Hi @dtedesco1,
I like the idea of a reputation token standard and have been thinking about it as well.
Here are some of my thoughts:
- Reputation tokens are hard to earn, but easy to burn.
- Reputation tokens cannot be transferred (period), but can be minted and staked.
- Reputation token supply is inflationary. Total supply of reputation tokens is constant increasing so that reputation loses value over time and must be continuously earned for an owner to maintain their share of reputation tokens.
There are lots of things to work out, but a real-world example has helped me think about this. I started life as a physicist, but switched to finance ages ago. My first job in asset management had an interesting flat culture. The management team rotated every year. My office was next to the founder’s grandson and was the same modest size. No corner offices. Also, everyone in the investment team bent over backwards to help me. It was great. The way it was explained to me, everyone was enthusiastic about helping me because the sooner I got up to speed, the sooner I could help them. Sounded great. But when my first annual review came around, I learned there was a more pragmatic reason why everyone was trying so hard to help me. I received an odd email saying that I had 10 points that I could allocate to colleagues with a maximum of 5 points to any one person and could allocate to at most 10 people (1 pt each). I didn’t have to allocate any if I didn’t want to. The basis for allocation? We were to allocate points to colleagues who we felt had helped us do our jobs better the previous year. Bonuses were largely influenced by how many points you received. I always thought that was a great was to incentivize a helpful culture. Now, it seems like a total no-brainer to tokenize this concept.
With this in mind, I am thinking that once someone has achieved a certain level of reputation, e.g. maybe owning 1 reputation token, they are periodically, e.g. once a month, allowed to mint (not transfer) a limited number of tokens to others who they feel have helped them or helped the project.
The natural use case for reputation tokens would be DAO governance as means to combat the current plutocracy of purchased governance tokens. Rather than buying votes, you earn votes via reputation and you vote on initiatives by staking your reputation on them. The amount you can stake is tracked similarly to how allowance is currently tracked in ERC-20.
Need to think about Sybil attacks. Maybe some kind of modified quadratic voting?
Edit: Btw, if there is a non-transferrable token standard, I think it should also contain a consent mechanism, e.g.