When Ethos was launched on mainnet, reputation in web3 of course already existed.
Ethos has given a "reputation boost" to some companies, projects and influencers to temporarily set their scores higher (in most cases, +400 to "reputable") to help:
identify that those sources are already reputable
provide a handicap to those users, that is still modifiable based on user entry
ensure the chrome extension is valuable (ie. Yuga Labs vs Uuga Labs twitter stand out as Reputable versus Neutral)
recognize reality that some people already have reputation
We intend for Reputation Boost to be temporary, as it promotes centralization to the Ethos team on "who is reputable." Not only does Reputation Boost have decay, but we plan to remove it entirely from the score calculation as the network grows and scores become more stable.
The current goal is to eliminate all reputation boost 12 months after the launch of Ethos, or earlier if the team feels the scores have normalized before then.
When looking at someone's reputation, you can see if they have a reputation boost here:
Reputation Boost Decay
Once a user that has a reputation boost joins Ethos, their reputation boost will start to decay as their score begins to normalize.
The current implementation of this reduces it over a 28 day period:
-100 on day 1
-100 on day 3
-100 on day 7
-100 on day 28
At which point they will no longer receive any reputation boost to their profile.
Please note, this is currently done manually so may not be perfectly on schedule - but we are working to implement it into a regular sequence that happens automatically.
The decay ensures that Ethos users with profiles are not receiving any unfair advantages
We may also implement other type of decay in the future for non-profiles, including decay triggered but things like: amount vouched, amount of reviews, or a certain score is reached.