CanYa

Overview

I joined the CanYa team in the early start-up stage as a digital designer. At the time, the team was comprised of 6 other people from tech, marketing and finance. Eventually, the company grew to a global team of over 30 individuals. I learned the most about design and user experience during my time at CanYa. My role was defined by the work to be done, and eventually I was promoted to Head of Design, leading a team of 4 designers. Cryptocurrency and blockchain were still relatively little known concepts to the layman, so I was able to get in- depth exposure to the space as it rapidly evolved. I was responsible for the UX, UI, logos, graphic design, and product design of the platform and its many decentralised applications (DApps).

The vision at the beginning of the project in 2017 was to create a marketplace for professional services and get paid in cryptocurrency. Shortly after a succesful ICO later that year, the project had the funding to expand its set of features. The brand itself sprung from the phrase "Can Ya?". The team at CanYa emphasised the future of work and productivity, and approaching it with a can-do attitude. The ecosystem was built on top of the ethereum network for its smart-contracts.

CanWork

CanYa’s flagship product which aims to become the go-to place for freelancers and digital nomads to find work on the web. As I had covered in my earlier article “The Digital Nomad” The users of this marketplace would be those who are looking to earn crypto, and spend their crypto to help get their own projects sorted. The project has evolved over time with the changing landscape of the blockchain tech, and we have been able to employ different parts of DLT in many different parts of the DApp from payments to time tracking.

CanApps

As we were building the marketplace, the team began to explore different ways to use smart-contracts to deliver value to the freelancers on the ecosystem. These projects are called CanApps, which include the following: