Atlas Trust

Trust in Atlas is explicit, verifiable, and temporary. Verified humans allocate trust on each other across specific topics. Governance cycles lock and refresh those allocations. Witnessing makes the whole process publicly verifiable.

In real life, trust is specific — you trust different people on different things. Atlas brings that distinction online: trust on climate science doesn't make you trusted on software security.

Trust Allocation

Every verified participant gets 100 trust allocations per governance cycle. You distribute them across people and topics — each allocation pairs a target identity with a topic string and a numeric score.

Trust Allocation Envelope

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "ReviewAction",
  "additionalType": "atlas:trustAllocation",
  "object": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "identifier": {
      "@type": "PropertyValue",
      "propertyID": "atlas:hash",
      "value": "<target-identity-hash>"
    }
  },
  "resultReview": {
    "@type": "Review",
    "reviewAspect": "photography",
    "reviewRating": {
      "@type": "Rating",
      "ratingValue": 15
    }
  }
}

Allocations are published as ReviewAction envelopes with additionalType: "atlas:trustAllocation". They become valid only after being witnessed by the network.

Square-Root Scaling

Attestation power is the sum of square roots of each individual allocation received. This means distributed trust always beats concentrated trust — even when the same total points are spent.

Scenario	Points Spent	Attestation Power
1 person gives 100 points	100	√100 = 10
4 people give 25 points each	100	4 × √25 = 4 × 5 = 20
100 people give 1 point each	100	100 × √1 = 100

Same total investment, dramatically different power. One person giving 100 points produces only 10 power, while 100 people giving 1 point each produces 100. Getting many independent verified humans to allocate trust is far harder than convincing one — the square root makes broad consensus the only path to real influence.

Competences

Trust allocations are materialized into competence scores — per-identity, per-topic aggregates that registries attach to every PresentedEnvelope. Clients use competences to filter and rank content by the author's demonstrated expertise.

Competence Record

{
  "topic": "climate",
  "score": 12,
  "identityHash": "b3a1f8..."
}

Governance Cycles

Trust allocations don't last forever. The year is split into three governance cycles, and every participant belongs to exactly one cohort determined by their identity hash. Each cohort's allocations are locked at a specific date, then recognized four months later.

Governance Cycle Schedule

// Three cohorts, determined by identity hash mod 3
// Each cohort's allocations lock and are recognized 4 months later

Cohort 1:  Locked Jan 1  →  Recognized May 1
Cohort 2:  Locked May 1  →  Recognized Sep 1
Cohort 3:  Locked Sep 1  →  Recognized Jan 1

// Attestation Power = Σ √(each allocation)
// 4 people × 25 points = 4 × √25 = 20  >  1 person × 100 = √100 = 10

This delay prevents last-minute manipulation and gives the network time to verify everything. You can update allocations between cycles, but they don't undermine currently recognized authorities. Power transitions are predictable and smooth.

Negative Trust

Trust isn't only positive. You can allocate negative trust on bad actors — a public signal that starves them of attestation power and makes their content filterable across the network.

When an identity's integrity score exceeds the negative standard threshold (square root of the second-highest integrity scorer), the identity is banned from issuing TradeAction envelopes and excluded from burn calculations.

Negative trust expires over time as the underlying trust envelopes reach their one-year validity limit. Changed behavior leads to natural recovery — more forgiving than permanent bans, more honest than shadow-banning.