Getting paid
Every quest and gig pays the full reward or budget (a disputed gig pays the share the arbiter decides). The platform fee is paid by the employer on top, never taken from you. You choose how you receive it:
- USDG, the stablecoin the work was funded in, paid 1:1.
- A Robinhood stock token from the list in the app. When you are paid, the StockPayout contract swaps the USDG for the token and sends it straight to your wallet.
You choose when you reserve a quest slot or when you deliver a gig. The choice is stored on-chain with your work.
The payout picker
The picker shows USDG first, then every stock token that work2own's payout contract accepts, with a search box. For each token it shows either an estimate, "≈ 0.0321 NVDA", or the reason it cannot be chosen right now. Estimates are for the current block and refresh every 30 seconds.
Reasons a token can be unavailable:
| Reason shown | What it means |
|---|---|
| Price feed is stale (market closed) | The Chainlink price for this stock is too old, usually because the stock market is closed |
| Price feed unavailable | The price feed could not be read |
| Pool price is below the oracle floor right now | The pool would give less than the protected minimum |
| No pool liquidity for this amount | The Uniswap pool cannot fill this amount |
| Amount is above the X USDG limit for this token | This token has a per-payout cap (see Stock payouts) |
| Token is paused / Token oracle is paused | Robinhood paused the token or its price oracle |
| Robinhood token registry is paused | Robinhood paused all stock token transfers |
| This wallet is blocked by the Robinhood token registry | Robinhood's registry does not allow this wallet to receive stock tokens |
The estimate is not a promise. The final amount is set when the payout runs, at the price at that moment, and never below the protected minimum described below.
Country
Robinhood stock tokens are not offered to residents of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Workers from these countries can still work on work2own and are paid in USDG.
The first time you open the payout picker, the app asks "Where do you live?" (after a free sign-in). Your answer is stored with your wallet and is not public.
- If you choose one of the four countries, the picker only offers USDG: "Your country is USDG-only, so this work pays you in USDG."
- The app has no option to change your answer later, and a wallet that declared one of the four countries cannot be moved to a country where stock tokens are offered.
- If your connection comes from one of these four countries, stock tokens are not offered either, whatever country you declared. The country of your connection is taken from Cloudflare's IP geolocation.
Protected price
Stock payouts use one of two protections, depending on the token. The app does not label them; the full list is in Stock payouts.
Oracle-protected tokens (the most liquid stocks). The swap may not deliver less than the Chainlink price minus the slippage allowance, which is 1%. If the price is older than the allowed age, the swap does not run at all. The operator's fresh quote can only raise this minimum, never lower it.
Quote-protected tokens. There is no Chainlink feed for these, so the minimum comes from a Uniswap quote taken just before the swap, minus 1%. Because this depends on the quote, each payout in these tokens is capped at 25 USDG. Larger amounts can only be paid in USDG or an oracle-protected token.
In both cases the delivered amount is measured from your wallet balance before and after the swap. If it would be below the minimum, the swap is cancelled and the payout waits.
When a payout waits
A payout that cannot run safely does not fail and does not lose money. It stays Pending, the USDG stays in the escrow, and it is tried again. Common reasons:
- The stock market is closed, so the price feed is stale. Oracle-protected payouts wait for fresh prices, for example after a weekend.
- The pool price is below the protected minimum.
- Robinhood paused the token, its oracle or all stock tokens, or blocked your wallet.
- The payout was triggered by someone other than you or the operator, for example by the employer's approval. Stock swaps only run when you or the operator trigger them, so outsiders cannot wrap the swap in a price-manipulation trade. The operator picks these up automatically.
What happens next:
- The operator retries pending stock payouts about every 10 minutes when a fresh quote passes the checks, and pending USDG payouts every 6 hours.
- You can retry yourself with Try now on the Dashboard's Payouts tab. You pay the gas for that transaction.
- After 3 days you can switch the payout to another stock token or to USDG with Switch token or USDG…, and it is paid right away if the new choice can run. The Dashboard reminds you: "Payout still pending: you can switch it to USDG or another token".
The Dashboard shows the last failed attempt for each pending payout, for example StalePrice(...).
Gas
You pay gas for the transactions you send: reserving, submitting, delivering, and Try now or Switch on a payout. When the operator completes an automatic quest or retries a payout, the operator pays that gas.