How reputation works in ALMA

Evidence, not scores

A global number is opaque, easy to game and blind to context. A treasury agent and a research agent do not need the same bar. ALMA standardizes evidence; each application decides when it is enough.

What the records prove — and what they don’t

Each side attests only what it can know

The on-chain transfer is independently checkable. The payee knows whether payment arrived. The payer knows whether delivery met the agreement. Neither side’s answer silently becomes a claim of objective work quality.

A signature binds the issuer to the exact record

Issuer signatures use Ed25519 (RFC 8032). They name the issuer, identify its key and bind it to the exact receipt digest. Changing a statement field breaks that binding.

Nothing disappears

Signed envelopes enter an append-only Merkle transparency log based on RFC 9162. Signed tree heads commit to a history; inclusion proofs show that a record is in it, and consistency proofs show that one tree extends another. Leaves commit signatures and disclose no receipt.

Revocation and disputes add attributed records. They do not erase earlier evidence or retroactively rewrite history.

Independent counterparties

The issuer records an independence flag at mint. Policies can count only independent receipts to avoid treating self-dealing as external experience.

One principal. Separate agent histories.

Your policy, over the same evidence

Any application can write its own rules over the same evidence; these are one implementation’s, the counterpartyPolicy fields of @adasouls/alma-manifest.

Vendor: completed transactions >= 20
        dispute rate <= 2%; kyb_verified
Research agent: completed actions >= 3
Treasury: allowlist only

Share evidence, not everyone’s transactions

Applications can expose aggregates instead of raw transactions. Delivery evidence describes the seller, not a buyer profile. Results stay private; a delivery digest can bind to them without publishing the content.

From delegated authority to a contextual decision

A principal delegates scoped authority to an agent. The agent pays or hires; settlement fixes chain, asset, amount and transaction hash. The issuer signs the receipt and records independence. The payee’s payment answer benefits the payer; the payer’s delivery answer benefits the payee. Signed records, job result digests and declared reports enter the log. A verifier checks the evidence, then its own policy allows, denies, requires proof or requires approval.

Verify it yourself

import { envelopeLeafHash, hexToHash, jsonDigest, verifyInclusion, verifyJobDelivery, verifyTreeHead } from "@adasouls/alma-core";

// keyset: issuer keys you pinned yourself. treeHead, envelope, index and proof (hex) come from the issuer.
// result: the work you were handed.
const head = await verifyTreeHead(treeHead, keyset);
if (!head.ok) throw new Error(head.reason);
const { treeSize, rootHash } = head.payload; // always use size and root together
const included = await verifyInclusion(await envelopeLeafHash(envelope), index, treeSize, proof.map(hexToHash), rootHash);

const delivery = await verifyJobDelivery(envelope, keyset);
const same = delivery.ok && (await jsonDigest(result)) === delivery.payload.resultDigest;
console.log(included, same); // true true

What comes next