UCG program: Matriz

[alexsotodigital]

Dear Astar community,

I’m excited to be here, this being my first interaction in the forum!
I’m Alex, and I co-founded Matriz. We would like to apply for the Unstoppable Community Grant.

Matriz is a Dapp that offers a membership to freelancers to access insurance, work tools and resources that allow them to boost their professional careers. Freelancers take advantage of the economy of scale of a collective to be able to make wholesale purchases, create community funds and access professional support services.

The project began in Mexico, where we have already established a legal entity (cooperative) to also be able to offer the fiscal and administrative management service to freelancers, which would allow us to receive their payments, make invoices, comply with tax regulations and deposit the net salary into the bank account.

Background

Matriz was inspired by Smart.coop, who have been running a federation of professional cooperatives for a couple of decades. We have also learned from the work done by Opolis, Guilded.coop, Freelancers Union, Enspiral, etc., where the pattern is repeated: a collective of independents seeking to mutually benefit.

We have been working in Mexico for 2 years, where we defined our dynamic governance model, did field research, co-designed a series of MVPs and built a sense of community.

We are now in a stage of expansion, where we would like to add more people to these agreements in order to reach the critical mass necessary to be economically sustainable.

Frutal Web House in Ethereum Mexico 2024

In September 2024, a Matriz team attended the Frutal Web House, a hacker house sponsored by Astar, where we were working on a Hackathon within the framework of Ethereum Mexico.

@Juminstock was our mentor in the Soneium track and with him we were working on an MVP that is currently live on the Minato testnet. Here the repository:

Github:

(https://github.com/Matriz-Coop/Matriz-Code)

Our Mission

Matriz has the great mission of sustaining large-scale mutualization.

We hope that it will serve as a common infrastructure between freelancers who seek to increase the impact of our work and our quality of life through collaboration among ourselves. A digital space where people with common principles can meet to form and maintain a community.

Project Overview

Matriz is ​​developing its Dapp on Soneium.

Because it is EVM compatible, transaction fees are cheap and the network is very fast. Our onboarding and in-app transactions processes could benefit from the Soneium network.

What excites us, besides the prosxpect of reaching a mass audience thanks to the networks you guys already have, is the potential this has when using web3 technologies, such as:

• Mutualisation groups
  • Escrow smart contracts that allow for mass purchases, creating waiting lists that are activated when a quorum is reached.
  • The user experience is similar to that of being in a shopping cart where you can create a package of benefits and subscriptions according to your needs (from insurance, technical equipment and training to work spaces, wellness services and leisure)

• Liquidity Pools
  • make advance payments, in the name of the representative company, to obtain better prices on third-party subscriptions. Making the annual or bi-annual payment but charging members monthly
  • Advance payments agreed upon by clients to freelancers in order to have a regular flow of income.

• Marketplace of service providers
  • Freelancers can access professional support roles, both internal and external, that have been pre-curated and follow quality standards.
  • Those members who certify their level of socio-environmental impact have advantages in showcasing their services and being accepted into projects seeking talent.

• Reputation Systems
  • Each project is created with a group of members who commit to a series of contributions recorded in a smart contract. At the end of the project, there is a feedback process to evaluate the added value and define the fair distribution of the remainder.
  • Contributions are recorded in the form of #praise which classifies different types of value (use, knowledge, in-kind, social), as well as reports of ‘fraudulent attitude’.

• DAO management
  • Matriz being a ‘DAO as a service’, where collectives host their initiatives receiving support roles in all technical areas outside of their operations.
  • The same support team is made up of freelancers who contribute to Matriz as a DAO.
    • Roles Círculo gob

Unique Selling Points

Matriz is distinguished by its ability to integrate web3 tools and its institutional connection to the web2 world. Its administrative and fiscal management of the agreements made in the DAO allows everything to comply with the corresponding regulations, protecting the creators and removing corporate responsibilities from their shoulders.

Since the goal of the cooperative is not to profit but to sustainably benefit the participating members, Matriz becomes the perfect ally for any freelancer, building lifelong relationships. A virtuous circle where the more people, the better the benefits.

In addition, the common infrastructure allows people to meet and create initiatives, starting with fewer obstacles and improving the success rate.

Team Members

Matriz is made up of a community with different levels of involvement. Some of the core team members:

• Alex Soto
  Team facilitator currently exploring distributed cooperative structures, dynamic governance models based on self-management, token engineering from a commons perspective, and large-scale mutualism networks.
• Cristina Yoshida
  currently exploring the design and facilitation ​of collaborative processes for social change. With 20 years of professional experience from the nonprofit, social entrepreneurship, academic and public sectors
• Diego del Moral
  With 15 years of experience in the impact sector: worked in government to protect the human rights of Mexican migrants in the US, directed a nonprofit in Mexico aimed at promoting ESG practices in small and medium enterprises.
• Rubén Gómez
  Visual designer, exploring systemic thinking to find solutions to complex problems, developing graphic communication elements, pedagogical experiments and physical products.
• Valentín Martinez
  Entrepreneur and academic learning how to develop tools with Blockchain technology that are useful for environmental and social efforts and increasing the reach and possibilities of agents involved in this mission.
• Manu Flores
  currently expanding his skill set to encompass key areas in data science, including data analysis, machine learning, and predictive modeling.
• Julieta Milanesio
  After almost 20 years in the media, both in Argentina and Mexico, he writes, creates stories, produces and does TV. In 2023 he started in the world of web3 and blockchain.

Roadmap

2024 Q4

• Find 50 pioneer members
• Create liquidity pool
• Membership through Attestations

2025 Q2

• Deploy Dapp on Mainnet
• Integrate tools and plug-ins
• Custom membership pricing using smart contracts

2025 Q4

• Data portability model
• Wholesale purchases
• Membership growth

Conclusion

While Matriz is an early-stage initiative, its operations have the potential to reach millions of people, contributing to Soneium’s mission to bring blockchain to the masses.

Matriz can become the one-stop shop for everything related to work, which has enormous potential to impact the lives of freelancers, an underserved and rapidly growing audience.

Soneium, by supporting Matriz, is indirectly supporting all the creators and artists who are already part of its ecosystem, and who would like to be participants in a mutual infrastructure.

References

Twitter: x.com
Github: Matriz.Coop · GitHub

Original Post:

https://forum.astar.network/t/matriz-dapp-for-collective-purchases-and-resource-pooling/7296?u=alexsotodigital

[souleater]

Hi Alex, welcome to Astar.
When we are talking about freelancer, what kind of industry that you covered. By reading your post, I initially thought it was creative industry, but it seems you guys covered more than that.

Also is this only for specific country or open to global?

[you425]

Hi there, thanks for the UCG proposal.
There are a few important things to mention before the project details.

First, the UCG slots are limited (6 slots) and all of them are currently filled. However, there are four projects that are due in November, so if those are not extended, we can hire you after that.

And this is most important, UCG does not currently support Soneium projects. This means that you are a Soneium project, so you are not eligible. However, dApp Staking applies to projects that have a positive impact on Astar Netowork, so even if your project is on Soneium, if you can contribute to Astar by increasing use cases for the ASTR, you may be eligible. However, this point has not yet been decided and needs to be discussed.

[Matt]

Great to see the application of Matriz for an Unstoppable Community Grant! This project, which focuses on freelancers’ needs for vital tools and services combined with the integration of Web3 technologies, is really promising. What personally excites me is how this will foster much better collaboration and trust between the members through its DAO management and reputation systems.

What does Matriz envision for the long term in terms of making such pools of liquidity and advances sustainable for freelancers?

[Juminstock]

I am happy that this day has come!

Matrix is an extremely interesting project that joined us and was finalized in our most recent Astar zkEVM hackathon.

Being their mentor, I could certify that there is a lot of value in their project and I am sure they will be able to bring unmatched value to the ASTR token as they have real usability.

Although Matrix is currently on Minato, it is easy to make an immediate migration to Astar, the Matrix team is ready to implement such migration without any problem to be part of our ecosystem and bid for the UCG.

[Max.eth]

The cooperative structure in Mexico looks like a solid move to me, It gives freelancers support where they need it most.

Excited to see what’s next.

[Sequaja]

As already stated big fan and can think this will be useful to safe money on tools/subscriptions. Challenge will be to gather like minded people to use this tool. Looking forward to see how this wil grow. One niche where I can think that this will be useful is cyber security, as subscriptions and tools cost a lot there.

[BoomBLB]

Thank you for the good proposal. The project looks very interesting. If I may, I’d like to ask a few questions:

1. Initially, I see you set a target of the first 50 people for the pioneer group. What are the team’s long-term plans?

2. What are the details regarding Revenue and Cost?

[alexsotodigital]

Hello!
Sorry for the late reply. I’ll go point by point.

@souleater

When we are talking about freelancer, what kind of industry that you covered. By reading your post, I initially thought it was creative industry, but it seems you guys covered more than that.

Indeed, our target audience is ‘any type of freelancer’ (which we understand as an independent worker whose service is based on knowledge) with a focus on those who work on ‘issues of socio-environmental impact’, ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘artists or creatives’.

But the intention is for it to be a generic infrastructure that can accommodate all types of independent workers (with more manual trades, such as carpenters, craftsmen, plumbers, bricklayers).

Again, I would like to point out that a third of the workforce in Latin America is self-employed.

@souleater

Also is this only for specific country or open to global?

The issue of fiscal hosting (of shared treasuries) implies having a legal entity per country. For this reason, our initial market is Mexico (around 650,000 self-employed individuals).

But our intention is to document all the processes and work open source, enabling the replicability of the model in other countries (generating a federation of organizations cooperating with each other).

@Matt

What does Matriz envision for the long term in terms of making such pools of liquidity and advances sustainable for freelancers?

We aim for economic sustainability through an administration fee (which I understand would slowly tend towards a zero marginal cost as the scale grows and automated processes are integrated via escrow smart contracts).

@Juminstock

Although Matrix is currently on Minato, it is easy to make an immediate migration to Astar, the Matrix team is ready to implement such migration without any problem to be part of our ecosystem and bid for the UCG.

Indeed, what we have built for Soneium has been just to demonstrate our interest; but we are aware that we will have to migrate to more fertile lands.

@Sequaja

One niche where I can think that this will be useful is cyber security, as subscriptions and tools cost a lot there.

This approach sounds interesting. In any case, I take this opportunity to say that in my opinion, the hard work is in creating the coordination templates (so that the groups can pool resources and co-manage). Once this is established, it could be applied to almost any community/interest.

@BoomBLB

Initially, I see you set a target of the first 50 people for the pioneer group. What are the team’s long-term plans?

We actually aimed for 50 people for the hackathon context, but now we see that we will need a larger critical mass to make it sustainable (if we don’t have seed funding). Probably between 100 and 500 people.

In the long term, I would aim for millions, just in Mexico. Two of my co-founders are in Brazil, where they could grow simultaneously.

@BoomBLB

What are the details regarding Revenue and Cost?

Currently, the project does not generate any revenue. We haven’t launched to the market yet because we are finalizing legal and tax matters (to avoid issues related to money laundering and outsourcing) and because we need a critical mass for the project to be sustainable. With 100 people, we could make the first purchase, but we would be subsidizing all administrative costs involved. We’re still working on the financial projections to get more accurate data.

Our current costs are around 2,500 USD per month, considering the accounting reports required by the cooperative, notarial expenses, administrative responsabilities, some tech tools, bank account, etc. No one on the team is receiving a salary at the moment.

[BoomBLB]

Thank you for the information. The details were thorough and clear, giving me a better picture.

In terms of numbers, I think it’s okay. I can understand the revenue and cost aspects. Additionally, regarding competitors, are there any direct or indirect competitors for what this project is planning to do? =)

[alexsotodigital]

Hi @BoomBLB

@BoomBLB

regarding competitors, are there any direct or indirect competitors for what this project is planning to do?

I hope I’m not sounding naive, but we don’t see other similar projects as competition but as allies, especially since we start from a federated model (where each country can have its own fiscal organization).

As for organizations that are working on solving similar problems, I would list:

• Open Collective, with whom we are opening communication and whose platform we use to maintain transparency in our accounting.
• Smart.coop, a similar federation in Europe but with a web2 focus.
• Opolis, who are serving the market in the United States with something similar.
• Guilded.Coop & Freelancers Union, who are part of the conversation from a ‘platform cooperatives’ perspective.

@BoomBLB

As for expanding to cover various types of freelance work, does the team have a roadmap for which areas to start with and which to tackle next? =)

Not at all. We think there is a lot of room for growth. The creative industry (artists, musicians, coaches) is probably a good group to follow after web3 natives.

[MrKarahanli-Emre]

I’m very happy to see you here. I am going to follow the discussions here for a while and watch the answers to your questions.

[BoomBLB]

Thank you very much for the information. I can see the picture more clearly now. If you need any help with promotion, feel free to give feedback anytime. Anyway, I hope we can do fun things together. =)

[Vangardem]

This is a great option to support freelancers, beyond the technical performance, what added value do you want to give to users, I have seen a reputation system that is really important for users in terms of the services you want to hire but beyond that, what kind of incentives will you manage to attract both freelancers and users, crypto is essentially based on incentives and gamification.