Opolis - Briefing Document
-- PRE-CALL CHECKLIST ---
General Discovery
Researcher: Jaris James
About the event
- Project: Opolis
- Guests: John Paller, 0xJoshua
- Topic: Decentralized Employment Benefits
- NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE
About our guest speaker
- John Paller, Founder of Opolis. (Twitter: @PallerJohn) (Discord: JohnPaller | Opolis#2670).
- Joshua Lapidus, Executive Community Steward of Opolis. (Twitter: @0xJoshuaSL) (Discord: 0xJoshua#0888).
- Write a short bio about the guest(s) including their role at the project they are speaking about.
- From 1999 to 2001, John Paller was a Division Director for 2 years at Robert Half, one of the leading recruitment and staffing agencies worldwide. John later became the CEO of PeoplePartners, another staffing/recruiting agency for 8 years before he founded Opolis in 2017. Joshua was the Business Development Lead for Lyft from 2018-2019, before becoming the Head of Business Development for Panvala, a sister DAO of ConsenSys. In this role, Joshua secured the first corporate sponsorships for a DAO.
- Before even getting involved in crypto, John’s vision for his HR firm (PeoplePartners) revolved around a vague desire to help “democratize employment,” referring to what he saw as a lopsided social contract where employers have a huge amount of power over employees within U.S. society. Questions started to gnaw at him — why is employment so disproportionate in power and value distribution? Why is healthcare in the United States tied to employment?
- It was while reading more broadly into economics and game theory, in hopes of answering these questions, that John came across Bitcoin from a friend working at a technology startup who told him it was the future of money. John read the white paper, and didn’t fully understand it, but bought some. Buying some Bitcoin on a whim was, however, not John’s only forewarning of blockchain destiny. While attending a small entrepreneurship conference in California in early 2014, he met Dmitry Buterin, Vitalik Buterin’s father. There was only around 30 people there, so it was a very intimate affair. Dmitry and John bonded as fathers, and quickly became friends.
- Due to this chance connection, John had a direct line to Vitalik’s father, who made “social media posts on the Ethereum white paper and the ICO.” This meant that he had exposure to the project from an early stage and, in early 2016, asked Dmitry to connect him with his son, Vitalik, who “was kind enough to spend several hours with John to talk about his ideas for use cases. John stated, “In hindsight, he was very gracious because my use case ideas were terrible” — John didn’t understand decentralization at all,” he recounts, adding that his mind was still stuck in the old world of centralized corporate structures.
- John eventually did have “the lights go on,” at which point he decided to do a full pivot in life. “It was almost kind of like my version of a midlife crisis,” John explains regarding his sudden decision to sell his business, effectively turning his back on a successful career to go full time web3.
- John decided to capitalize on the steady rise of self-employment by creating a decentralized cooperative to automate the employee payroll/benefits experience. John stated, “The rate of self-employment is accelerating even faster now due to the pandemic. The estimates are 90 million people by 2028 in the U.S. workforce alone.” Though the share of independent workers is rising, John sees an untapped niche in the market for human resource systems. From data management to identity verification and credentialing, “all of it is designed with the corporation as the customer — they are farmers of talent and the talent is the product,” John explains. On the blockchain side, the phenomenon of decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, is set to benefit from, and offer opportunities to, this growing crop of independent workers. Play-to-earn games, the increasingly popular framework of blockchain games that allow players to make money within the economies of video games, are also set to burgeon. All of this poses challenges for governments, which can benefit from the arrangement where most people have an ongoing, full-time job “because employment is a great way to make sure that taxes are paid,” whereas managing the reporting of independent contractors is much more difficult. “Imagine a world where you work in 20 countries simultaneously with people that share your values, share your worldview, and you don’t have to worry about any of the jurisdictional compliance.”
- What are some notable achievements that increase their web3 reputation?
- John Paller is the founder of ETH Denver, and Joshua is the Executive Community Steward. ETH Denver is a global innovation festival, which is currently the largest web3 summit in the world.
About the project
- What is the general positioning of the project? i.e. DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, governance.
- General Position: A member-owned digital employment cooperative. Opolis utilizes DeFi, DAOs, and governance.
- What is the value proposition of the project? How does it clearly differentiate itself from others in the web3 space?
- Opolis is the first project of its kind. Opolis provides top-tier insurance benefits, along with W2 and payroll for the US web3 world, making sure that their members are tax compliant and insured. Service members are also owners of the service, and receives a share of the EOY profits.
- How does it benefit it community members and general web3 communities at large?
- There is a need in the web3 space for employment benefits and Opolis provides this for US citizens with high quality nation-wide Insurance. The members that process their payroll through the cooperative are also owners of the cooperative.
- Is it bridging blockchains, protocols, tools, communities, etc.?
- Opolis has a utility token called $WORK that is used for governance and staking inside the Commons. The token is built on top of Ethereum and has recently bridged over to the Polygon blockchain. Opolis partners with Gitcoin to help freelance developers get health & employment benefits.
- Does it bring a unique vision or approach to solve challenges in web3?
- Absolutely! Opolis helps web3 contributors located in the US to pay their taxes, while receiving the same high quality benefits as a traditional salaried employee.
- How does it improve the web3 ecosystem?
- The Opolis Employment Commons adds validation to web3 work. Web3 contributors can use their paystubs from the Opolis Cooperative to get a lease, a car loan, or a mortgage.
- Generally, how does the product work?
- Provide basic information about the product
- Become a member of the Employment Commons Cooperative on the Opolis website.
- The Employment Commons help you form an LLC that elects S Corp so you can be an employee of your own entity.
- Fund your Employment Commons account with the amount you want your company to pay you.
- Your company gets an invoice for your payroll.
- Opolis charges a 1% fee on every invoice for making sure that the members on their platform is tax compliant, and receives high quality benefits.
- The 1% fee is not a sunk cost because Opolis is not just a service provider, by using their service you actually become a member/owner of the service. When there are profits to be distributed at the end of the year, you are going to get a share based off of the other members of the cooperative.
- You receive a W2 in January and pay stubs twice a month.
- Details of product stemming off high level overview
- Opolis provides health benefits, W2 payroll, and pay stubs for members of it Employment Commons. The price to join the commons is a one-time fee of $20. The only other catch to remaining in the Employment commons is to fund your account with the minimum wage of a salaried employee two times per month. Invoices are sent out to your LLC on every 1st and 3rd Friday of every month, and you receive the payment that you funded for yourself as an S Corp Employee of your LLC via direct deposit. Tax withholdings and benefits are taken care for you by the Opolis team, and 1% is taken out of every deposit from every member of the commons to fund this. At the end of the year, profits are split amongst every member of the commons, because members are also owners of the Opolis project.
- Outline a few mid to high-level topics about the product
- Opolis provides the same benefits as traditional salaried employees for web3 entrepreneurs. Opolis is powered by the $WORK token, and the token is only available for members of the Employment Commons with governance and staking being its only utility, this should protect the price of the token. Opolis is also the only project of its kind; Opolis adds validity for crypto earning entrepreneurs in the US by providing health insurance, pay stubs, and W2s.
- Results of the product so far
- Opolis was launched Q1 2021, and is providing top-tier health benefits, W2, and pay roll for crypto entrepreneurs in every state of America except for Arizona. The $WORK token was updated and re-launched and can be staked on the Opolis platform in the Employment Commons.
- Practical applications of product.
- Detail current functionality of project, where it is deployed, TVL.
- $WORK is the governance token for Opolis Employment Commons Members, and is deployed on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchain. The max supply is unlimited, and the max supply is currently in circulation. The TVL is $213,899 on Sushiswap.
- Current and potential use cases.
- Opolis is used for providing health benefits, W2, and payroll for web3 freelancers. By providing these benefits, Opolis allows the members of its Commons to function in the physical world to get mortgages, leases, car loans, and high quality health care.
- Outline steps for a beginner to get started.
- Must be a US citizen or have US work authorization.
- Must live in a state that’s not Arizona.
- Must make at least the minimum exempt wage of your state, which is the minimum wage of a salaried employee, which is higher than the minimum hourly wage. (IRS Requirement).
- Set up a zoom meeting for an Opolis Introduction with Julian via the Opolis website.
- Go to https://commons.opolis.co/accounts/signup/ to complete the onboarding process.
- Token economy.
- $WORK is on the Ethereum Mainnet and Polygon. The $WORK token is not sold to the public or investors, it is rewarded to Commons Members for certain patronage activities, such as, payroll consumption, member referrals, and staking.
- Any recent, meaningful updates to the project.
- The $WORK token was upgraded for functionality and security reasons and redistributed to the Commons Members.
- Roadmap/future applications
- Technical updates
- The $WORK token was re-launched due to a sybil attack on the credit card processing provider on the Coalition Member signup page. At no point was the token infrastructure or ANY user information compromised. This credit card fraud allowed a few nefarious individuals to procure hundreds of Coalition Memberships and receive significantly more $WORK than any single Member should have at this point of the distribution. In order to resolve this issue and protect against future exploits, the Commons will be reissuing $WORK Rewards tokens to Members and putting in place anti-sybil protections. The new version of $WORK Rewards is simpler in design. This gives Members more options for how to use their tokens. For example, the new version is easier to bridge to and use on Mainnet Ethereum.
- Community updates or changes
- Opolis teams up with Xero to provide Opolis members with a flexible, cloud-based accounting platform to run their business from anywhere in real-time. Business owners can get an up-to-date view of their financial position, spend less time finding and entering information, and have the necessary financial information on hand to grow their business. Opolis formally partners with Gitcoin to help freelance developers get health & employment benefits.
About the ecosystem
- Find one or two things the speaker has shared in the past about the future growth, impact of web3?
- John stated that blockchains and cryptocurrencies are tools for self-sovereignty. Web3 represents liberty, and gives individuals their own empowerment. Self-employment is rising rapidly. In order to create mass adoption for crypto, it’s going to be through payroll and employment.
- How will their project(s) contribute to the evolution and adoption of web3?
- Opolis will expand the adoption of web3 within the US by validating web3 contribution as a “real occupation.” Opolis secures its members with health insurance, W2 tax compliance, and paystubs to function seamlessly between the physical and the digital world.
- What are some web3 projects/tools that the project integrates to create a more robust ecosystem?
- Opolis is integrated with a DAO and a governance token called $WORK. $WORK isn’t sold to the public or investors. The token serves as a unit of account for patronage and as a utility token for governance and staking inside the Commons. You must be a formal Commons Member to receive the full value of the token. Commons Members are rewarded with $WORK for certain patronage activities: payroll consumption, Member referrals, and staking.
Anything else?
- On the ground level, Opolis is already operational and offers independent worker-members in the U.S. a host of services. The basics include health, dental and vision insurance available in various tiers to provide security for the worker, their spouses or entire families. For example, the combined health, dental and vision insurance premiums range from $313 to $557 per month for the worker alone, or from $1,125 to $1,845 for the whole family.
- In addition to insurance, Opolis offers the opportunity to elect various retirement savings plans, methods to keep salary consistent even when taking time off, and tools to manage tax deductions for things such as wellness expenses.
- On the services side, there is the possibility to create an integrated payroll from various income sources, which streamlines taxation and accounting and opens up the possibility to take a salary in cryptocurrency.
- The cooperative is currently operational in only the U.S., but John envisions that it could become a “global public utility” in a way similar to internet infrastructure or cryptocurrency networks.
- “The goal is to become a global public utility infrastructure for employment — at that scale, it doesn’t even need a name — it would operate similarly to how people think about Ethereum layer one. It’ll just be a thing that is and does.” - John Paller
Resources
References
- Website: https://opolis.co/
- Medium: https://medium.com/opolis
- Opolis (Twitter): https://twitter.com/opolis
- John Paller (Twitter): https://twitter.com/pallerjohn
- Joshua Lapidus (Twitter): https://twitter.com/0xJoshuaSL
- John Paller (Disocord): JohnPaller | Opolis#2670
- Joshua Lapidus (Discord): 0xJoshua#0888
- John Paller Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpaller
- Joshua Lapidus: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshualapidus
Sources
- Bankless AMA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G8IT877too
- Opolis & Gitcoin Partnership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y1f2oT-RWM&t=842s
- $WORK Rewards How-To GUide & FAQ: https://opolis.co/work-support/
- AMAwith Joshua Lapidus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QyHeZLgsh8&t=1268s