While LinkedIn is useful for displaying people’s educational and professional accomplishments, there’s a world of self-made tech talent whose skills aren’t so easily reflected on the networking site. Rather, their expertise is hidden in the lines of code they write.
Aspecta tries to fill this gap by providing an AI-powered profile builder for developers who want to create LinkedIn-like identity pages themselves. This is done by using large language models to examine the quality of code in the projects they contribute to. The platform also factors in social approval and applies network analysis to see if a programmer’s work has been “liked” by other recognized experts.
The number of web3 developers increased despite the crypto winter, and naturally, Aspecta’s data reach extends into the blockchain world. Its algorithms derive clues from how users’ wallet addresses interact with smart contracts and mark their activity types accordingly, which He says is an “easier” process than verifying, for example, GitHub data because “string data is more structured”. .”
Aspecta is currently integrated with GitHub, so when users log in with their accounts on the code hosting site, they receive an auto-generated identity page with all of their technical achievements that looks a bit like the trophy page of a player. The platform has also included Google, Stackoverflow and MetaMask in its data sources and is in the process of integrating Twitter.
The alpha version of Aspecta attracted some 130,000 users to its waiting list. Investors took notice of its traction, and today the startup announced that it had closed a $3.5 million seed funding round that would allow it to launch the beta edition of its flagship identity product. digital, Aspecta ID.
Key institutional investors in the round included ZhenFund, a venture capital firm known for backing Chinese entrepreneurs growing globally, as well as crypto-focused HashKey Capital and Foresight Ventures. The startup has also attracted several strategic investors likely to leverage its identity service, including Galxe, Dorahacks, CyberConnect, Mask Network, and P12.
DAO governance
Like many startups working in the digital identity space these days, Aspecta finds itself drawn to the decentralized governance mechanisms of web3.
“We’re basically creating an identity ecosystem and we don’t think it should be managed by a third-party company. Rather, it should be managed by a DAO,” said Jack Heco-founder of Aspecta, in an interview with TechCrunch.
A DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, is run by coded rules like a computer program that is controlled by members of the organization rather than a central party. DAO members own tokens that allow them to vote on key decisions. The concept caused a stir during the crypto bull run, attracting artists, entrepreneurs and investors to initiate their DAOs, but many have lost steam since the market downturn.
Aspecta’s DAO has not yet been implemented. He felt that talent insights uncovered by the platform’s AI would eventually generate revenue, which would be better distributed based on community rules. that is, he wants leave it users, or data providers, decide how their data is used by data consumers, the parties that use their digital footprint.
In addition to serving programmers, the platform also targets organizations that can use developers’ digest data through its “identity as a service”. Hackathons, for example, might find Aspecta useful because its identification system can not only help register contestants, but also offer insight into hacker skills. Or if a company is hiring developers, they could use data from Aspecta to get a quick overview of candidates rather than reviewing their code line by line.
The next step for Aspecta is to target content creators who face the same dilemma as software developers – their achievements are not easily presentable on existing professional networking sites. As such, the startup plans to apply its algorithms to examine the popularity of creators’ tweets or Youtube videos, as well as using graph learning algorithms to spot fake reviews.
“You can pretend to follow Twitter, but you can’t mess with Aspecta’s algorithm,” He said.
