Introducing Sablier: Continuous Salaries on Ethereum
Update: this is an old article that refers to an old release of Sablier. See Introducing Sablier V2 and our launch thread on Twitter.
I recently announced the launch of Sablier on Twitter and I was delighted to see the response of the Ethereum community:
This is awesome. I'm thinking of asking clients to pay us by the minute or hour @deepwork_studio. Q: could they cancel a continuous payment in progress? For example, we offer them a security that if we don't hit a milestone they can cancel at any time...
— Charlie Ellington (@charlie_surf89) June 2, 2019
I dunno about you, but I'm looking forward to a future where you can get paid in real-time rather than every 2 weeks https://t.co/Oc9ugaxwon
— Cooper (@cooper_kunz) June 2, 2019
I feel we should provide a bit more context on why we’re building this and what are some interesting use cases.
First things first
What is Sablier?
An Ethereum dApp that you can start using today to pay your employees continuously. You make a one-off deposit and then the contract starts “allocating” the funds to the employee at a rate you set in advance.
Why is this helpful? Maybe they need the money for a personal urgency. Or they have to pay rent. Or they just moved to the big city, need food and wouldn’t open up their savings account.
Sablier is about providing insurance and optionality.
If you’re an employee wanting to use our dApp, please reach out so we can get in touch with your employer.
What do you mean by “continuously”?
The first version of the dApp allows users to select one of the pre-defined intervals from below. There is no constraint though, we can easily expand to other fixed intervals or even custom values.
How do you measure time?
The trick is to use the so-called block time average as a time proxy. On Ethereum, blocks are broadcast once every ~15 seconds, which makes 1 minute to be the equivalent of 4 blocks.
If you want to see the implementation, check out our open-source repository.
Can the payer get their money back?
Indeed, they can at any time before the end of the stream! Read this tweet for more information.
Is it safe?
We can’t be evil. The backend of Sablier is composed strictly of trustless smart contracts deployed on Ethereum Mainnet. Check them out on Etherscan.
They have been audited using MythX. You can inspect the report here.
Use Cases
Payroll
We are currently focused on payroll, as I believe there is huge untapped potential in using crypto to pay salaries.
In spite of all the hype that blockchain had over the last years, most companies still prefer using a bank account for paying their employees (even for remote workers).
That made sense, until of now:
- Stablecoins such as MakerDAO’s DAI rose like a phoenix after the market crash of 2018
- Many easy to use fiat on-ramps for those stablecoins (Circle Team, Wyre)
- Regulatory uncertainty slowly faded away, as more countries updated their stance on crypto and more legal services startups popped up
Finally, projects like Sablier provide an extra incentive for companies to switch to a crypto-native solution and provide optionality to their employees.
Other Use Cases
In the original tweet storm, I talked about how it’s up to you to decide what to use our product for.
We do focus on companies and employees and payroll, but the beauty of decentralised applications is that you can start using them right away without trusting or asking us for permission.
Here are some interesting applications:
- Freelancing
- Subscriptions
- Taxes
- Consultancy (lawyers, doctors)
- Rent
- Car parking
Please let us know if you used Sablier for any of the use cases above — or anything else that’s non-obvious!
Reach out
- Website: https://sablier.finance
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/SablierHQ
- Telegram: https://t.me/sablier
- GitHub: https://github.com/sablierhq/sablier
If you want to get in touch personally, I’m on Twitter and Keybase.
Peace out ✌️
