Open source · Escrow by default · Kleros arbitration · Community-governed
Taskuler is an open-source, community-owned marketplace for getting work done. Customers post jobs with a bounty held in escrow, builders bid and deliver, and payment is released by rules anyone can read in the code. Nothing depends on trusting a company.
timeout Customer silent N days after delivery → builder is paid.
timeout Deadline + grace period missed → customer is refunded (all but the minimum fee).
dispute No settlement → Kleros arbitration.
Why open source?
Trust is the single most important feature of a public protocol or service, and the only way to trust a service is to validate it. So Taskuler is open source, and we want as many people reading the code as possible.
When it comes to software bugs, the best disinfectant is sunlight, and builders are the sun.
Taskuler will create an open-source freelancing platform and provide tools to help with every step along the way, built in phases so the core marketplace works well before anything else is added.
How it works
A customer describes the task, sets a deadline and the required builder deposit, picks the job's currency (TSKR or USDC to start, with ETH possibly added), and adds a bounty. The bounty goes straight into escrow.
Builders put down a deposit in the job's currency to bid. The customer accepts a bid or a counter. On Taskuler projects there's no customer to choose: backers' TSW votes for the builder.
The builder submits proof of delivery. Once it's accepted, the bounty moves from escrow to the builder's wallet, along with NFT badges.
Every completed job is added to the builder's on-chain work history. Badges unlock real benefits, like lower deposits and better bid ranking.
Customer pays to place a job on the Market.
Builder pledges to complete a job.
Arbitrator settles disputes between the two.
Protections built in
Deposits work like a deposit for a hotel: they are kept to ensure good behavior. Escrow and deposit timeouts work without an admin or a frontend, so funds never depend on a Taskuler website staying online.
| Protection | What it does |
|---|---|
| Deposits that scale | Each deposit is a percentage of the bounty, with a minimum per token. Governance sets both, so small jobs stay cheap to take on. |
| Job currency | The customer picks the job's currency. The list starts with TSKR and USDC, and ETH may be added. TSW (Taskuler Stake Weight) holders vote on adding tokens. The bounty, deposits and refunds are all in that token, with no price conversion. USDC gives the job a stable value if you want it. |
| Builders keep 100% | The protocol fee (a small percentage of the bounty, with a flat minimum per token) is paid by the customer, on top of the bounty. Nothing is taken out of the builder's payout. If only part of the bounty is paid out (an agreed split or a Kleros ruling), the fee is recomputed on what was actually paid, never below the minimum, and the customer gets the difference back. Jobs funded by the Treasury for Taskuler projects pay no fee. |
| Escrow timeouts | If the builder misses the deadline plus a grace period, the customer is refunded: the full bounty, and the protocol fee except its per-token minimum. If the customer doesn't respond within N days of delivery, the builder is paid automatically. Anyone can trigger either. |
| Partial delivery | The customer and builder can agree on a partial payout. If they can't agree, either side can open a dispute. |
| Settlement first | Before a dispute, either side can make a settlement offer, and the other can accept or counter. |
| Kleros arbitration | At launch, disputes go to Kleros V2 on Arbitrum One, through its IArbitratorV2 interface. Each job fixes its arbitrator when it's created. Kleros draws jurors at random, weighted by how much PNK (Kleros's token) they've staked. Either side can appeal, and each appeal round has more jurors. Jurors choose one of five outcomes: the builder gets 0, 25, 50, 75 or 100% of the bounty, and the rest goes back to the customer. If they refuse to rule, or tie and nobody appeals, the bounty is split 50/50. Kleros fees are shared in proportion to the ruling: a builder awarded 75% bears a quarter of them and the customer three quarters (on Taskuler projects, the backers' share comes from the project's dispute reserve). A deposit is lost only on a clear loss: the builder's if they get nothing, the customer's if the builder gets everything. Partial rulings, a refusal or tie, and agreed splits return both deposits. |
Projects
A Taskuler project is any project the Taskuler community builds and funds through TSW: backers stake TSW on it, it's funded from the Treasury in proportion to that TSW, and its tasks are built through ordinary Market jobs. How project funding works.
Open-source Git hosting built on Forgejo. Contributors will be paid task by task through Taskuler-funded tasks: backers stake TSW on the tasks they want done, and each builder is paid from escrow, in the job's currency (TSKR or USDC), once the work is accepted. It doesn't run a separate payout system.
Status: Planned; funded through TSW once Phase 2 is live. Until then it's bootstrapped and no contributor payments are being made.
Open-source distributed hosting built for privacy, security and decentralization, formerly called Ourcld. Names are user-controlled, releases are content-addressed, and mutable data is encrypted before it leaves your machine and spread across independent hosts.
Status: Early and in development; funded through TSW once Phase 2 is live.
Roadmap
We're building in phases so the core marketplace works well before anything else is added.
Phase 1 · Launch
IArbitratorV2, with an option to appeal.Phase 2 and later
Disputes have their own path: Kleros V2 at launch. Bonded Taskuler mediators come next, as a faster first step with appeals to Kleros, once a lawyer has answered the legal questions. A Taskuler juror court is built only if measured demand and security checks support it, and it runs alongside Kleros before its rulings count.
Tokens and governance
The token used to interact with the Taskuler network: post bounties, pay deposits to bid, and subscribe to Taskuler products. TSKR is earned, not sold: there's no token sale.
TSW (Taskuler Stake Weight) is earned by staking TSKR and used to vote on which tasks the Treasury funds: stake TSW to create and fund Taskuler projects, each funded in proportion to the TSW staked on it, and no project gets more than 10% of a funding period's pot. Any part of the pot that can't be allocated rolls into the next period's pot, but the pot never grows past 3 times its regular size; anything above that returns to the Treasury. Backers can propose tasks and push their stake down onto them to set priorities (top-priority tasks are funded first, and a task nobody pushes stake onto isn't funded), and that stake still counts toward the project. Backers' TSW also votes for the builder of each project job (see Taskuler projects). It's proportional to the TSKR staked, and it builds with time: quickly at first, then more and more slowly as the stake matures. It starts building the moment a stake is opened (there's no lock) and is boosted by completed jobs and by backing Taskuler project tasks that were delivered without an upheld objection, challenge or audit finding (a backer loses that boost for a while if a task they backed fails a challenge). It can't be transferred, and unstaking forfeits all the TSW that stake earned. Whether Taskuler's own arbitrators, which come after launch, will also get a boost is still being decided; at launch, Kleros pays its own jurors from its arbitration fees. Backers of work that earns income may also get TSKR, paid as new stakes and taken only from a slice of that project's income, but only after legal review. A stake can't be partly unstaked or topped up: adding TSKR opens a new stake that starts from zero.
A fee from every customer job goes into the Treasury (Taskuler project jobs, which the Treasury funds, pay none). The customer pays it on top of the bounty, so builders keep 100%. It's a small percentage of the bounty with a flat minimum per token, both set by governance. Once the Treasury's liquidity pool is live, the Treasury converts fees to TSKR; until then, fees paid in USDC stay in USDC and pay running costs. The Treasury funds Taskuler projects: TSW holders stake TSW to create and back them, and each funding period the money is split in proportion to the TSW staked on each project. Money leaves a project one funded task at a time. Money a project hasn't spent yet stays with it for its next tasks, and goes back to the Treasury if the project goes dormant, stops, or leaves it unspent too long.
Protection against fake accounts: every TSW vote counts each account's TSW averaged over a window that ends when the vote opens, so TSW gained or moved after a vote opens doesn't count. The window length starts at a suggested default and is tuned by governance. Votes are weighted by TSW (work history, badges and a record of backing delivered tasks only boost how fast TSW builds, not the vote itself), and every task has a cap on how much Treasury funding it can receive.
Projects are anything the Taskuler community builds and funds through TSW, paid for by the Treasury and built through ordinary Market jobs. There are no stewards, coordinators or councils: backers steer with their TSW, proposers write the tasks, and rules in the code handle the rest.
| Rule | How it works |
|---|---|
| Proposers write the tasks | Backers with enough stake on a project can propose tasks. The proposer writes the spec, as tests where possible, and sets a maximum bounty within a benchmark range. Each task's Treasury funding is capped; the cap is set by governance. Specs and overpriced bounties can be challenged. The proposer publishes the project's plan at creation (backers can suggest changes, which take effect after a challenge period) and answers builders' questions in public; answers given before a bid is accepted become part of the spec. |
| Backers pick the builder | Builders submit sealed bids, one per account, with no counters. Backers vote with the TSW they pushed onto that task; every funded task has some, because a task with none isn't funded. If nobody votes, or too few do, the lowest qualifying bid wins. A bidder can't vote on their own task, and links to bidders must be disclosed. |
| Bonds and milestones | Treasury money must be covered by someone's bond, or not paid out upfront at all. Builders post a bond for their task and are paid in milestones or as a stream. A shared backstop fund comes later. |
| Accepted unless backers object | Work is accepted after the audit hold unless backers object. Until there's a pool of drawn reviewers, a backer must also sign off before payment. If backers holding a set share of the task's TSW (counted when the task was funded) object, the work goes to the normal dispute process: Kleros decides, and the builder can win. Instead of objecting outright, those backers can propose paying the builder part of the bounty: the builder has 5 days to accept, counter once, or refuse and let Kleros decide, and not answering doesn't count as accepting. The proposal, and any counter, has to be 25, 50 or 75% of the bounty, the splits Kleros can rule on, the unpaid part goes back to the project (project jobs pay no protocol fee), and an agreed split isn't held against the builder. Backers don't need to post a bond or deposit to object: each project builds its own dispute reserve, from a share of its funding and its carry-over, to pay the arbitration fees, including the backers' side of any appeal. If an appeal costs more than the reserve holds, the objecting backers cover the gap and get it back if they win; builders pay for their own appeals. Every valid backer objection draws on it, since the same share of TSW is needed both to object and to use the reserve; a backer below that share, like anyone else who challenges, posts a bond. Fees refunded when a builder loses refill the reserve, and any leftover returns to the Treasury. Large tasks, and tasks mostly backed by their proposer or linked accounts, get a longer hold and more random audits. A backer's explicit acceptance is recorded but doesn't release money early. Proposers can back their own projects. Builders, and anyone who bid on the task, can't accept their own work, and links must be disclosed. Automated checks are used wherever a spec can be tested by machine, and large tasks get randomly drawn, bonded reviewers once the Market has a work history. |
| Everyone can watch | Every project has a public scorecard. Projects face random audits, whistleblowers are rewarded, and a winning bid that costs a lot more than the lowest qualifying one is flagged for audit. |
| Self-funding allowed | Proposers and builders can back their own projects, since that can't be stopped. The bonds, challenges and audits above are what keep it honest. |
| Paid after the fact | Any work can be funded retroactively, once the work is done, so nothing is paid out upfront. Backers vote on it, capped at a share of project funds. |
| Dormant and stopped by rule | A project goes dormant automatically if its stake falls too low or nothing happens for too long. It stops only if it misses its milestones, loses a challenge or is stopped by a TSW vote. A proposer can also ask to wind a project down, and backers vote. On dormancy or wind-down, leftover money returns to the backers' stakes; otherwise unspent money returns to the Treasury. |
Amounts, time windows and thresholds for these rules start at suggested defaults and are tuned by governance.
| Allocation | Share | Release / lockup (multi-year release with a cliff) |
|---|---|---|
| Community rewards only for paying the initial builders | 60% | Released over time through activity on the network |
| Treasury | 35% | Released in stages by TSW vote |
| Liquidity | 5% | Put in a TSKR/USDC pool on Arbitrum by the Treasury after a TSW vote; pool tokens locked |
Legal note: these percentages are final. Total supply is fixed at 1,000,000,000 TSKR. Community rewards are released over 48 months with no cliff; the Treasury's share has a 12-month cliff, then 36 months; liquidity is released when the pool is seeded. There is no token sale: TSKR is earned through work and grants, or released by the Treasury. Nothing here is an offer to sell tokens.
What the 5% allocation is for.
Part of the supply goes into exchange pools, so customers can buy TSKR to fund bounties and builders can sell what they earn without big price swings. Without it, a bounty's value could swing a lot before the job is done.
These tokens aren't spent. They stay in the pools, ideally owned by the Treasury, so trading fees flow back to the community.
The Treasury seeds the pool, but only after TSW voting is live (Phase 2), and only if a TSW vote approves it. It will be a TSKR/USDC pool: the first tranche is at least $50,000 USDC, seeded once fee income covers 6 months of operations, with pool tokens locked for 24 months; later tranches need a TSW vote. The venue and the conditions for that vote are still open.
Escrow, deposits, work history and arbitration run on chain and are paid for by users' gas, so they have no server bill.
The website, the indexer and API that make jobs searchable, RPC nodes, and storage for job files and proof of delivery. The Treasury pays for these.
The protocol fee on every customer job (Taskuler project jobs pay none), plus subscriptions to Taskuler products such as the Task Manager and Calendar. Once the Treasury's liquidity pool is live, fees are converted to TSKR. Until then, fees paid in USDC stay in USDC and pay running costs, and grants are a primary source of funding for the audit and early hosting. Hosting, maintenance and upgrades are ordinary Treasury tasks, voted on by TSW holders.
Covering the launch gap: part of the Treasury's 35% is set aside as an operations budget until job fees cover costs. It's $150 a month (retuned once real invoices arrive), under a cap on Treasury outflows, with public spending reports; governance tunes it. Projects like Talent Protocol and Gitcoin Grants Lab struggled with exactly this gap. The fee percentage and per-token minimums should be set to cover hosting as volume grows; the amounts are still an open question.
FAQ
Yes. Taskuler is open source so that anyone can check how jobs, escrow and payouts work. We want as many people reading the code as possible.
No. Browsing the Market is free. You only need a deposit when you post a job or place a bid.
Each deposit is a percentage of the bounty, with a minimum per token, and governance sets both. So the deposit for a small job stays small. Deposits are paid in the job's currency, which the customer picks (TSKR or USDC to start, with ETH possibly added), and they are returned in the same token. NFT badges from completed work can lower your deposits.
The customer. The protocol fee is a small percentage of the bounty with a flat minimum set per token, so even small jobs cover their cost. It's added on top of the bounty and goes to the community Treasury. If only part of the bounty is paid out (an agreed split or a Kleros ruling), the fee is recomputed on what was actually paid, never below the minimum, and the customer gets the difference back. Jobs the Treasury funds for Taskuler projects pay no fee. Builders keep 100% of the bounty. Governance sets the percentage and the minimums, and the percentage has a hard cap in the contract. The amounts are still being decided.
If the customer doesn't respond within N days of delivery, the escrow pays you automatically. Anyone can trigger that timeout, so it doesn't depend on Taskuler's website being online.
At launch, Kleros V2, a decentralized court on Arbitrum One. Both sides can make a settlement offer first. If that fails, Kleros draws jurors at random, weighted by the PNK they've staked, and either side can appeal a ruling. Jurors choose one of five outcomes: the builder gets 0, 25, 50, 75 or 100% of the bounty, and the rest goes back to the customer. If they refuse to rule, or tie and nobody appeals, the bounty is split 50/50. Kleros fees are shared in proportion to the ruling: a builder awarded 75% bears a quarter of them and the customer three quarters (on Taskuler projects, the backers' share comes from the project's dispute reserve). A deposit is lost only on a clear loss: the builder's if they get nothing, the customer's if the builder gets everything. Partial rulings, a refusal or tie, and agreed splits return both deposits. Bonded Taskuler mediators may come later, after legal review.
Arbitrum One, where Kleros V2 runs natively. The contracts are chain-agnostic, and Base is planned as a second chain once its Kleros gateway has a track record.
No. TSKR isn't sold, now or later. It's earned through work on the network or through grants, or released by the community Treasury. The allocation percentages are final, and the total supply is fixed at 1,000,000,000 TSKR. Nothing on this page is an offer to sell tokens.
Waitlist
We're looking for early builders and customers to help shape Taskuler before launch.