Yesterday, we held an AMA with Max Uper, the founder of tr3butor, to answer questions around the plans and vision for tr3butor. The AMA took place in the #general channel on Discord. If you weren’t able to join, here is the full recap:
Max: Hey everyone!
Max, the founder of tr3butor is on the line. Happy to see everyone here! This is the very first AMA for us.
I’ll do my best to answer all the collected questions and inspire you to join our journey, as community-first is not an empty word for us.
A little about how this will go: we’ve collected questions you sent in chats, comments, and DMs. For convenience, they are divided into several blocks: general questions, vision, team, product, DAO, and other questions that did not fit into any of the categories.
The channel will be on mute while I’m answering them. After that, we will open a channel, and you will be able to ask questions that were not included in our shortlist.
The best questions will get the opportunity to mint ‘Explorer’ or ‘Contributor’ OAT, whichever one you prefer.
Let’s go!
Section 1: General
The first set is dedicated to general questions about the t3butor, team, and our motivation.
Q: What is tr3butor?
Max: We are building the perfect contributor management platform with on-chain identity, reputation, matching engine, and payment tools for DAOs, coupled with a vibrant and supportive community.
We’ve started by addressing one of the major problems for every founder or DAO operator: talent recruitment.
Utilizing community-powered referral recruitment, we are ensuring a win-win-win situation, where organizations boost their speed and quality of talent sourcing, talents get hired, and communities are rewarded for their recommendations.
Recently, we have launched our Quest Board, with more than 70 organizations onboarded and a variety of ready-to-apply quests ranging from jobs to grants and hackathons.
Besides the Quest Board, we launched a Contributor Wiki v0.1, Twitter, Discord, Mirror, and a newsletter. We’ve also built and strengthened our relations with industry-leading advisors, foundations, social DAOs, talent communities, education providers, tech partners, and KOLs.
Q: How did you get the idea for tr3butor?
Max: Being in crypto since 2014, I have personally seen a massive demand for talent and suffered from the inability to hire cool people to the team first-hand, but at that time, I did not perceive this as a market opportunity or a problem that I was ready to solve.
However, in 2019, my partner and I opened a recruiting agency called Frontrunnrs, where we hired web3 talent for clients like Zerion, BitFury, xDeFi, HodlHodl, Aurora, Naga, Bnk to the Future, etc.
By the middle of 2021, the hiring problem has become the #1 problem for all the founders and DAO operators I know. It became clear that we have to build a platform like a tr3butor to help hundreds of companies solve their hiring challenges and help talents find their next meaningful opportunity.
After participating in the DAO Global Hackathon last December, we received validation of the idea and massive support for our project. Thus the tr3butor began.
Q: What’s your background in web3?
Max: I have a degree in financial economics. In 2013, I learned about Bitcoin and fell in love with the concept of decentralization. My thesis in 2016 was about the future of cryptocurrencies and their role in the global economy. So far, all predictions have come true 🙂
Despite my financial education, I have been working in management consulting and strategic marketing since 2014. In 2017, I became the Humaniq project’s CMO. After that, I founded the Byzantium agency, which helped conduct over $150M worth of token sales for clients such as NAGA, BANKEX, Crypviser, and others.
Since 2019, I have been a co-founder at Frontrunnrs, which I already wrote about above. In addition, I have spoken at more than ten conferences, attended more than 100 events in 30 countries, and served as a consultant and advisor for hundreds of projects.
Q: In simple words, how can all of us benefit from tr3butor?
Max: I like this one ;)
First of all, you can search for the best vacancies, grants, bounties, and hackathons curated by us. All the opportunities are from great companies and projects, and we guarantee that there are no and never will be companies that do not benefit the industry on our platform 🏆
The second benefit for the contributors, which is not available yet (but will be soon), is the on-chain CV and verifiable contribution history, which will allow you to easily prove your competencies, your experience and receive additional benefits that were not possible before — for example, airdrops from projects that want to attract an audience of contributors. We are already negotiating with some of them and look forward to bringing joy to you.
For those who have talented friends or a large audience (influencers or communities), everyone will be able to benefit from the community referral program by simply sharing jobs and other opportunities from tr3butor and earning rewards upon successful hire.
If there are employers among us, then there is a clear benefit in increasing the quality and speed of recruiting people to the core team or contributors to DAO.
Q: Tell us about your team. Where are you from?
Max: Today our team consists of six people, five originally from Ukraine 🇺🇦
Now, we have two guys still living in Ukraine — Head of Research SkyNetUa and Technical Lead bostonleek.eth.
Our Head of Product Oleg and DAO Success Manager Viktoriia live in the Netherlands and Poland, respectively.
Our Content Writer and Researcher cy is an American who lives in Thailand.
And I am also Ukrainian, living in Lisbon currently.
Every team member has at least ten years of experience in their professional field, and each of us is a big fan and ambassador of web3 and its values.
The first batch of questions is covered! We’ll highlight our mission, vision, and plans in the next couple of questions.
Section 2: Mission, Vision & Plans
Q: What are the global problems in crypto? What do you want to get rid of?
Max: There are tons of problems globally in crypto. We don’t aim to solve all of them but focus on the problems related to onboarding new contributors to web3, helping existing contributors to find their next epic challenge, and improving coordination between contributors and organizations in web3.
The first problem that we are now solving is the problem of recruiting. This is one of the most significant pain points in the industry. Accordingly, our community recruiting solution seems to us the most optimal and promising in the context of how the entire web3 ecosystem lives and works today.
The contributors’ problem we solve is finding and selecting the best opportunities for professional development and participation in the industry — from small events and bounties to grants and hackathons.
Q: What are your plans for the next 6–12 months? Some cool news, alpha leaks, hints?
Max: We have quite ambitious plans for the next 6–12 months, but we are focusing primarily on what we want to achieve in the next three.
Firstly, there will be a relaunch of the platform with a new design, which is absolutely unique for similar platforms. And it seems to me that this will be our unfair advantage, which will immediately become head and shoulders above all other competitors.
Contributor profiles, company profiles, and referral profiles will already be available in this product version.
We will launch our community recruitment module in September with 5 leading companies in their niches that will offer significant rewards to contributors for helping to source talent for them.
In addition, we plan to conclude the ‘NFT You Cannot Buy’ campaign and distribute the first NFTs to launch pre-governance and truly be co-owned and co-operated by contributors.
In terms of stats and numbers, over the next 6–12 months, we plan to grow at least 5–10x times in terms of the number of organizations listed on the platform, available opportunities, Twitter followers and the Discord community
In addition, we have plans for a vast number of unique partnerships and the closing of pre-seed and seed rounds. And over the next 12 months, we will try to launch our on-chain profiles, transfer the entire system to decentralized rails and launch a full-fledged DAO that will influence the roadmap and strategic decisions of tr3butor.
P.S. The next few months will be FULL of cool announcements and releases, I promise
Q: What’s your long-term vision for 3–5 years?
Max: No complex system was initially designed as a complex system. Therefore, according to the lean methodology, our primary goal is to move iteratively. We aim to increase the number of services we provide and the number of problems we solve.
In 5 years tr3butor will be the most significant talent community and professional network in Web3 consisting of an ecosystem of products that facilitate education, onboarding, coordination, and cooperation of Web3 builders.
The second block of questions — is done! Next — probably, my favorite set of questions — about the product.
Section 3: Product
Q: What’s the difference between tr3butor & other job boards in the market?
Max: We hope that in 6 months, the answer to this question will be obvious, but now I will answer this one 😉
We call tr3butor a ‘job board on steroids’ for a few reasons:
First of all, it is web3 native, which means we have not only vacancies but also bounties, grants, hackathons, and other native web3 opportunities for contributors.
Secondly, we really care about our users and want to make the search, selection, and application process as easy and friendly as possible. Something that is not currently on most other job boards. 🏄♀️
Thirdly, all the talent opportunities on the platform are verified and curated by us — you can be sure that you are applying for a cool and worthy company with a good culture, decent salaries, and a mission that we personally believe in.
For us, the job board is a key and integral part of the product, but it is not the whole product. We don’t want this to be a site you visit every year when you need to find a job.
We want it to be a community where you learn, have fun, make friends and partners and receive offers that match your goals, personal mission, and values the best way.
And finally, this is community-powered recruitment that allows you to share open opportunities and receive rewards for successful hires.
Q: I see the buttons “Share and earn” / “Refer and earn” — do they work? How I can earn with it? 💸
Max: You may not only see them, but you can already use them!
At the moment, both “Share and earn” and “Refer and earn” are in test mode. For now, you cannot receive a monetary reward for sharing and referring your friends. But we celebrate everyone who uses these features and will reward them. In a few weeks, we will be launching a new Genesis NFT’s OAT that will reward the use of these two features.
And around the end of September, we will launch the first 5–10 companies with real crypto-rewards for recommending friends for their vacancies. These will be the leading companies, and we promise that your friends will be grateful to you if you help them get a job in one of these companies.
In the future, you will earn $3–30K from each successful placement that you help organize.
Q: I often hear about SBT, digital Identity, reputation, and on-chain CV. Do you plan to implement smth like that? It would be cool.
Max: I’m glad that you, like us, are in a bubble where you can hear about these technologies. We believe in each of these and plan to gradually implement these technologies in tr3butor.
We followed the concept of SBT and worked on it long before Vitalik formulated it in his paper. We plan to use them in tr3butor as soon as we are ready for it. We focus on specific value for our users — contributors, communities and employers. We will implement on-chain CV, verifiable contribution history and other features related to digital identity and SSI (self-sovereign identity) over time.
The first thing we started working on is the on-chain CV and the ability to create a web3 contributor profile, where you connect your wallet and get your score depending on the credentials that this wallet has and accumulate your reputation pseudonymously or openly, as you wish.
Hopefully, we covered your qs about the product. Now, your most expected set — our Genesis NFT campaign
Section 4: Genesis NFT
Q: What is Genesis NFT, and what’s in it for me? It looks like NFTs are not so popular in 2022. Why did you choose the NFT format?
Max: First of all, we’re familiar with the NFT concept since 2017, and we are not responsible for the 2021’s hype around it (i promise!). So we consider NFTs in their initial sense — as an ownership certificate and a beautiful way to reward contributions and distribute power.
As a tribute to Web3 builders and our early adopters, we’re introducing the tr3butor Genesis NFT.
The tr3butor Genesis NFT will act as an enhanced pass into the ecosystem we’re creating. While our platform will be open to everyone, holding our NFT will unlock many exclusive privileges within our ecosystem.
To get Genesis NFT, you need to collect at least 3 out of 9 possible OATs. OAT is an on-chain achievement token. In fact, this is a free NFT that can be obtained for some on-chain or off-chain achievements (e.g., holding some tokens, having some credentials, performing simple tasks like following Twitter, etc. )
For now, we have 4 OATs available:
’Early bird’ — there were only 1000 of them for early community members, and it is already minted out. #🐣│claim-early-bird
’Explorer’ — OAT for contributors who have participated in legendary Web3 events (e.g. ETHDenver) and holders of the NFT certificates from the web3 educational platforms (e.g. _buildspace). #🌐│claim-explorer-oat
’Contributor’ — OAT for contributors holding NFTs and ERC-20 tokens of the most ‘talented’ communities in Web3, such as DeveloperDAO or Opolis. #💠│claim-contributor
’Participator’ — OAT for web3 contributors who have taken part in Web3 Contributor Survey. #🧠│claim-participator
’Innovator’ — OAT that we give out to anyone who has either deployed a smart contract or voted in a DAO. #💡│claim-innovator
The following OATs will be used to reward contributors in the tr3butor community. These are the people who will help to attract more users and partners, share our talent opportunities with friends and subscribers, will help us improve our product and community 🦾
Also, we have prepared a few (so far) secret tasks that will help everyone earn their NFT genesis.
Q: Why did you launch the Web3 Contributor Survey? How can it help the industry?
Max: We started W3CS for several reasons:
The first and main reason is that we, as people with extensive professional experience, sincerely believe that the market in which you cannot make data-driven decisions is not mature enough.
The more data you have, the more quality decisions you can make, the more sustainable business you can build, the more long-term benefits for all market participants. 🏆
The second reason is more egoistic. Based on this research, we are going to improve our own product and marketing hypotheses in order to provide you with the best possible service and experience.
Thirdly, W3CS helps us to partner up with a large number of important infrastructure players and get allies who will support us for many more years on our way.
We are making these results available to everyone as a public good to build our reputation as a project that is not just trying to extract value from the market, but also improve it in the long run and provide mass adoption.
Go to #🧠│claim-participator after AMA and take part in the survey!
Q: I’ve got just 1 OAT. And for me, it looks tricky to meet the requirements of 3 OATs for 1 NFT. I’m not a member of communities like Developer DAO etc. Will you provide other chances for ppl like me to get the Genesis NFT?
Max: The NFT campaign is designed so that every web3 contributor can get our NFT with some effort. If you have just one OAT and it is a Participator for W3CS, then you shouldn’t worry.
You will still have the opportunity to get at least 2–3 OATs just by making useful contributions to tr3butor (e.g., promoting us as a platform, sharing our vacancies during the community recruitment campaign, and helping our community to grow and prosper).
So thank you for embarking on this brave journey and we believe you will all get the 3 OATs you deserve.
Q: Are you planning some kind of ambassador program? I would like to contribute somehow. For example, I’m good at community management. How can I help you?
Max: Of course, any talented person who wants to be a part of tr3butor and help us grow will have the opportunity to contribute.
We will reward such people with either Genesis NFT or real rewards in the form of crypto, invitations to events, swag, etc. So you can start contributing now and be sure that you won’t be left without a reward 💎
Congratulations! We’re done with Genesis NFT questions. Now, let’s speak about our DAO & token 👀
Section 5: DAO & Token
Q: You mention ‘co-owned and co-operated by contributors’. Do you mean you’re a DAO? WDYT about DAOs?
Max: I strongly believe in DAO as the next stage of organization development. I believe that with the help of DAOs, we can build more fair, independent, and scalable institutions — from educational to investment ones. 🤝
Of course, we plan to make tr3butor one of the biggest and most successful DAO in the industry. But since we have been deeply immersed in crypto and web3 for a very long time, we understand that a DAO launched at the wrong time can become a factor that will kill the project. Therefore, we approach this very accurately.
The foundation of tr3butor DAO will be built with the help of Genesis NFT. Full decentralization and transition to a pure DAO are planned no earlier than in a year when we find a product-market fit, gain a critical mass of users and be ready for project tokenization.
Q: Do you plan a testnet?
Max: We are not planning a ‘testnet’ because we are not a protocol. We plan to use technologies that have been battle-proved and have shown their scalability.
However, we are going to use the power of community to test out everything that we launch, like the Share & Earn feature. Those who are ready to help us in testing and improving our product will definitely be rewarded.
Also, NFT holders will be able to be the first ‘testers’ of our On-chain CVs and other cool features in the future.
Q: Wen token?
Max: We are not ready to share any details of tr3butor TGE. The only thing we can promise is that the token won’t be launched before we find a product-market fit and gain a critical mass of users.
Tokenomics is being developed in partnership with the brightest minds in the industry, and we are committed to making it as healthy and beneficial as possible for everyone in the ecosystem.
No more questions about tr3butor (but you have the opportunity to ask more at the end of the session), but we had a lot of questions about working in crypto, let’s answer them too :)
Section 6: Working in Crypto
Q: What personal skills should I have to be successful in the web3 industry?
Max: In addition to hard skills and deep understanding of web3 philosophy and technologies, I would name the following three traits as key success factors:
1/ Optimism
You will go through despair, pain, scam, rekt, disappointment, crypto winters, etc. And you really need to be an optimist and believe in the industry in order to successfully go through this :pain:
2/ Curiosity
Crypto is a dark forest, so without curiosity, you won’t be able to walk in really deep. Curiosity is one of the most important skills I recommend developing.
3/ Openness
All the coolest things in the industry like Defi, NFT, GameFi, etc., were something that a group of crazy people were doing. And everyone else was laughing at them. And those who first stopped laughing and started trying something new, they were the winners.
Therefore, I wish you to always remain open. And if you see someone laughing at someone, maybe the person being laughed at will be right (and rich) in a year.
Q: What crypto roles are in most demand? Where are most of the opportunities in crypto? Which cool companies are interested in hiring?
Max: This question is too general. I will try to answer based on my experience as someone who has helped dozens of companies hire employees over the past few years.
There is always a demand for engineers, especially those who write secure smart contracts — Solidity, Rust Engineers. 🛠️
There is always a demand for Front-End Developers and Full-Stack Developers who can build a project from scratch.
Strong growth and huge demand for Product Managers and UI/UX Designers. We urgently need cool product people who can bring web2 standards, and allow web3 products to stop being something funny for a small bunch of geeks, and become something that can really get millions and millions of users.
Q: What blockchain is the most promising for getting a job? 💸
Max: It is difficult to get a job in the blockchain lol.
But if your question is ‘what ecosystem is the most promising to work with?’, I would say that these are Ethereum and L2 solutions that are currently under development like ZkSync. From L1, I personally believe in NEAR only, but this is not financial advice and I could be wrong.
Q: Are you hiring? Do you need some help from me?
Max: YES, we are hiring!
We haven’t posted open roles yet, but we are hiring a Community Lead, Content Writer, and Business Development people, so if you’re one of them — feel free to send me your CV and portfolio in DM.
And the last set of questions that we could not place in any of the categories. Let’s go!
Section 7: Other Questions
Q: I’m super excited about web3, but atm I’m new to it. Pls provide some tips on where to start and what to learn.
Max: I always recommend beginners start with the fundamentals.
Bitcoin and Ethereum whitepapers are a must. As well as Melanie Swan’s book “Blockchain’s Blueprint for a New Economy” and “How to DeFi” by CoinGecko.
And I highly recommend studying the materials from our Contributor Wiki.
Q: Which Twitter influencers, newsletters, or sources would you recommend to stay up-to-date with the industry?
Max: It’s hard to name all of them. I’d recommend following me on Twitter, and following the people I follow. And DYOR before following anyone.
Q: What are some of your favorite crypto tools/apps? What would you like to share?
Max: I’m working too much to have free time to explore new apps and tools.
But here is the list of what I use on a constant basis:
- Metamask
- Coingecko
- Zerion
- Galaxy
- Binance
- Matcha.xyz
- Sushi
- Dune Analytics
- Curve
- Looksrare
Q: Where do you get your energy/motivation from? Does work-life balance exist in crypto? Sometimes I just don’t want to turn on my laptop.
Max: It’s a hard question, and everyone should answer it themselves. I get my energy and motivation from being ambitious enough and not rich enough to do nothing, lol.
So I just wake up, meditate and start working every single day. Sometimes I feel like shit, sometimes I don’t want to touch my laptop, too. Then I just meditate, open my laptop, and start working.
Work-life balance exists, and you should take your time during crypto-winters to chill and relax, cause during bull market you don’t have any work-life balance. You have a work-trade balance, but no life in this equation.
Q: What future do you see for web3?
Max: Unfortunately, I can’t see the future. So let’s ask someone who possibly can: midjourney 😄
Thank you for all your questions! Hopefully, I was able to answer them and give you more clarity on what we’re building and why you should join us on this journey 🙂
Now, we’re opening up the channel again for any extra questions you may have.
Q: The question is not really about web3 or development. How do projects find moderators for social networks? Is it possible to get a paid job, for example, if you know Discord well, set up bots, and prevent scammer attacks but do not have the skills of a community manager?
Max: Good question!
I would go and apply for 5–10 community manager vacancies to find out if you’re good enough or need to develop some specific skills.
Also, you can start contributing to several DAOs for free and gain the experience you need to get a paid job.
Hint: you can start here in tr3butor’s discord 🙂
Q: Thanks for the AMA 🤝🏻 I want to ask if we are not getting any OAT out of 9 OATs, can we buy them off any marketplace? Are they listed, And can I still get the web3 survey OAT? Or am I late😭
Max: You’re not late. Go ahead to 🧠│claim-participator, participate and claim your OAT 🙂
We can’t restrict people from selling their OATs, but it’s not something we expect them to do:)
About tr3butor
tr3butor’s mission is to match brilliant contributors with the most exciting Web3 opportunities, by creating a powerful contributor platform co-owned and co-operated by contributors.
Contributors can already explore and apply to the exciting opportunities from 70+ leading organizations in Web3 through the tr3butor Quest Board.
These include grants, bounties, hackathons and full-time positions from a diverse range of organizations such as Alchemy, Algorand, Balancer, Binance, Chainlink, ConsenSys, Ethereum Foundation, Filecoin, GitCoin, Lens, Maker, NEAR, SSV Network, Starkware, The Graph, Zerion, zkSync, and others.
The Quest Board is powered by community-driven referral recruitment, where anyone can earn rewards by sharing the open positions or recommending the right candidates.
Here’s how you can get involved now. Come join in on the fun! 💖
- Read our detailed Public Announcement to learn more about tr3butor and our vision
- Hop into our Discord, take part in the Web3 Contributor Survey and claim the Participator OAT
- Follow us on Twitter and turn on notifications 🔔