This week, host Alex Kehaya joins John Paller, Founder and Steward of Opolis, is a next-generation ecosystem for the self-sovereign worker. John is also the founder of ETH Denver, the largest Ethereum hackathon in the world.
John's journey into crypto started in HR tech, an industry he worked in for 15 years before he founded Opolis. John was wildly successful in the industry, and he was able to build and run his HR tech firm, which grew to one of the largest in Colorado. Although John was successful in the industry, he always felt that employers often treated employees poorly and wanted to create a company to empower employees.
John spent 12 years trying to create a system that he felt represented employees and their needs and did so in a decentralized way. John eventually found the building blocks for this system in Ethereum. Once John understood the decentralized aspects of blockchain behind Ethereum, he could see that Opolis needed to run in a decentralized way.
Opolis essentially acts as an employer in that it creates W-2s, does payroll, and acts as HR, but its employees govern it entirely. An employer system that the employees run ensures that employees do not have to give up their freedoms and that their best interests are protected. Further, employees are given equity in the company through a token system called WORK. John explains;
"We've tokenized it through the WORK token, our community rewards token, for your consumption. Let's say you put $100,000 in Payroll through. That goes into a bucket of consumers. We have almost 450 members or something right now, but let's say all their Payroll goes into a bucket. You get a pro-rata share of a payroll mining distribution as we grow. Every 10% of growth, there's a new emission of tokens. We inflate the token supply about 1.2% on every 10% that we accrue value."
John and Alex also discuss ETH Denver, the communities surrounding the event, and the reading of "B is for Bufficorn," an Ethereum-themed kid's book that John helped write.
Listen to Alex's full interview with John to learn more about Opolis, ETH Denver, and which US Governors participated in reading "B is for Bufficorn."
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