The Idea
SkillSwap is built on one principle: teach what you know, learn what you don't — no money changing hands for the skills themselves.
You list what you can teach and what you want to learn. The network finds people whose needs mirror yours, you exchange knowledge directly, and each completed exchange leaves behind a verifiable proof anchored on the Cardano blockchain.
1. Set Your Skills
Connect your Cardano wallet and declare two things:
- What you can teach — the skills you're confident sharing.
- What you want to learn — the skills you're looking for.
Your profile is your position in the network. A connected wallet is required — it's how you sign in, secure your messages, and prove your exchanges.
2. Find a Match
The matching engine only surfaces bidirectional matches — people who teach what you want and want what you teach.
No one-sided connections. Every match is a fair trade by design.
A Perfect Match is someone whose teach/learn skills mirror yours exactly. A Strong Match overlaps on at least one skill in each direction.
3. Request a Swap
When you find someone to trade with, you send a swap request and pay a small 2 ADA platform fee.
This fee keeps SkillSwap sustainable and filters out low-effort requests — but it's designed to never punish you for reaching out:
- If the other person declines, you're refunded the full 2 ADA, automatically.
- You only ever part with the fee when an exchange actually goes ahead.
The payment is verified instantly — we read your signed transaction directly, so there's no waiting for on-chain confirmation before your request is sent.
4. Exchange Skills
Once your match accepts, the swap becomes active and a private, end-to-end encrypted conversation opens between you.
Both sides:
- Share their skill and any deliverables.
- Confirm completion independently.
A swap only completes when both parties have delivered and confirmed — no single person controls the outcome.
5. Earn Your Proof
When both sides confirm, SkillSwap generates a deterministic proof of the exchange — the participants, the skills traded, and a content hash.
You then anchor that proof on Cardano with a single signed transaction. The result is a permanent, independently verifiable record that the exchange happened:
PENDING → ANCHORING → ANCHORED
The proof belongs to you. Anyone can re-hash the stored details and check them against the on-chain record.
The Swap Fee, Explained
The 2 ADA fee moves through clear states so you always know where your money is:
- Paid — you requested the swap and the fee is confirmed.
- Kept — the match accepted (or you cancelled); the fee sustains the platform.
- Refunded — the match declined; your 2 ADA was returned in full.
Every refund is re-checked on-chain before it's issued, so a refund is always backed by a real, confirmed payment. You can see the live status on each swap and in your dashboard.
Why Cardano
Every meaningful action is backed by real cryptography:
- Wallet sign-in proves who you are without passwords.
- The swap fee and its refund are real on-chain transactions.
- Your proof of exchange is anchored on-chain and verifiable by anyone, forever.
SkillSwap doesn't just say an exchange happened — it lets you prove it. Get started and make your first trade.