losing your reputation. If Engagers learn that a badge is meaningless (or worse, that it is false), then they will stop engaging with it, and that badge's reputation score will fall.

3.Won’t this system reinforce biases?

We think that this system creates a true meritocracy that works against biases. Today talent is evaluated based on the strength of its self-marketing. It benefits the people that have known brands in their resumes, making those brands the gateway for all talent. It makes transitioning between countries, industries, and communities very hard.

By making reputation a derivative of the actual actions of Engagers, and making it self-sovereign and transparent, we allow anyone in the world to see the true value of your story. This system pushes people to collect achievements and contributions, not brand names. It reduces the need to make your Linkedin and Resume look good. And it makes talent across the world more mobile and opportunity more accessible.

4.How do you prevent people from cheating and exchanging identities?

Connecting your wallet to your actual flesh and bones is a problem across the whole web3 industry. Soul bounding currently ensures that tokens aren’t passed between wallets but doesn’t yet allow us to ensure that you and your wallet are one and the same. We have a bunch of ideas on how to solve this and are working with companies pushing on this problem.  this is something that is part of our roadmap but won’t yet be solved in our MVP.

For instance, if you try sending your resume for a position will result in a 10-20% response rate. For top companies, over 50% of their hiring is done through referrals. Companies aren’t using resumes anymore but rather sourcing from networks and referrals.

What’s so bad about a world that relies on networked searches? Networked searches create biases, hurt people that don't have strong networks, and move value away from the employee. They inhibit employers from accessing the full swath of top talent in the world and bound them by the reach of their personal networks. In a hyper-connected global market, this is a meaningful handicap for companies.

We need better tools to tell our stories. Tools that are built for a digitally-native, creative global workforce. Where information is owned by the talent but can be trusted and easily understood by the hiring manager. Where conversations are sparked by open passions, interests, and side projects, and where we eliminate the humble bragging culture, conversations, and posts where only the best self-marketers win.

The world around has rapidly changed. We are in the midst of a transformation in how humanity operates, moving from an industrial age to a new digital age. This is impacting every part of our lives - our political structures, our financial systems, the way we communicate with each other, and even the food we consume. It is causing a transformative shift in how we perceive work and how we spend the productive time of our lives. Previous generations thought about careers or jobs. They joined a workplace where they assumed that they would spend a large chunk of their lives. Many went to college and learned a profession, becoming accountants, lawyers, doctors etc. They then joined an accounting firm or a legal firm, coming every day to the EY or Deloitte factory and running the same process over and over again, getting better at it with each iteration. As they specialized in running this process, they earned promotions, became managers and then partners, and reaped large economic benefits

We, the generation navigating the workforce today, understand that if we build our futures on running existing processes rather than creating new ways of doing things, then we are in trouble. In the next few decades, the role of process-runners is being automated out. Legal tech is automating the role of some of the most senior lawyers, bookkeeping software is automating the roles of many accountants and DallE-2  is going to automate the role of some of the top designers. The employees that run processes for a living will constantly need to compete with the algorithms that are quickly getting better and cheaper. In parallel, the people that can write the algorithms, that can generate ideas and new ways of doing things, are going to become more valuable and get a bigger piece of the pie.

The millennials and Zoomers understand this. They understand that the world has changed. They know they can’t rely on companies and institutions to provide them with life-long learning and employment. They understand that they need to take control of their personal brands and how they are perceived in the world. That is why they care more about their GitHub or blog posts than their promotion. That is why they have three passion projects in parallel to their day jobs. And that is why they are changing jobs every 18 months. They intuitively understand that they need to build a passion, they need to be able to create and they need to own their careers.

The tools we use to tell our stories are fit for the old world. They are analog and easily corrupted. The first resume was written in 1482 by Leonardo De-Vinci to explain why he should be hired as a bridge builder. Resumes since evolved as a staple of the industrial age. A resume details what factory you worked at, on what machine, and for how long. They worked well when you could easily understand from them what a person can do (which machine he can run) when the role you needed him to play was similar to his previous role, and when the longer he operated the machine the better he got at it.

A resume is a legacy tool from when careers were linear progressions, so professional storytelling was simplistic. Talent was sourced locally (either within a geography or an industry) so details could easily be vetted and reference checks were sufficient. The biggest revolution to resumes in the past century has been Linkedin, which basically allowed you to upload the same old-fashioned resume into a digital format (and connect it to a cringy news feed). We still operate in this analog fashion, with digitized, monetized versions of these analog tools (think Linkedin), in a complex, global digital world.

As the world around us changes we need a new tool to tell our professional stories. This new tool needs to be built from the ground up for this new world and must fit a few prerequisites.

1. It needs to be built for a global workforce, easily understandable by every person you meet regardless of your overlapping networks.

2. It needs to be digitally native, such that you can be searched and contacted by anyone in the world.

3. It needs to be easily trusted, reducing the friction needed to verify and test information.

4. It needs to be sovereign, owned by the talent, providing them with the ability to tell their stories and move them around the digital world as they see fit.

Many people are trying to create this new tool. They are mainly approaching it as a data collection and data processing problem. They are creating automated talent systems (ATS) with keyword searches. They are creating personality tests or skill assessment tests that try to predict who you are. Or they are creating automated ways to scrape your work and try to understand who you are.

We believe that the new tool won’t come from better data processing but rather from a different alignment of incentives across the talent ecosystem. Most of the information about people is locked in the head of other people that know them. If we can incentivize the people that know you to help the people that want to know you, by providing accurate and truthful information that can be easily trusted and evaluated, we can rebuild the pipes of the talent eco-system in a way that is fit for the digital age.

In part two of this piece, we will explain how aligning these incentives might work and how we can build something new that makes the talent ecosystem much more efficient and cooperative. Stay tuned….

For someone born in a stable society at the nexus of the centralized identity system, questioning the authority of centralized entities seems unintuitive: Why wouldn’t you trust governments and corporations to control your identity, unless you are a criminal or a member of a sanctioned country? Why not allow the parties that perform related services to collect fees?

The fees being charged by the ledgers of the assets and identity have become egregious. The impact on privacy and freedom has become unsustainable. The powerful and ultra-rich have already understood this and are operating in a parallel system - they register their companies in a tax-haven (effectively de-centralizing them), they have dual passports from small Island countries, and are having conversations with countries as sovereign individuals. The tools being built today, and the pressures on society, are democratizing that access to a sovereign identity to the masses.

For example, we base financial trust and opportunity on an identity formula that we call a “credit score”. Try moving from any country to the USA and see how hard it is to rebuild your credit score. It doesn’t matter if you are a 65-year-old billionaire, the moment you land in a country, you have the same credit history and access to capital as an 18-year-old. You have built your identity in one country's system, but the US doesn’t accept that system’s ledger, and you are stuck in the middle trying to explain that you are creditworthy.

A large number of startups are trying to solve this by creating their own version of your identity in their database and allowing you to use it in the country you arrive at; however, this is a patchwork solution to a systemic problem: one where your identity in one country is not portable around the world because it isn’t trusted by other countries.

This system would be different if from the onset, the identity you used in your country of origin was a global digital identity owned by you. You would interact with your bank, car dealer, online service provider, and others with this identity building your credit history directly to the identity you own. By building your reputation on your sovereign identity, you could easily move it from one place to the other and be able to easily navigate a globalized financial system.

Another example: the work visa system was built on a territorial basis, to allow people to travel the world and trade without hurting the local working population while making sure you pay taxes to the local country. If you want to work in your country, you have the government-issued citizenship that comes with a right to work. If you want to work anywhere else, you need to apply based on your country’s relationship with that country. If your country doesn’t have a good relationship with the other country, then you will have trouble getting that visa. The receiving country doesn’t look at you as an individual with unique skills but rather as part of a multi-million person population that is all boxed together.

In a global digital world, this system is falling apart. Digital nomads are working from anywhere without really asking permission (all breaking the law). Countries, like Costa-Rica, are inventing new permissioning systems (nomad visas) so that people can work remotely without worrying about work visas. Companies are being built remote-first, with positions moving between countries at a weekly rate, necessitating that legal departments constantly scramble in search of a solution.

Imagine a world where a country deals with you directly as a sovereign individual. You own your identity: your portfolio of work, experiences, and interests, such as your university degree and the financial assets you directly own. The receiving country can decide that it gives visas to all graduates from university X or people with profession Y without looking at their country of origin. Suddenly a country can interact directly with a person and rebuild the work visa system in a way that fits a digital global economy.

Some countries are already operating this way with the Ultra-rich. They are talking to them directly and negotiating the terms of allowing them to move, work and build a business in their country, on the basis of entrepreneurship or direct investment.

This isn’t theoretical, there are real-world examples where the shift from a right to an asset changed the power dynamics in an industry. Until relatively recently (2008), telecom companies were under no obligation at all to port your number if you switched carriers or moved. Your number was the asset of the phone company, and they leased the number to you.

In 2008 the FCC changed the power dynamic. Your phone number was suddenly your asset (still in the government's database, so not yet fully decentralized), and the Telecom companies had to convince you why you should park it in their system. At any point that you chose, you could leave with your number to another service provider. If you moved, you carried your identity with you to the next provider without having to go back and communicate the change directly with everybody you know. This shift in structure changed the power dynamic in the Telecom industry: when the easy movement of numbers is allowed, there is a 34% increase in customers choosing to switch numbers and a 14% drop in prices paid (link). Moving the power to the customer, by shifting the ownership of the asset, changed the power dynamic.

We can extrapolate that to your friend's list on FB, your Gmail address, or even your social security number. If countries and corporations need to compete every day to convince you not to leave, they need to constantly up their game and provide value.

There are more examples, but the core concept is the same.

We need to rebuild the global identity system from the ground up, and it needs to be built in a way where the individuals are in control, not the governments or corporations. A sovereign identity, recognized by different countries and companies, could allow people to move around with their personal identity and use it wherever needed, without relying on a specific country of origin for approvals. This isn’t a call for anarchism or extreme socialism/capitalism but rather how we can reimagine a global merit-based system that is fit for the digital age. Where individuals are in control and the system is working for their benefit.

One of the major areas of this change is our identity. The basic structure of our identities, who defines them, and who owns them are being disrupted through technological and social changes. Blockchain technology is allowing us to reclaim and own parts of our identity that up until recently were defined and owned by others (governments, corporations, and other organizations) that leveraged their power to collect social and financial advantages. By rebuilding the global identity system from the ground up in a decentralized fashion, individuals can control their identities, move around with their corresponding identifiers and use them wherever needed, without relying on anyone else. Redefining identity ownership will redefine the power structures in society.

If I asked you to prove to me that you are who you claim you are, what would you show me?

You could show me your government-issued IDs (social security number, passport, driver's license). You could show me a company-issued identifier (e-mail address, FB/Twitter/LinkedIn handle). You could show me an asset you own (home address, phone number). You can show me a biometric identifier (face, DNA, fingerprint, retina). Or you could have others (family, friends, your lawyer) vouch that you are who you claim you are, either based on your biometrics (your picture, physical presence) or based on some other information you mutually know.

Not all these identifiers are the same. Some of them are your assets and some of them are your rights. Your government-issued ID, the unique company identifier, or the listing of your asset is a registry in someone’s ledger that is dependent on the security (and ones standing within) of that institution. They give you the right to access that information. A right that if they want, they can cancel and that in most cases you need to pay for (with money, freedom or other assets). Your biometrics are yours; no one can take them away from you; however, they are limited only to the physical world. Once you connect them to a digital identifier, then that connection between the physical and the digital needs to sit somewhere, and most likely that connection will be owned by someone that isn’t you and that you need to pay to use.

How we present ourselves to the world and how others identify us, is a basic building block of human society. To co-operate and build a functioning society we need to know who is in front of us and if we can trust them. For centuries (if not millennia) people have had very little ownership over their identity. They relied on governments, corporations, and other institutions to define and own their identities in ledgers and databases. These organizations leased people’s identities back to them so that they can use them in their day to day in the form of passports, IDs, or usernames. They told us what we are allowed to say about ourselves and what is acceptable by defining the standards of identity. In return for this lease, people paid a fee, gave up their sovereignty, and limited their freedoms. The owner of the asset had enormous power.

The evolution of the blockchain, and more specifically, decentralized identities are allowing us to reclaim our identities back and turn them from a right into an asset. The core technology of the blockchain allows us to write a registration in a ledger, that anyone can trust, but without needing to put your trust in a central entity with interests that often are different than yours. The registration in the ledger is the asset of the person who is listed, and no one can change it without going through a pre-defined mechanism. This is a simplified description of the blockchain, and there are many derivatives of these chains with different balances between security, trust, and efficiency. There is also the very big question of how you connect this digital identifier to a real-world person and how people won’t just trade in their identities or steal them from one another. But at the conceptual level, the blockchain allows you to own a digital asset directly without relying on a 3rd party-controlled system. This is a massive change that is still under-appreciated.

This change of identity from a right to an asset will have huge impacts on society and on the power structure between states, corporations, and individuals. This piece is long enough, so I’ll stop here but in a few days we will publish Part II of this piece with thoughts on the practical implications of this change and how we think it will affect all our lives (Teaser: think of how it changes work visas and working in a global economy, global travel, a global tax system, personal accountability etc.). Stay tuned.