WagmiClub
Powering LATAM gig economy with on-chain proof of work.
About
Why are you participating for Based LatAm? We’re participating in Based LatAm because we believe our platform can bring real value to the gig economy in the region. Latin America has one of the fastest-growing gig workforces, with up to 50% of the labor force in some countries engaged in freelance or temporary work(https://bit.ly/3A20Kjb). However, this growing sector faces challenges such as identity theft and a lack of verifiable work history across different platforms. Our platform addresses these problems by issuing soul-bound badges as proof of work, which are tied to a person’s identity and cannot be transferred or stolen. This gives gig workers in LATAM the opportunity to showcase their skills, build a trusted online presence, and protect themselves from fraud. Additionally, the use of smart wallets ensures that even those unfamiliar with blockchain can participate easily, providing an inclusive, seamless experience. We’re particularly motivated by the fact that identity theft and digital fraud crimes have surged by over 400% in the region since 2020(https://bit.ly/3BTtGua). This is a pressing issue that we’re eager to help tackle by securing digital identities through blockchain technology. Moreover, the Latin American gig economy is vibrant and diverse, making it a perfect testing ground for our solution. By targeting LATAM, we aim to empower a large segment of workers with a more secure and reliable way to showcase their achievements, track their on-chain and off-chain accomplishments, and create a verifiable on-chain resume. Additional Features During the Buildathon, we enhanced our project by integrating Basenames and the Base Smart Wallet. The addition of Basenames allows users to register with familiar, human-readable names instead of complex wallet addresses, simplifying the onboarding process and improving user experience. Furthermore, the integration of the Base Smart Wallet provides a seamless way for non-tech-savvy users to interact with our platform and the broader Web3 ecosystem. These features significantly enhance accessibility and usability for gig workers in Latin America, making it easier for them to showcase their skills and achievements while ensuring their digital identities are secure.
How it's made
What challenges are you focusing on? We are addressing three major challenges in the gig economy community of Latin America with the help of Base, where we’ve deployed a badge contract on Base Sepolia and integrated smart wallets and Basenames to make this possible: Identity Theft and Fraud Prevention: Identity theft and digital fraud have surged in LATAM, with a 409% increase since 2020. Freelancers often invest heavily in building their online presence, only to face identity theft or misuse of their profiles. Fragmented Work Histories: Many gig workers operate across various platforms, making it hard to present a complete and unified work history. Web3 Accessibility for Non-Tech Users: While the gig economy in LATAM is thriving, many workers are unfamiliar with blockchain technology. How does your submission address this challenge? Our platform uses soul-bound tokens (SBTs) minted through our deployed contract on Base Sepolia to combat identity theft. These tokens provide a verifiable and tamper-proof digital identity that workers can own, ensuring their credentials are authentic, non-transferable, and secure from fraud or impersonation. To address fragmented work histories, our platform aggregates on-chain and off-chain achievements into a secure, verifiable on-chain resume that consolidates a worker’s professional history. This helps freelancers demonstrate their capabilities and reputation in a unified way, increasing trust with employers and improving job prospects. Finally, we implemented smart wallets to simplify onboarding and interaction with Web3 for non-tech-savvy users. We’ve also integrated basenames, which provide human-readable names instead of complex wallet addresses, making the sign-up process easier and improving user experience. By deploying our contract on Base Sepolia, we leverage blockchain technology to enhance security, accessibility, and professional reputation-building for gig workers across Latin America. Challenges we ran into Non-Technical: The key non-technical challenge I faced was not being originally from Latin America. Understanding the cultural nuances, economic realities, and unique pain points of gig workers in the region took time and effort. We overcame this by conducting research on the region's gig economy, including statistics on identity theft and digital fraud, as well as interviewing individuals and local organizations to better grasp their needs. Technical: One of the main challenges we faced while building the platform was integrating Basename for resolving ENS subdomains to addresses. This added complexity because many popular tools, like WAGMI, do not support Basename ENS subdomains. It made it difficult to call functions related to user profiles, requiring us to implement custom logic outside the typical development environment(use of thirdweb). Since we weren't using onchainkit, this led to a more complex codebase and increased manual effort. However, successfully integrating Basename significantly improved user experience by streamlining sign-ups and minimizing errors from entering long addresses.