Thanks @Ilichb for the proposal. The architecture is clearly well thought out, and we can tell a lot of work went into this.
This proposal lands right in something we researched a few months ago, the Collective Rewards program and the builder–backer relationship. One of the points we raised back then:
So to be clear, we’re not against a builder reputation score, in fact it’s something we’ve called for. In that same feedback, we also noted that the Lab is already working in this direction. So for us, a reputation layer feels more like a nice-to-have for backers picking who to support, not a must-have right now, and we don’t think this is the right moment for the Collective to put this much treasury into it. Three reasons:
1. It’s not really our main problem right now. The issue today isn’t that backers can’t tell good builders apart, it’s that almost nobody is staking yet. Only ~2.3% of supply is in the dApp, ~97.7% is still sitting idle, and from our research the blockers are awareness and visibility, not difficulty judging builders. A better builder score helps the small group already backing make sharper choices, but it doesn’t do anything to bring the other 97.7% in. So our priority should be activating idle RIF and onboarding holders first.
2. The cost is hard to justify at this point. The $28k is for Milestone 1 only, and M1 is testnet, so we’d be funding a prototype that doesn’t even touch the live program yet, with mainnet and the next milestones coming later as separate, and we don’t know what those will cost.
3. It overlaps in part with where Rootstock is heading, but it’s not 100% exactly the same thing. The team is already moving in this direction, the FES is waiting to launch, but FES measures funding efficiency (the onchain value a funded project returns for its grant: TVL, tx, new wallets), whereas you’re proposing a builder reputation score, which is a different object. And much of what this would build, indexing governance data and turning it into a score, sits on infrastructure the Collective already has. So we think what Rootstock is building internally could likely be adapted toward what you’re proposing, at lower cost than a separate external system.
So we’d rather not fund a separate external system that does what the DAO is already building internally.
For now though, our honest take is that it’s a good idea but the wrong timing, and it overlaps too much with FES.