# SkillGraph

## Problem

In the crypto world, not many people use LinkedIn or any other professional social network. There are a number of reasons for it:

1. There is aversion to centralized companies locking you in and your data and monetizing it without benefit to participants/users.
2. The feed is filled with content that is not valuable
3. There is a deluge of in-mail you receive from recruiters and paid members you don't really care about except LinkedIn makes money
4. You get constant request to connect from people you have no idea

A good LinkedIn product is still valuable to everyone because

1. I would like to showcase my on-chain skillset and expose myself to opportunities.
2. I want to know who works at a DAO/company and who has worked there in the past, who in my network is connected to someone at that DAO/company.
3. Instead of LinkedIn selling my data to recruiters, I would like to get compensated.
4. I want to own and have the ability to port my data and social graph.

## Solution

Blockchain is the ideal technology to build a new skills based network because the social graph is open and any number of applications can be built on top of that data. LinkedIn on blockchain wouldn't look like another web 2.0 social network at all yet accomplishes everything that a professional network would do. Going head on with LinkedIn and building a network is a recipe for failure. The only way to disrupt is to build something very blockchain native, using the primitives of the blockchain.

My idea is to use a two pronged approach to build this.

1. Onboard educational organizations in the blockchain space and issue NFT as credentials to all the participants.
2. Partner with companies/DAOs and other orgs and issue an NFT to their employees as POEM - Proof of EMployment.

Once users have these NFTs, we will create a public profile for any ETH address by querying the metadata from the NFTs belonging to that ETH address and showcase the profile. All these NFTs are displayed on user profile, indexed and anyone can search these profiles based on various criteria and stake to interact with them. These profiles are valuable to companies that are interested in recruiting them.

**If we succeed in doing this, we would have essentially built an open professional database. You can then allow for profiles to connect with one another and store the connection on chain so it becomes a truly open network.**

## Traction

1. Secureum - A smart contract security audit organization has committed to issuing NFT/badges to approx 1000 students using our platform.
2. Blockchain School - They have 5,000 students enrolled for their upcoming Polygon course and they will be using our platform
3. We are in discussions with many other blockchain native educational companies
4. We are in discussions with DAOs and other blockchain companies to issue Proof of Employment NFTs

## Why now?

- Blockchains are scalable now (There are a number of good L2 solutions going live. We plan to use Arbitrum to begin with and eventually go multi-chain)
- Wallet infrastructure has gotten better over the years
- NFTs have captured the mindshare of the general public, they are more open to this now
- Momentum around Web3 has started accelerating now

## Second order effects

1. We might be indirectly solving the Identity on blockchain through this system
2. Anyone can build an Upwork like marketplace on top of this graph.
3. We can introduce a job protocol for organizations to post jobs on chain that gets syndicated and shared by job based applications.
4. All profiles are inherently bank accounts. So, social financial applications like splitting a bill, uncollateralized loan etc. can be built on this.
5. You can easily build Earn 3.0 - stake/pay to contact or market to these profiles.