The recruitment industry is broken, with intermediaries charging high fees to introduce suitable employees to businesses seeking to fill vacancies. Whilst this is generally accepted as the price of doing business for long-term appointments, it can be prohibitively expensive for contract or freelance work. Organisations can spend more time and money securing an employee than they do on the work itself.

ChronoBank, a blockchain initiative backed by major Australian labour hire company Edway, is seeking to revolutionise the short-term recruitment sector by creating decentralised mechanisms for employers to access and rank prospective employees. The LaborX exchange, which is built on Ethereum’s smart contracts platform, will enable workers and businesses to connect on a peer-to-peer basis.

Using LaborX, organisations can buy labour directly – in much the same way that Uber connects drivers with those looking for a taxi, or Upwork allows freelancers to access work directly. Moreover, LaborX will include a decentralised reputation system that will enable workers to be rewarded in line with their talent and experience, instead of on a one-size-fits-all basis.

Smart contracts

The LaborX exchange is built on Ethereum’s ground-breaking smart contracts capabilities. Although ChronoBank’s crowdfund is still under way, a significant proportion of the critical work has already been completed. The rewards contract, which handles automatic payment of dividends for token-holders, has been created, as has the exchange contract that will allow trading between different token types on LaborX. This exchange contract code has been implemented within the GUI of the ChronoWallet, allowing users to view offered rates and make trades quickly and easily. It is also possible to view amounts of Labour Hour (LH) tokens to be transferred in fiat equivalents, and to switch between different currencies.

ChronoBank is now into the second month of its crowdfund, having already raised around 1,200 bitcoins as well as significant quantities of other cryptocurrencies (LTC, ETH, ETC, WAVES and NEM). The project also received $1.1 million in venture capital funding from AXL Strategic Partners and has the backing of Edway, a major labour-hire organisation based in Australia.

To participate in the crowdfund or find out more, visit www.ChronoBank.io.