A New Standard for Trust in Web3
Zero Authority, the EigenTrust Algorithm & the Future of Reputation
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 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.
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