Introducing True Network - The Reputation Layer of the Internet

[tusharojha]

“Bringing Accountability to Anonymity in Web3.”

True Network is a substrate-based blockchain that enables building of the reputation systems for the internet by making it super easy for anyone to become an issuer, attest to work done by people & create models aka Algorithms for Reputation Scores.

Developers can create Reputation Algorithms for different use cases that live on the True Network Blockchain & get’s computed in a trustless, transparent & permissionless manner.

Internet is a collection of silos of work

The internet has emerged out to be a collection of silos with no specific known standard for reputation & attestations i.e. no simple metric for work representation & thus the problems in Hiring, Filling 100s of Forms, manual verifications, no accountability, etc. emerged.

How’s the future looks like with True Network

A great reputation system can solve a lot of problems.

• Financial Reputation Scores (like credit score) to get under-collateral loans
• Game platforms will be able to do on-chain tournaments, setting game difficulties & more.
• Proof of Work (Devs, Artists, Social), etc.

and much more.

Technical Architecture

True Network is a substrate-based blockchain implementing 3 main pallets i.e. Issuer, Credential & Reputation. True Network’s Blockchain will be a Parachain on Polkadot & Kusama or need to buy core-time in future in order to bring data from other chains & provide cross-chain verification via XCM.

Pallets

1. Issuer
   Registers the issuers by making them lock some tokens to start issuing credentials.

2. Credential
   Pallet for registering the Credential Schema & store Issued Credential / Attestation.

3. Reputation
   Enables the issuer to create an algorithm & register the code (Assembly Script to wasm) for calculating Reputation Scores.

   Reputation = Algo(creds, weights)

Why building a new chain?

1. Incentivise the Right Actors
   Currently, Issuers are not incentivised to act right or even build systems that are strong for being used as reputation.

2. From Distributed Silos to One Bucket
   Build contracts, deploy on multiple chains => Web3 Silos, there needs to be a single connected source that powers this special requirement for the internet.

Read more in our lightpaper.

About Us

Tushar Ojha
Founder, True Network
Polkadot Blockchain Academy Graduate (Founders Track), Hong Kong 2024
ETH India 2022 Winner
(Biggest ETH Hackathon Globally)
Worked as DevEx, Subsocial Network (Social Finance Parachain on Polkadot)
10+ Years as a programmer

Tarek Abdalla
Senior Rust Developer
Ex- Rust Dev at Subsocial Network
Opensource Contributor to Flutter & Dart.
Experienced Substrate Developer with overall 8 years of industry experience.

[YungBeef]

What sets True Network apart from KILT?

It sounds fairly similar, and made me think of this:

[tusharojha]

True Network is focused on building the infrastructure for Digital Reputation Online. It enables communities to create models of measuring the important factors to them out of the work one has done whereas Kilt is a decentralised identity provider, with a very different promising features.

Now regarding the standards,

Why multiple competing standards are a problem?
Projects like Kilt, EAS, Polygon ID, and many others enable schemas and credentials for teams to become issuers and solve their business needs (a similar problem for social platform projects like Lens, Subsocial, Farcaster). This works until they need to interoperate with others.

At True Network, we understand this and it will not be a problem for us because with Reputation Algorithms, essentially the schema builders and attestors are also providing the method of how these systems are understandable by others.

Hence, in the future, it will be much easier for projects to build on top of each other’s schemas, like layers, in a permissionless manner.

Like this:

[alice_und_bob]

Hey Tushar,

Great to see your project pushing to the next stage!

Could you give a few very practical examples of how this will benefit the consumers of your system?

Thanks

[tusharojha]

Hi Tommi,

There are many examples that will be enabled by True Network for the end-consumer.

Some are a little aspirational that I would like to see in the future:

• Undercollateralized lending platforms
• On-chain P2P exchanges
• Merit-based Governance

The above will be made possible by introducing mechanisms like Reputation Staking, which will incentivize people to lock up their reputation score or level as a secondary asset alongside money.

Other practical examples that we already see interest in:

Gaming Reputation:
Most games have a very limited shelf life, during which players enjoy them before they become obsolete or fall out of trend. Because of this, gamers who spend hours grinding them have limited takeaways (other than fun, of course). Innovations in gaming reputation can enable gamers to participate in on-chain tournaments of similar games and earn rewards, while the games will receive a larger and more genuine audience for their tournaments.

Work Reputation:
Reputation based on people’s work credentials.

Content Reputation:
Social platforms have private content algorithms that are neither transparent nor modifiable by end consumers. With True Network, there can be a marketplace for content rating algorithms based on your interests.

But for now, one of the dapps that’s launching using True Network is:

Skill Sync:
Find developers to join your team based on your requirements, using the Developer Reputation Model.
Here’s an early look at it: Link to the video

PS. Because it’s built on True Network, multiple dapps can leverage the model created by Skill Sync for Developer Reputation for hiring, grants, networking, and more.

[lukastanisic99]

Hi Tushar! Hope life is good post PBA
Overall I like the idea of reputation systems and I think they’re a hard problem in general. The hard part is to find a universal way to measure everything objectively even though reputation by definition is subjective - different people value your reputation differently.

For instance in your algorithm Reputation = Algorithm(Credentials, Weights) where an issuer issues a credential and gives weights and sets the algorithm - I understand how this would work within the ecosystem of the single issuer, but the problem is when you want to interoperate with other issuers outside the single ecosystem. Mapping many different reputation scores from different issuers into a single dimension (value) is very hard.

What’s your business model? I don’t think we spoke about this at the PBA. Is this like a public good? Why do you need the token?

Overall I like what you’re doing and hope you get funded to explore this further!

[edoga]

Gmgm Tushar! I’m glad to see True Network here, as you know I use KILT a lot, and at the beginning seems like True Network was trying to take out the DID standard, however, I can relate to one of your examples during the PBA, about gaming, I see the potential about True Network being kind of a oracle for online reputation, and I agree with the comment of Luka, making an oracle and standardize the information within multiple isssuers, could be a headache, more if the DID standard is something part of the True Network Protocol, and if this isn’t contemplate, why?

@tusharojha

Why multiple competing standards are a problem?
Projects like Kilt, EAS, Polygon ID, and many others enable schemas and credentials for teams to become issuers and solve their business needs (a similar problem for social platform projects like Lens, Subsocial, Farcaster). This works until they need to interoperate with others.

I’m assuming, True Network, does not use DID standards, which would be a closer approach to projects like Litentry for digital ID, however, the DID standard is meant to be interoperable and easy to discover between DID services such as KILT or Polygon ID, why to choose an ID method on a clustered ecosystem and how True Network could link to DID standards?

And, also, reputation is something that if you measure it, suddenly you have competition among the stakeholders, giving open field for bad practice on these reputation systems. How can you protect the protocol against bad actors who could use the reputation system to leverage bad practices?

Overall, I see the potential of True Network, it worries me that the fractionalization of the identity systems on the web3 ecosystem could shatter massive adoption for regular users, however, I see the main target, gaming, and software developers, which is a good perspective for reputational systems, and digital IDs.

Greetings my friend, I’m happy to learn more about True Network.

[LinkedCar]

The idea of managing and transferring reputation across different platforms or games using blockchain technology is interesting. Blockchain’s immutable and decentralized nature can securely store and verify a player’s achievements, skills, and reputation, making it transferable across games and platforms. It’s like a universal player profile. (I guess it’s only about reputation, and not sharing in-game assets and achievements across different games?)

You also talk about work reputation, and skills reputation – but gaming seems the way to go. My feeling is that it will open up new ways for collaboration between game developers and platforms.
But this could also pose significant hurdles. (eg aligning the varied criteria for reputation across different games and platforms …)

I’m interested to see how far this idea of blockchain based reputation management will bring you ! Good luck Tushar !

[Chris_Nifty]

Hello Tushar
Happy to see True Network progressing.
I agree with the comments other made that reputation for gammers seams to be the way to go. This can help gammers have a universal player profile. I am sure that would be difficult to do. But I see the potential True Network has.

[replghost]

Love the idea of breaking through the silos - it’s not just an idea that applies to current credentialing blockchains, but actually a theme of Polkadot in general with interoperability between chains/networks.

[wariomx]

I met Trushar at PBA; I think he is intelligent and can provide value to the Polkadot Ecosystem. The credit score reputation sounds interesting and a tool I will definitely integrate into my project rotam if it goes live. As a follow-up question, What other parachain or Polkadot ecosystem tool, besides substrate stack, are you planning to integrate?

Greetings,
Mexican Mario.

[tusharojha]

Hi Luka,

Thank you for all the insightful questions. Happy to see your interest in True Network & it’s core fundamentals.

I completely agree with your point:

@lukastanisic99

reputation by definition is subjective - different people value your reputation differently.

True Network believes that reputation is subjective, and different communities have different values. That’s why our algorithm allows dApps using the reputation model to adjust weights, so they can focus on what matters most to them.

Hence, this is not limitied to singe issuer to setup like the concern you mentioned:

@lukastanisic99

I understand how this would work within the ecosystem of the single issuer, but the problem is when you want to interoperate with other issuers outside the single ecosystem.

@lukastanisic99

What’s your business model?

There could be multiple revenue streams that we are researching, currently this is our initial plan.

@lukastanisic99

Why do you need the token?

The TRUE Token is crucial for the protocol to function properly. It incentivizes the right participants and helps build financial trust in the entire marketplace of algorithms on True Network. You can find more information about the usefulness of TRUE tokens in our lightpaper.

[tusharojha]

Hi Edgar,

Thanks for pointing out interesting details.

You mentioned:

@edoga

the DID standard is meant to be interoperable and easy to discover between DID services such as KILT or Polygon ID, why to choose an ID method on a clustered ecosystem and how True Network could link to DID standards?

True Network prioritizes digital reputation systems and aims to enable them through the most effective means. The DID standard by W3C facilitates interoperability and has demonstrated its potential. My comment on competing standards was regarding schemas, as Yung Beef intended to discuss them rather than DIDs, in my opinion.

As outlined in our future roadmap in the lightpaper, we plan to leverage W3C and DIDs as trusted sources of information from which reputation can be derived including KILT.

@edoga

And, also, reputation is something that if you measure it, suddenly you have competition among the stakeholders, giving open field for bad practice on these reputation systems. How can you protect the protocol against bad actors who could use the reputation system to leverage bad practices?

Honestly, I have a different view on this. You can see it as a belief we hold in our philosophy of reputation systems. If reputation is measured using a set method in a trustworthy and transparent way, it encourages participants to behave well rather than engaging in negative practices.

Moreover, by using substrate and following Polkadot’s principles, these models can be constantly enhanced by ecosystem teams to address any weaknesses that bad actors might exploit.

Consider Uber drivers as an example. They understand that to increase their number of rides and earn better fares, they must provide good customer service, assistance, and build a positive reputation within the system.

[tusharojha]

@wariomx

The credit score reputation sounds interesting and a tool I will definitely integrate into my project rotam if it goes live.

That would be amazing, looking forward to it.

@wariomx

What other parachain or Polkadot ecosystem tool, besides substrate stack, are you planning to integrate?

It would be beneficial to collaborate with smart contract para-chains and Kilt in the near future. This way, individuals can integrate reputation models directly into their business logic and create compelling experiences for the end-user.