Reputation-Weighted Voting is the Future of Governance

One-token-one-vote hands control to whales and mercenary capital, leading to low-quality proposals and governance attacks. Voter apathy is >90% on most major DAOs.

• Whale Dominance: A few wallets can dictate outcomes regardless of expertise.
• Low-Quality Signals: Votes are cast based on price, not protocol health.
• Security Risk: Enables flash loan attacks to temporarily hijack governance.

Systems like Optimism's Citizen House and Aragon's Vocdoni use soulbound tokens (SBTs) or non-transferable NFTs to measure contribution. Influence is earned, not bought.

• Sybil-Resistant: Attaching reputation to a persistent identity prevents vote-buying.
• Expertise Weighting: Long-term contributors and subject matter experts get more say.
• Progressive Decentralization: Starts with token voting, migrates to reputation as the system matures.

Pioneered the bicameral model: Token House for capital interests, Citizen House for community impact. Citizenship is a non-transferable NFT awarded for proven contributions.

• Retroactive Funding (RPGF): Citizens allocate millions in OP tokens to fund public goods.
• Separation of Powers: Prevents capital from solely controlling grant funding.
• On-Chain Attestation: Uses EAS (Ethereum Attestation Service) to track contributions verifiably.

Reputation systems require new voting mechanics. Conviction Voting (used by 1Hive) lets voting power accrue over time, favoring patient, committed voters. Expertise Oracles (conceptually like UMA's oSnap) can delegate weight based on verifiable credentials.

• Time-Based Weighting: Counteracts snap decisions by whales.
• Delegation to Experts: Users can delegate their reputation to known specialists.
• Lower Proposal Throughput: Naturally filters out spam by requiring sustained interest.

The hardest part is creating a sybil-resistant, fair, and transparent reputation graph. It's an oracle problem.

• Data Sources: Must aggregate on-chain activity (e.g., Gitcoin Grants donations, governance forum posts, code commits) and potentially off-chain credentials.
• Game Theory: Systems must be resistant to reputation farming and collusion rings.
• Subjectivity: Defining "value-add" is inherently political and must be community-defined.

Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) and zero-knowledge proofs will enable private reputation scoring and voting. Projects like Fhenix and Aztec are building the infrastructure.

• Privacy-Preserving: Users can prove their reputation tier without revealing their full history.
• Anti-Collusion: Makes it harder for large holders to identify and bribe high-reputation accounts.
• Composability: Private reputation scores become a portable, cross-protocol primitive.

One-token-one-vote is easily gamed by whales and bots, leading to low-quality governance. Voter turnout is often <10%, and proposals are decided by a tiny, unrepresentative minority.

• Sybil-resistance is non-existent with pure token voting.
• Delegation pools centralize power without accountability.
• Voter incentives are misaligned (speculation vs. protocol health).

Reputation is a non-transferable, earned score based on verifiable on-chain actions. It creates a meritocratic layer atop capital. Think Gitcoin Passport for DAOs or Optimism's Attestations.

• Metrics include: proposal authorship, successful execution, long-term delegation, bug bounties.
• Reputation decays over time, forcing continuous engagement.
• Enables quadratic voting or conviction voting without Sybil vulnerabilities.

Building a reputation system requires cheap, scalable data storage and verification. Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) and Optimism's AttestationStation are the foundational primitives.

• Store proofs of contribution on a low-cost L2 like Base or Optimism.
• Use zero-knowledge proofs (e.g., zkSNARKs) for privacy-preserving reputation claims.
• Aggregate scores via oracles like Pyth or Chainlink Functions for cross-protocol reputation.

Curve Finance's veCRV was a proto-reputation system: voting power is earned by locking tokens long-term. This created the "Curve Wars" but revealed flaws.

• Benefit: Aligns voters with long-term success (4-year lock).
• Flaw: Still capital-based, leading to bribe markets and power consolidation.
• Evolution: Next-gen models like Frax Finance's veFxs add staking performance as a reputational metric.

With robust reputation, governance can safely delegate authority. High-reputation members form SubDAOs (like Aave's Guardians) for rapid, expert execution. This creates "Fork Resistance".

• A fork loses the social graph and reputation, making it worthless.
• Enables "skin in the game" governance where influence is earned, not bought.
• Reduces governance surface area for everyday decisions, increasing agility.

Start integrating reputation today. The stack is ready.

• Data Primitives: EAS, Ceramic, Tableland.
• Scoring Engines: Build using Sismo's ZK Badges or Orange Protocol.
• Governance Modules: Plug into Snapshot X, Tally, or Compound's Governor.
• Key KPI: Reputation Concentration Gini Coefficient. Aim for <0.6 to avoid centralization.