Credibility score on Ethos reflect community-driven sentiment about public accounts (like Twitter and ENS addresses) based on publicly available interactions. These scores are not an absolute measure of credibility, trustworthiness, or character but rather an aggregation of user-submitted feedback and publicly available metrics.

Since credibility scores are user-generated and algorithmically driven, they may not always reflect a complete or accurate picture of an account’s engagement and trust level.

Credibility scores reflect public opinion and do not claim to be definitive truth. The system is not designed to harm reputations but to reflect user engagement patterns.

To start, the only information we have about a user is their

These two data points represent the "foundation" for a credibility score. New Twitter profile will receive a score penalty of -250 for the first 90 days, after 90 days this score penalty will drop to -50. Once your Twitter profile is older than 365 days the penalty will be removed and you will have 0 score from your profile account age. If your profile is older than 5 years you will get a small score boost of +5.
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Just like Twitter account age, Ethereum wallet quality help bring a user to "credibly neutral" at 1200 or more. Here we evaluate the all-round quality of the wallet connected to the profile. The score will be based off the best connected wallet.
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Beyond the account history, a user's initial credibility score is set by who invites them. Invitations from credible people will lift a new user's score up, while invitations from low credibility score have the chance to drag a new user's score down.

Inviting a user creates a bond between the inviter and invitee, tying their scores together for 180 days. This means that if a credible person invites someone, and the invitee's score goes down from their initial score, the credible person's score will also go down in some relation to the amount of the invitee.

This bond is used to discourage people from inviting non-credible Ethos users, sybils, or other potential bad actors.
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Beyond simple account history and who invited you, an Ethos score is almost entirely driven by how other people review, vouch and slash them.

Positive reviews and vouches will increase credibility score, while negative reviews and slashes will remove from a user's credibility score.

All peer-to-peer mechanisms are weighted with the actor's credibility score; a user who lacks credibility will have a diminished affect when leaving reviews compared to someone who has significant credibility.

Individual activities like reviews can also be magnified by community consensus. If a user leaves a review that was heavily downvoted, it will count less towards the subject's credibility score.

This weighting helps us maintain a safe and trusted environment.

Currently all credibility scores are calculated and stored offchain, with the intent of eventually moving these algorithms onchain.

When viewing a user's profile, you can click the "Score breakdown" link to take you to the credibility score definition page.

Here you will see the full breakdown of exactly how that score was determined.

Credibility scores and the definition of what credibility means are expected to change over time. While we've built a solid foundation of the credibility scores, we continue to improve the way the credibility scores are calculated.
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The most recent changes are proposed by the team and voted on by the community. You can read more about them on the EIP proposal page on Snapshot.
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