> and there's a significant hoop to pay someone in crypto
Not sure why that would be. Being paid in Bitcoin is very easy. Download a non-custodial Wallet such as Phoenix Wallet or Wallet of Satoshi (new version is non-custodial) and you can receive on-chain bitcoin, or even better, lightning payments right away. You create an invoice as a link or QRcode and send it to your employer, and done.
The payer (employer) most likely will need to convert fiat/cash to bitcoin first, but since the kacet project aims to attract companies in that space, there shouldn't be an issue.
That's the plan.
The project idea came from me paying freelance designers for work using Solana and wishing there was something to keep me safe. At the time it seemed like all of the freelance work platforms were using Ethereum which had extortionate fees, so I decided to look into bringing such a platform to Solana.
I like the idea of a crypto-focused platform. I don't see payment in particular a neccessity of the platform though, no need for smart contracts for that case. You should bring together employers and freelancers, and they can sort out payment themselves. Crypto is a heterogenous bubble anyway (just as I, for example, am a Bitcoin-only guy and will reject every other crypto).
Why not monero? Even lower fees and you don’t need to advertise to the whole world how much money you have.
There's no smart contracts on Monero so it doesn't really solve problem of secure and verifiable work contracts between 2 people.
There is talks of Monero-like privacy on Solana so that will come in useful later