TL;DR

A cross-organization reputation system that values effort over economic power, fostering collaboration and neutral credibility.

Description

The current approach of relying on token ownership for voting and participation has led to decreased community engagement among members who are passionate about their communities. Additionally, individuals are less motivated to join new communities, fearing the time and effort it would take to establish their reputation from the ground up.

Introducing ZuTrust, a verifiable and interoperable reputation layer that addresses these challenges by establishing a framework where your contributions as a Zuzalu member are acknowledged between spin-offs and other organizations. This system empowers you to influence the community you are dedicated to, not based on economic power or tokens you possess but on the level of your commitment and efforts towards the community's future (Valocracy).

Problems addressed and Solutions

1. Verifiable track record of past contributions and Valocracy

1.1 Absence of a history: make your story count and enhance your on-chain reputation with all past collaborations

1.2 Arbitrariness in role selection decisions: assign roles to those with more knowledge and building experience in specific areas, basing decisions on verifiable reputation – contribution-based role assignment

2. Coordination, Interoperability and Modularity

2.1 Lack of interoperability between ecosystems: portability matters, so take your reputation forward, participate in other communities, and show them what you've built on Zuzalu

2.2 Plutocracy and voting turnout: value valocracy, make your participation and contributions valuable and important; currently, governance tokens lead this front and are still based on monetary power and not always on contribution

2.3 Bribery: when we have a non-transferable reputation based on our verifiable contributions, bribery becomes a harder.

2.4 Absence of an equitable community currency: a community coin can be created taking reputation into account; economic value may be considered, but reputation can be part of the governance equation

2.5 Voting system based only on token holdings amount: reputational systems, combined with delegate and time-stamp systems, can lead to a better equitative model for voting systems in digital organizations, by weighting the voting power by who are fit by reputation in the ecosystem, not only the amount of holdings.

3. High-quality community engagement and recognition

3.1 Lack of engagement: the ease of tracking progress stimulates increased engagement and optimal decision-making based on a unit with high reputation in a specific area

How will we evolve this part?

Starting point:

At the 2023 Ethereum Argentina event, Blockful's Product Marketing Manager, Daniela Zschaber, participated in the Hackathon and secured three prizes with a Reputation Protocol named The Shelf. She led the UX design and product design thinking process.

Building upon these achievements, we now have a Proof of Concept and a starting point for advancing the created product. The product utilized Composable Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) to track and aggregate reputation, using ERC-6220/ERC-6454 and EAS.

We need more research and feedback to have a v1 that can be used in production.

Current challenges

• Sybil resistance system: describe it here: (possibility: binding it to identity providers like Gitcoin passport or Zupass)
• Retroactive reputation framework: Take into account the past participation of members who have already positively contributed to the Zuzalu community.
• Cross-organization model: Great skills are great skills everywhere, how to take this in consideration in a fair way?

Roadmap:

1. Beginning with an in-depth research of current solutions on reputations and various features we want to incorporate
2. Conducting interviews with Zuzalu members, gathering feedback from their past experiences, current roles, and insights to construct a fair reputation system
3. Starting a Design Thinking to create a board of ideas and project evolutions, summarizing each development of features, benchmarks, interviews, and the technical side
4. Collaborating with the community to establish a roadmap
5. Building the projects openly and collaboratively, providing well-defined tasks for the community to work on together

Deliverable focused on in-person use case

Session/event attestation dApp: At ZuConnect, zuzalians were proposing sessions to discuss different subjects and share knowledge. The Zuzalu experience is guided and created by the own community, but were are the impact metrics? How do we measure a great contributor? Only with vibes, memories? This is one of the examples where a reputation layer comes in play.

This dApp is for in-person engagement, metrics for sessions, reputation around an organizer and attendees (possibility: connect with Token Proof or integrate with Ceramic).

Additional deliverables

Reputation Dashboard: A dashboard to display members with the highest reputation, categorized by areas such as event organization, governance, development, etc (possibility: connect more than one wallet to make different contributions count)

Why does Zuzalu need this solution and why does it matter?

• Engagement growth
• Better visualization of contributions and contributors
• Incentives toward a constant generation of value
• A more trustworthy choice for those executing sensitive or high-level risk works
• Effort-based governance

Core Team:

Name: Alex T. Netto Bio: Founder; Chainlink Advocate; Winner of more than 7 Hackathons including ETHSão Paulo, ETHSamba and ETHGlobal NY. Highlight for Zuzalu: Currently researching Yanomami tribes to understand alternative cooperative governance models and 8º Top ENS Delegate. Contact: alex@blockful.io

Name: Guilherme Neves Bio: Contributor for the blockchain ecosystem, built different applications in blockchain; Winner of more than 5 Hackathons including 2 from Ethereum. Highlight for Zuzalu: Open-source builder and community lead and Contributor as an advisor in the Valocracy Manifesto article. Contact: guilherme@blockful.io

Name: Gabriel Novak Bio: Economist, Engineering consultant; Ex-cofounder of a fintech; Winner of 3 Ethereum Hackathons. Highlight for Zuzalu: Network State societies Enthusiastic, collaborative projects founder, and Currently researching Yanomami tribes to understand alternative cooperative governance models. Contact: gabriel@blockful.io

Name: Daniela Zschaber Bio: Graduated in Linguistics and Literature, PMM, Chainlink Community Advocate; MBA instructor in web3. Highlight for Zuzalu: Winner of Ethereum Argentina Hackathon (Reputation Protocol) and Currently researching Yanomami tribes to understand alternative cooperative governance models. Contact: daniela@blockful.io

Name: Franco Aguzzi Bio: Worked with worldwide companies; Winner of 2 Ethereum Hackathons. Highlight for Zuzalu: Developing creative and innovative solutions, active contributor to IRL Public Goods projects. Contact: franco@blockful.io

Blockful is Improving DAOs governance with tech expertise, agile development and reliable contributions. Blockful is committed to unlocking the full potential of digital organizations with purposeful an skilled team and committed with open-source.

We build in public (goods).

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