# A New Standard for Trust in Web3
In the decentralized future we’re building, reputation is not given—it’s **earned**, **measured**, and **composed** across the network. At **Zero Authority**, we envision a world where your onchain contributions speak louder than your clout, where trust isn’t dictated by centralized platforms, but **emerges organically** from your work, your collaborations, and your impact. To get there, we’re merging two powerful ideas: * The **Standard Reputation Framework**: an open system where anyone can award reputation for meaningful contributions. * The **EigenTrust algorithm**: a decentralized method for computing global trust based on local experiences. Together, they form a foundation for a **trustless trust system**—a future where you own your reputation and take it with you anywhere in the ecosystem. *** ### The Reputation Layer Is Missing DAOs, protocols, and onchain teams run on coordination. But coordination without **credibility signals** leads to noise: * How do we know who to hire, promote, fund, or delegate? * How do we reward real contributors, not loud ones? * How do we protect networks from sybils, spam, and manipulation? What we need isn’t just data—it’s a **decentralized reputation layer**: one that is **open, transparent, and composable** across chains, protocols, and applications. We’re not just building it—we’re inviting everyone to build it with us. *** ### The Promise of EigenTrust The **EigenTrust algorithm** was developed for peer-to-peer networks as a way to filter out bad actors and uplift trustworthy ones—without any central authority. Here’s the genius of it:\ It propagates trust through the network by weighting local experiences. > If Alice trusts Bob, and Bob trusts Carol, then Alice may assign partial trust to Carol—even if they’ve never interacted. This kind of **transitive trust** forms the basis of an emergent, global reputation score. And that’s exactly the kind of structure Web3 needs—but mapped to **wallets, smart contracts, DAOs, and contributors.** *** ### ✦ Trust in Numbers: Light Math, Big Ideas Let’s look under the hood—lightly. Each participant ii maintains **local trust scores** sijs\_{ij} for others they’ve interacted with. To normalize for fairness: cij=sij∑ksikc\_{ij} = \frac{s\_{ij}}{\sum\_k s\_{ik}} Where: * cijc\_{ij} = normalized trust Alice has in Bob * The sum of all cijc\_{ij} values for a given user equals 1 Then, using **power iteration**, we compute the **global trust vector** tt such that: t=CTtt = C^T t Where: * CC is the matrix of all normalized local scores * tt converges to a stable distribution of global trust This isn’t just theory—it’s already been battle-tested in decentralized networks. But in Web3, it becomes exponentially more powerful: * **Wallets = identities** * **Reputation = weighted behavior** * **Scores = interoperable signals** Imagine plugging this into a bounty board, governance system, or collab platform—and instantly surfacing **the most trusted contributors, by context**. *** ### The Standard Reputation Framework: Anyone Can Reward The [**Standard Reputation Framework**](https://docs.zeroauthority.xyz/the-dao/standard-reputation-framework) allows: * DAOs to issue reputation to voters, builders, and bounty winners * Individuals to give attestation to others they collaborate with * Apps to plug into a shared layer of **composable trust** Reputation can be: * Public or private * Context-specific (e.g. "trusted reviewer", "governance expert") * Immutable or time-based * Earned, never bought This is a protocol, not a platform. It’s **designed to be adopted, remixed, extended**. *** ### Building a Reputation Economy Imagine a world where: * Your onchain resume shows endorsements from real collaborators * Airdrops are based on your verified impact, not just activity * Protocols weight your vote based on reputation earned across DAOs * Hackathons, bounties, and governance use trust to filter signal from noise We’re not there yet. But we believe we can get there—**together**. It will take: * Open infrastructure * Transparent math * Interoperable standards * And the belief that **trust can be decentralized** without being diluted *** ### Join Us This is an open invitation to build the reputation layer of Web3: * If you’re a DAO: start issuing reputation. * If you’re a builder: integrate our standards. * If you’re a contributor: start earning trust that’s portable. Because in the end, reputation is not what you say about yourself—\ It’s what the network says about you. And at **Zero Authority**, we’re making sure the network can finally speak.