Hello everyone!
Today I discovered a new project on the Hive blockchain: Open Genie. Let's have a look at what exactly it is. Afterwards I'll review it to help you getting started on their platform. I will conclude this article with my own opinion of the Open Genie platform. I hope you enjoy discovering and reading about this new project built on Hive!

What is Open Genie?

Let's first have a look how the team behind Open Genie describes their own project:

Open Genie is an innovative online platform that allows users to post their wishes and have them fulfilled by a community of Genies. Wish Makers can create a post with a description of their wish, a reward, optional milestones, a title, optional bids, and an optional thumbnail. Genies then bid on the wish, and the Wish Maker can choose a Genie to fulfill their wish. All payments are made directly between the Wish Maker and Genie through direct transfers on the Hive blockchain or whatever reward mechanism they decide on between each other. Open Genie is a free platform that ensures the safety of its users by storing personal information on the Hive blockchain, making it impossible for anyone to add, remove or edit that information except the end user.

I tried to mark the words which seem the most important to me. As you can read, it's an online platform which you can access by going to https://genie.peakd.com/

On that platform anyone who needs a certain service, is able to create a wish. This could be anything, like for example if you want a new avatar or if you want a new developer for your project or just because you're looking into someone who could rework your mariage photos or... These are just some examples and you can add whatever you want as a wish. Ofcourse, you have to be serious, so don't abuse it.

Ofcourse just creating wishes wouldn't be that great if they were never fullfilled. Thus the platform is aiming to bring people who are in need of a certain service together with people who are able to deliver such a service. You could look at it like a marketplace for services centralized on the Open Genie platform.

People who want a certain service could propose a price they want to pay if someone is able to deliver the service or they could let people bid for it. So yes, you could get paid for your work. These payments could be done over the Hive network which gives you the opportunity to complete these payments in no time without fees.

The whole platform is free. At this moment, I don't know how exactly the team behind Open Genie wants to benefit from this platform. As they have put their time and effort in it, my guess would be they somehow would like to benefit sooner or later from it. Maybe they are just desperately in search of certain profiles and hope to find them through their platform, I don't know. This is ofcourse just speculation of my part.

Besides the payments which could be made through the Hive Blockchain, the information is stored on the Hive Blockchain as well. So anything which is posted or commented will be stored on the Hive blockchain and could be seen by others. This way there is transparency and it's not possible to change certain aspects.

Team behind Open Genie

Open Genie is a project of the @peak.open projects. These are open source projects built by the PeakD team. If you're on Hive for a longer time, you'll definitely know these guys as they have built a lot on Hive. This about polls, sting chat to name a few. The individuals behind Open Genie are the following:

@muwave - Developer
@yozen - Developer
@mirafun - Developer
@jarvie - UX/Feedback
@borislavzlatanov - Developer
@mozzie5 - Content Writer
@asgarth - Developer

I recognize most of them from Hive and their posts, but don't know them personally. If you want to get to know them, you should reach out to them though their profile. That would make more sense than me just making up some random information about them.

How to create a wish

Let's have a look how you can create your own wish. The first step is to login. This can be easily done by clicking on login and than utilizing the keychain application. Don't forget to accept the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy. All you need is a Hive account.

Now that we're logged in, we're good to go to create your first own wish. To do so, you have to click on 'Make a Wish'. Like you can see on the image below:

Afterwards, you'll see the following screen:

Here you can add some parameters of your wish:
1) Wish title: The title of your wish, how would you describe it shortly
2) Choose a category: Here you can add a category, which makes it easier for people to filter. For example if you're a developer you'll want to search on development wishes. As Open Genie is still being optimized, you can still sugest some categories.
3) Wish Description: In this field you can explain what exactly you're looking for. Some background information, some ideas, ... You can write it all down here.
4) Thumbnail image: People are usually more attracted when there are some images added as well. Add a relevant, nice picture here.

When you scroll down, you'll see there are some more advanced parameters as well:

Here you can add some extra, more advanced parameters of your wish:
A) Tags: You can add tags, if people search on Hive utilizing a certain tag, they'll find your wish easier.
B) Genie Requirements: You can add certain requirements, are there any skills you want the Genie to have? Certain degrees or certificates, you can ask for them here.
C) Publish your wish as comment in a post and not as top level post: This means that you can post it as a comment or as a post. If it's a post, it could trigger automatic votes and these posts will appear on your post feed. If it's as a comment, it won't fill your personal post feed.
D) Currency: You can choose in which currency you'll pay the genie.
E) Budget: You can show the amount of the currency you selected you'll use to pay the Genie.
F) Price Discovery: If you just want to let the potential genies make an offer, you can cross this box.
G) Create wish: Click this button to publish your wish upon people could see it and potential Genies could appear.

Congratulations, you made your first wish!

How to fullfill a wish

Besides creating our own wishes, we ofcourse want to see if we could help out others. For doing so, you could get paid, which is great! You help others and for doing so, you could earn some of your favourite tokens!

Click on 'Wishes' as you can see in the follwing image:

Now you'll see a list of wishes as you can see below:

On top of the screen, you can filter on categories. As explained before, the platform is still in development and new categories will be added. It's even a wish to come up with new categories, so if you want to make some free Hive, go and explore!

Afterwards you'll see all the wishes, their thumbnail picture, category, title, author of the wish, the amount of the payment and if it's still open or already assigned. My advice would be to have a look at https://genie.peakd.com/wishes yourself and see if you could help others out.

When you click on a particular wish, you'll find more information about the particular wish:

You'll find more text about what it is and some background information. As well as the budget available for the wish.

I marked one button in red as you could get more information. For example if something is not clear or maybe you want to negotiate about the budget or... Than you could click on Express interest or Ask Questions.

You see a text window will appear where you're able to type whatever you like. Afterwards click on Submit Comment and your question will be published on the Hive blockchain as a comment. You can utilize this text window to show interest as well, just answer something in the sense of: I would like to be your genie.

First impressions

In general I think this is a great platform. Like I described it at the beginning, I see it as a marketplace for services powered by the Hive blockchain. This is definitely great. There are quite some folks on Hive of which everyone has some unique talents. If we could help eachother out, it will make Hive an even better place.

One suggestion I have is that it would be made possible to add pictures when pressing on the button 'Express interest or Ask Questions'. I tried to copy a picture in the text field but that didn't work. This ofcourse is just something minor but still it would add some userfriendlyness.

Overall I think this is a great addition to the Hive ecosystem as it's something which has usecases transcending just Hive, crypto or blockchain. So, I would definitely advise anyone to go and visit https://genie.peakd.com/ !

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!
What do you think about Open Genie?