🎖️On-Chain Reputation

On-chain actions of any given address are by definition publicly available for most blockchain protocols. These actions, however, cannot be tied together to form the history of activity of a given person with reasonable degree of certainty as anyone can easily create new accounts forming new on-chain ‘identities’. Pseudonymity is the mechanism by which users retain their privacy given transparency of public blockchain protocols. Hence, running the risk of some exaggeration, we can conclude that susceptibility to Sybil attacks is the cost of immutability.

But had there been some strong form of Sybil resistance, the data points representing interactions between an on-chain identity (an account or a set thereof representing a human or an AI or pretty much any other entity) and the rest of the protocol would characterize this identity to the same extent, real world reputation characterizes a real world person.

Web3 footprints are data points enabling a measurement of user’s on-chain interactions (for example, across various DAOs and other dApps). This data serves to provide users with a virtual equivalent to a real-world reputation. These data points can be used to tailor each users' accessibility to various dApps, services, and governance mechanisms within the broader ecosystem.

A Web3 footprint refers to the multitude of interactions between a Persistent Identity and the rest of the protocol. It represents the relationships between an account, other accounts, and the system itself.

A product of Web3 footprint is the outcome or result derived from the interactions mentioned above. This product can be quantified as a user's impact on the network, which can be used to define their virtual equivalent of a real-world reputation.

dApps and other users can then use these data as inputs into their own business logic. Reputation is an immensely important social primitive — meritocratic governance, undercollateralized lending, attestations and social networks are only the tip of the iceberg of use cases it enables.