Colony, a London-based startup aiming to leverage P2P and blockchain technologies to create a decentralized marketplace for freelancers, was awarded $10,000 in prize money during today’s Proof of Work startup competition, which was held at the Consensus 2016 fintech conference.

Colony co-founder Collin Vine, who previously co-founded San Francisco-based virtual assistant service provider Zirtual, presented the concept behind his company to a panel of judges made up of several prominent fintech investors and industry leaders like Dan Morehead, CEO of Pantera Capital Management and Chairman of Bitstamp.

According to Vine’s speech, Colony provides an environment where firms can form “colonies”, which are essentially groups endowed with a certain amount of capital that freelancers can draw from as compensation for services rendered, “A colony is as easy to start as a Facebook group and contributing is as easy as tweeting.” reads the Colony site.

Vine explained in his presentation:

“The person who does the most bounties gets the largest amount of money,”

Four other companies participated in the Proof of Work competition; The Sun Exchange, a solar projects investor platform; private blockchain developer Coinprism; digital asset investment platform Lawnmower.io; blockchain-based digital identity management service Uniquid.

The Colony platform currently integrates with several popular online services such as Twitter, Stripe, Mailchimp, Dropbox, IFTTT, GitHub and Google docs.

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