# A New Standard for Trust in Web3

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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.

<https://linktr.ee/zeroauthoritydao>


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