TL;DR

• Talent markets are very inefficient. And AI is bringing even more noise.

• The inefficiency is mostly caused by poor and fragmented reputation data, but blockchain can help fix it by making reputation data accessible and reliable.

• With multiple working apps and 200K+ Web3 users already generating rich data, Talent Protocol is in an unparalleled position to take advantage of this opportunity.

• Talent Protocol unlocks rich reputation data, using both humans and AI to curate it, and makes it accessible to any app via an API and SDK.

• $TAL is the token fuelling the creation and curation of reputation data, and also how the protocol redistributes value to those contributing to the ecosystem.

Problem

What is broken?

Most markets have been disrupted by now. But one stubborn market is still as inefficient as it was 30 years ago: the talent market.

The talent market does a terrible job at matching the right talent with the right opportunities. For tech roles, for example, the average time between a job posting to it being filled currently stands at 62 days. In the age of AI, it shouldn’t be this hard to find talent.

Talent markets are inefficient because individual reputation data is fragmented, mostly unreliable, and often gated. The internet was initially envisioned as a decentralized network for free information flow, but has slowly become dominated by the big tech monopolies that go to extreme lengths to protect their product: user data.

Why should you care?

Inefficient talent markets lead to slow processes and often flawed decision-making. Millions are lost making the wrong talent bets every year.

Inefficiencies also greatly limit talent with less "traditional" backgrounds, which can often be the bets that have asymmetric upside if they play out.

At Talent Protocol we strongly believe that there's no shortage of talent, only market inefficiencies. And the way to more efficiency, is fixing the reputation data problem.

Vision

While looking deeper into why reputation data is so difficult to uncover, we realized one key thing: self-reported profiles, such as LinkedIn, are more representative of a personal brand than real reputation.

Real reputation is how others perceive you, not what you say about yourself. It’s built on observable and verifiable aspects of a person's actions and achievements. In order to reveal real reputation, we need better tools than self-reported profiles. And what technology comes to mind when you think about the words “observable” and “verifiable”? Blockchain, naturally.

Our product vision is to go from self-reported, static resumes to reliable, portable reputation.

Imagine if you could instantly access your reputation data in thousands of social and financial apps, without needing to rewrite your profile in every new platform. A world where professional data is socially reported and peer-reviewed. Imagine the trust of human referrals, but at scale.

If reputation was accurately represented, we could:

• Discover new, but trusted talent much more efficiently.

• Eliminate the need for first interviews or most background checks.

• And, even look into under-collateralized lending and other financial products.

Solution - how we plan to fix the problem

After 2+ years of experimenting in public, we’re kicking-off Talent Protocol V2: a talent ecosystem, powered by AI and secured by blockchain, that unlocks rich reputation data and makes human potential more visible.

If LinkedIn data is mostly self-reported and about personal branding, reputation data unlocked by Talent Protocol is socially reported, verifiable onchain, and curated by humans and AI. It represents real reputation.

The core element of our talent ecosystem is a Web3 protocol that can compete against existing data monopolies. A shared reputation system, connected with a growing number of apps, that can read and write reputation data to the Web3 protocol. From a user’s point of view, their rich reputation data is represented by a portable and user-friendly Talent Passport.

The early days of the internet were also defined by open, standardized protocols, like HTTP for connecting websites, or SMTP for email. But one limitation of web1 protocols is that they weren’t capable of storing data about users — they simply defined how participants could interact with one another. As a result, centralized services stepped in to fill that gap. One example: the SMTP protocol defines how email users interact, but user data lives in Google’s servers.

With blockchain, Web3 protocols can be open and store data. Imagine all of Linkedin’s data, but in a public and interoperable database. We believe blockchain is to data what open source is to code.

Opportunity

Making reputation data accessible and human potential visible will be game changing, for both organizations and talent. And we’re at a pivotal moment for that to happen as work dynamics are shifting rapidly:

1. The need for talent continues to increase as technology advances, and frontier tech is expected to grow 6x until 2030.

2. Talent markets have been inefficient for decades, but they are already becoming much worse. Just imagine how they will perform with a massive influx of AI-generated resumes and credentials.

3. And, to make it all worse, there’s going to be less and less talent available as Josh Bersin (the “granddaddy” of HR Tech) predicts in his latest 2024 Work Predictions.

Adding to the talent trends above, Web3 finally has the necessary infrastructure to go mainstream, including account abstraction, lower transaction fees on L2s, better on/off ramping, among other innovations.

Advantage

Talent Protocol is in an unparalleled position to take advantage of this massive opportunity.

Growing community: Talent Protocol ecosystem has 200K+ Web3 users; the more we scale our ecosystem, the bigger our data moat will be;

Rich reputation data: a unique social graph with a financial value as a proxy for trust between connections ($1M+ of funds already used by builders to support other builders);

Leading brand: first-mover in the intersection of Talent and Web3; supporting builders with Take Off scholarships since 2022.

Experienced team: founders have 12+ years of experience in HRTech and Web3 social.

Working apps: Talent Tokens provided $700K+ worth of reputation until 2023. Today, both Votings, and builder.fi are already adding more rich reputation data to the protocol, and more apps are coming soon.

Protocol

To put it simply, Talent Protocol makes previously unobservable information (reputation) publicly visible and universally accessible.

The key elements of our protocol are: the ReputationOS, the Talent Passport, and the Ecosystem Apps.

ReputationOS

The system that aggregates reliable reputation data, uses both humans and AI to curate it, and makes it interoperable with any app via an API and SDK.

Talent Passport

Reputation is represented by a portable and user-friendly Passport.

The Talent Passport encapsulates both your credentials and your connections. Credentials are any type of achievements or attestations. Connections are a rich social graph, with data about connection weight, length, and value.

Users can Collect other passports for a fee, which is automatically split between different stakeholders (passport holders, supporters and protocol). Collect to support someone you know or to simply bookmark talent.

Ecosystem Apps

Talent Protocol is designed for the next wave of crypto apps, built for a mainstream audience. Entertaining social games and networking apps that embrace the two sides of crypto: social impact and speculation.

The first apps are being developed by the core team (see below) to showcase what’s possible to build. But anyone can build an app that writes/reads data from Talent Protocol, and even apply for builder grants.

Goals App (public beta): we simplified the beta Talent Protocol app, deployed on Celo, since 2021,  to focus almost exclusively on goals. Talent Protocol app is now a Web3 social platform where builders can bet on each other’s goals. There’s also an AI assistant to help you write great goals. Join to find the support you need to achieve your most ambitious goal.

builder.fi (private alpha): a Q&A marketplace, built on top of Base and Farcaster. Discover experts, build your reputation and monetize your knowledge by answering questions from other users. Reach out to us if you want an invite code.

Votings App (coming soon): we’ve been experimenting with an innovative voting mechanism for the past 4 months, also in the beta Talent Protocol app. See here the past 5 votings. We plan to spin off this use case to its own app soon, creating a social betting game on crypto rails to help talent win grants and scholarships.

API-driven Business Model

Talent Protocol makes it easy for builders to integrate reliable reputation data in their apps. We offer them rich reputation data they cannot find elsewhere, and we make it easily accessible to all.

Our ecosystem generates unique data, coming from apps with innovative use cases that reveal new types of reputation data, and write it directly to the protocol.

In addition to unique data, there’s also curated data. Reputation data coming from external data sources approved by the (soon to be created) Talent Protocol DAO, that is curated by both humans and AI. This is publicly available data, but the curation adds value to it.

Onchain data is publicly accessible, but unlimited access to our API is reserved for holders of $TAL.

Changing or influencing the way data is transformed within the ecosystem will require additional fees and/or staking in order to prevent bad actors from engaging with ReputationOS.

Token Economy

$TAL is the fuel powering the creation and curation of rich reputation data.

Our Protocol Rewards redistribute value to those contributing to our growing ecosystem:

• Reviewers: API fees are redistributed to users that manually review passport data.

• Talent: Users earn $TAL rewards every time someone collects their passport.

• Referrals: Apps that facilitate the creation of passports also earn $TAL rewards.

A token is an essential piece of the puzzle, if we want data-driven network effects to exist beyond the scope of one organization.

What’s next?

2023 had both challenges and turning points, but all the lessons learned have crystallized into this clear vision of what to build and how to fulfill our mission. We call it Talent Protocol V2.

Talent Protocol has been building in the intersection of talent and Web3 for almost 3 years. Building strong community and product foundations takes time, patience and discipline. Especially when it involves surviving a bear market.

Luckily we’re backed by some of the most supportive and experienced players in Web3. They’re too many to name here, but we want to highlight partners like Protocol Labs, Celo, Base, GSR, Alliance DAO, Coinlist, Worldcoin, ETHGlobal, Privy or Airstack.

Now, as we prepare for the long expected $TAL token launch in 2024, your support is more important than ever.

Let's play to win!