The Friction-less Skill Movement Platform
A permissioned blockchain network built on Hyperledger Fabric
A chromium extension to make sure ownership lies with you at all times
A radical, nah, a logical way to look at Identity of an individual
A gig application to make sure skill movement is possible
We believe liberty is a forever narrow corridor. The narrow corridor suggesting a set of rules for the governance. Enough room to wiggle but not so much as to wander. We may not get it right the first time, but we can always tune the variables(go read about system design approach). Hence, our decision to build the heart and soul of our endeavor as a permissioned decentralized network. We cannot be grateful enough for the efforts of the entire team behind Hyperledger Fabric. When we discovered Fabric, we were building an enterprise solution, and as the idea of The Third Pillar took form, we realized Fabric was the perfect product for our permissioned network.
Hyperledger Fabric is an open source enterprise-grade permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform, designed for use in enterprise contexts, that delivers some key differentiating capabilities over other popular distributed ledger or blockchain platforms.
- One key point of differentiation is that Hyperledger was established under the Linux Foundation, which itself has a long and very successful history of nurturing open source projects under open governance that grow strong sustaining communities and thriving ecosystems.
- Fabric is also interoperable with a lot of other open blockchain networks such as the Ethereum network.
Community (Coming Soon)
- Community is a fork of the Hyperledger Fabric which allows users to create join a Community server. Each Community will have its own set of rules and roles. These servers could be self hosted or The Third Pillar can host it for the community with a small fees.
- Though by default, each community will be part of the SkillsChain Network, the partners/admin can choose to setup an isolated community as well.
- We will leverage what we believe could be two very powerful tools to manage a community; Discord and Roam Research. Discord to handle communications and RoamResearch as an interface and "doubly-linked" knowledge DB.
While the narrow corridor sets up the conditions for the idea of liberty, we believe there is one more pre-requisite, an extremely important one at that: DATA OWNERSHIP. We have removed passwords from our applications and put a magic box inside this crypto (not cryptocurrency, you capital leveraging baboon) extension we call Shield. Corny ? We know. Shield will generate and store your keys on your devices, which ensures you are in control (and accountable), authenticate your sessions on the network applications, encrypt/decrypt private data and generate signatures for validations.
Your keypairs and passwords stay with you. We or anyone who you haven't authorized can never see your private data. We will soon also let you keep a backup of your data from all network applications on your local devices as well.
One password for login into any of the application on the SkillsChain network. Application developers will leverage to handle user login/signup for them, saving time and effort.
We have taken the first steps and we realize there is still a long way to go, and we are always looking for help. At the present the extension is designed to work with applications that people at The Third Pillar have built, Identity and Gigs.
We believe an individual is a representation of their action and action alone and not thoughts. Thoughts are like air, they are all around us and all individuals are capable of observing them at all times, socio-economic advantages aside. These thoughts are not a part of you unless it translates into action. That is when you own that thought. Identity is an attempt to show the world on your behalf, all your actions and derive from those actions, your virtues to partly answer the question: "Who are you?". It will let you create, track and manage digitally verified documents that certify pieces of information about you. All this while you, and only you, decides who gets to access it.
-Who Am I? The Age old philosophical question can be answered if we look at it from a Skill perspective. Our forefathers were called hunters and gatherers first and not "Afrikaans".
-Am not the name that my parents gave me / the religion / caste / country / language am born into. I din't choose them.
-What I choose to become is my identity and it starts with what my virtues are and what I offer to my fellow beings. We try to capture this in our Identity Application as HardSkills, Soft Skills & Virtues (Values in Action).
-Choose one or more document to certify a claim, like your education or demographic identity. A verification request is sent to the concerned organization or community, who then digitally sign it.
-You can also share with the world a validated proof of work for each SkillsChain network community you choose to join.
-Other users or organizations can request validated private data, such as certificates, score cards or payslips and every time you open your information to someone, you are paid in fiat currency.
This might be getting redundant at this point, but we must specify again, that any private data or files that are uploaded to the application is encrypted with Shield and not even the developers or admins or even the government can see them without you sharing it with them.
Gigs is that final piece of puzzle that enables the movement of skill. Each gig is an atomic task either to learn/build a skill or to consume that skill to earn. Building Gigs on top of this permissioned network with validated Identities helps us tackle the labor market frictions of verification, validation, search and match with relative ease.
Since our network is permissioned and community validated, users can trust each other when it comes to their identity and Proof of Work.
Skill Endorsements and Certifications on completion of a gig is captured on the blockchain and shows up on your identity profile thus making your SkillsChain profile a living log of your Skills.
2020 Nobel Laureates, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, used two-sided auction to create a better system for spectrum allocation that worked for both parties involved (state & the market). We are building on the same framework to design a better gig allocation and time allocation of gig workers.
We use a low / no code tech stack to manage and run our communities which will be plugged into the SkillsChain ecosystem soon through Shield.
RoamResearch - a tool for networked thought has become our backend for all our up-skilling activities by acting as a knowledge base, event management etc
All team communications happen through Whatsapp or Discord with the right processes builtin for efficient flow of information in linear or structured way respectively.
