Rise Case Study: Lido DAO & Pool Maintenance Labs

Pool Maintenance Labs is a startup focused on high-level technical IT contracting. While PML is a small company, they contract with variable numbers of international freelancers throughout the year. Due to the nature of the IT services that PML provides to clients, their contracts with freelancers range from both long-term to short-term work agreements. For the company to contract with global talent in this capacity, an area of principal importance is the ability to streamline both compliant onboarding and payroll. The challenge PML met was in finding a payroll and compliance solution that was sufficiently adaptable whilst providing a high level of customisation; they needed a service that enabled expedited and efficient custom statements of work. With the capacity at which they were contracting, this was an imperative that had to be resolved in order to effectively scale their operations. Furthermore, in several contracts of Pool Maintenance Labs, remuneration to contributors was required to be made in crypto. In order to compliantly streamline these payouts to global contractors, identifying a solution that could provide automated compliance and payroll was crucial for growth.

The launch of Pool Maintenance Labs in 2022 coincided with that of Rise's crypto-friendly compliance and payroll solution. Rise enables streamlined compliance from onboarding to payroll for companies hiring both local and global talent. Rise's compliance solutions were an important answer to Pool Maintenance Labs' challenge of paying international contractors compliantly, in the desired currency, at scale. Rise provided flexible contracting capabilities, allowing PML to efficiently, compliantly and quickly draft contracts for a diverse range of work agreements. Whilst some contracts were for long-term hires, others needed to be drafted with urgency for immediate project-based assignments. This challenge was resolved with Rise's infrastructure for automating compliance checks for contractors and rapidly drafting localised and compliant professional service agreements. Rise also provided the flexibility to onboard and work with different types of contractors in a very flexible manner, both for them and for PML. For crypto payroll options, Pool Maintenance Labs required the ability to pay contractors in a diversity of currencies. Lido is a liquid staking protocol, and PML works with a grant received from the token holders at Lido DAO to provide IT services and development. Lido effectively manages contributor compensation in Lido DAO's native token by utilising Rise's capabilities to issue payments in both crypto and fiat currencies.

Pool Maintenance Labs has used Rise for their onboarding and payroll since their inception. As a result, they have been able to propel growth and avoid the inconveniences of going through traditional financial intermediaries. Due to their wide net of global contractors, with Rise, PML was able to streamline the processes of onboarding, managing and paying local and international contractors whilst ensuring total compliance. Being able to sign statements of work quickly and execute invoice payments in a compliant way is a huge facilitator for them being able to do their business. Rise enabled PML to scale their operations without opening bank accounts in random countries just to be able to work with contractors that happened to be based there.