Coordinape wants to modernize resumés with NFT launch

LinkedIn but for Web3?

In the Web2 world, there are limited options for people to showcase work history outside of the traditional resume. One such option is LinkedIn, which tracks job boards, networking, and a static profile as well as some — key word here — skills and achievements. 

While users can connect and share posts with people within their network, the available resources for individuals looking to track their history, success and networking through an online profile is very slim. 

A slew of issues arise when looking at the current offerings. Verifying the accuracy of someone’s online profile poses a significant challenge. It’s difficult to ensure that any skills they’ve received endorsements for are skills the person actually has.

Similarly, updates aren’t easy to manage or find. Profiles tend to remain static, making it challenging to discern the extent of a person’s professional development within a specific role, particularly if they have been with one company for a considerable period of time.

There is also a significant concern regarding data control, giving rise to privacy concerns. Individuals may be uncertain about how their personal information is being used, shared, or stored by a given platform, which can erode trust and raise questions about the protection of user privacy in the digital realm.

Now enter Coordinape, a Web3 platform with a possible solution for your Web2 woes — with work history that is.

It recently announced a soul-bound NFT, dubbed CoSoul, that tracks the work history of its holders on-chain. Each free-to-mint CoSoul is updated monthly, based on the platform’s native token, GIVE. 

Holders have a public profile and are able to show off the amount of public GIVE given to the holder. Public GIVE is a “normalized” version of GIVE and consists of contributions, notes, epochs, organizations and the original GIVE.

A few days after CoSoul’s launch, Coordinape co-founder Zach Anderson told Blockworks that thousands had already been minted, and the numbers kept climbing. 

“I think having like a trustless way to sort of be like, ‘Yeah, I’m a real person who’s here, I’m helping, I’m doing something. I’m not just an airdrop farmer.’ Right? That alone is going to be massive for every DeFi protocol that wants to have tokens and have token voting and not just have to go by ‘who’s loudest in the discord’ or ‘GM?’” adviser Chris Eberle said.

Anderson said some of the people minting CoSouls didn’t have prior experience with Coordinape’s circles. These circles were initially introduced by Coordinape to enable tracking of GIVE and to facilitate the distribution of compensation within DAOs.

Anderson and Eberle believe that despite being initially designed for DAOs, Coordinape’s Circles possess the potential to incorporate a more social element. By introducing the right tools, CoSoul tokens could transform into a dynamic representation of skills and experiences, akin to a “living, breathing CV.”

In fact, Circles didn’t initially come from a DAO itself. It actually stemmed from Anderson’s experience as co-founder of Converge. 

Converge is a “network of practitioners who cultivate impact networks,” according to its website. Anderson said the team at Converge would invoice clients, then put the money in the “middle of the table and have a conversation about who should get what.” At the time, none of the team was salaried and there was no payroll. 

Anderson found that the ability to work through the “micro frictions” helped to build trust and accountability — something the team at Coordinape has tried to copy over to Circles and CoSoul. 

However, there are always challenges, especially with developing technology and sectors. 

“The biggest challenge is going to be prioritizing what are those features that are really going to move the needle,” Anderson said. He also noted that there are not enough “DAOs in Web3 to build a sustainable protocol on top of,” which has compelled the team to explore the use cases for projects such as CoSouls.

And that led Anderson and the team to think about how they could develop CoSouls into something with more real-world applications. Anderson expressed his desire to explore Coordinape beyond its initial purpose of compensation, aiming to develop it into a platform with broader real-world applications.

Anderson provided Blockworks with examples of potential enhancements for CoSoul, such as integrating GitHub or utilizing other tools that can showcase individuals’ work and directly display it on their NFTs.

“The dream future of Coordinape for me is to help companies become a bit more like DAOs,” Eberle said. He wants companies to be able to use Coordinape or CoSouls to allow employees to have more agency, and decentralize companies. 

“I think Coordinape has a real opportunity to make a dent in the way companies can work,” he continued.

The Coordinape team said it envisions the potential for modernizing the “who you know” aspect of networking. Meaning that traditional reliance on in-person introductions may become less crucial when seeking opportunities or connections, both within and beyond the realm of DeFi.

Anderson said that it was “powerful” to build a product that essentially took away the middleman traditionally needed in order to make those introductions. 

“When it works, it makes a million times more sense,” to allow people to show up and contribute talents and be “appropriately rewarded based on that contribution,” Anderson continued. Though he quickly noted that neither the traditional nor more technologically savvy approaches are without faults. 

As for the future, Anderson noted that the Coordinape team is excited to open CoSoul up for collaboration and composability. 

“We’re really excited to collaborate with other people,” he said. He wants to be able to add “interesting data points” outside of Coordinape’s current offerings “as part of what we’re building.”

---

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.