I. What is a project ?

A Project is the core unit of work within Algolancer, representing a freelance opportunity created by a client and secured by a smart contract on the Algorand blockchain.
Each project combines on-chain guarantees with off-chain metadata to provide a decentralized, transparent, and scalable hiring experience. While project details such as competences, required skills, categories, and other metadata are stored off-chain for efficiency and flexibility, the project's critical lifecycle and agreement logic are enforced through Algorand smart contracts.
A project serves as the foundation for all interactions between clients and freelancers, including applications, hiring, work execution, work unit tracking, and payment settlement.

II. Key Features

III. User Workflows

The following diagram illustrates the project end-to-end workflow in Algolancer, showing how Clients and Freelancers interact throughout the project's nominal scenario, from creation and application submission to project termination.

IV. Starting New Project

There are two main types of projects within Algolancer:

When creating a new project, the user is required to deposit a refundable collateral amount calculated based on blockchain storage usage (the maximum number of applicants). This amount is fully recovered once the project is deleted.

User is required to pay a second refundable collateral amount of ~203,000 microAlgo ($0.02), which will be returned once the project is deleted.

Also the MBR will increase by ~563,500 microAlgo ($0.05), which will be fully recovered upon deletion.

The real project creation fee is transparent and fixed at 1.5 USDC ($1.50), with no additional or hidden fees.

V. Application

Once a project is created, it becomes publicly available across the Algolancer network, and freelancers can view both its on-chain state and off-chain metadata.
To submit a proposal, a freelancer must first opt-in to the smart contract, and then apply to this project. The application fee is fixed and transparent, with no hidden costs such as connects or proprietary tokens. The fee is set at 0.2 USDC ($0.20) per application.

VI. Hiring

The project owner can view the data of all applicants once they apply to the project. Before making a hiring decision, the owner may initiate a chat session with an applicant to discuss the project and gather additional information. The client can then decide whether to hire or reject their application. A client can hire up to 10 freelancers per project

Once the freelancer is hired, the submitted proposal amount (milestone or hour budget) becomes the agreed work unit budget, and will be used throughout the duration of the agreement.

VII. Work Progress

The next steps depend heavily on the project type and the decisions made by the client. Throughout the project lifecycle, the client may create and fund new work units, terminate an active contract, or delete the project if no active contracts exist. Freelancers on the other hand may opt-out of the project at any time, regardless of the project's global state or their local state within this project.

Important :

If a freelancer opt-out during an active work unit, the locked funds associated with that work unit are not immediately released. Instead, the full amount remains reserved and will be refunded to the client once the project is deleted.

VIII. Contract Termination

A contract can be terminated in four ways:

For a freelancer, a contract should ideally be terminated by the client, as it positively impacts their on-chain reputation (proof of work).

IX. Deleting a Project

A project can be deleted by the client at any time, subject to the following conditions:

Once the project is deleted, the client can recover any pending funds, as well as the primary MBR and the collateral paid at project creation.