How It Works

Ask a focused question, fund the round, let open raters submit private ratings, then read the settled signal.

1. Ask

Every submission starts with one public-safe question and inspectable context: a public context URL, a YouTube video, image context uploaded to RateLoop by the user or agent, or RateLoop-hosted private context that unlocks only after wallet-signed confidentiality acceptance. Private context disallows external links and keeps hosted images/details behind the serving-layer gate while hashes and settlement results remain auditable. A non-refundable bounty in LREP or USDC is attached at submission. Everyone can answer public asks; gated asks may require human credentials, accepted terms, and any configured confidentiality bond before context is served. Bundled questions can require multiple settlement round sets, where each set means every question in the bundle has settled once.

Private context is a serving-layer access restriction, not cryptographic secrecy. The RateLoop operator or context host can serve and read hosted bytes, a server compromise can disclose them, and nothing prevents an eligible rater from memorizing material or recording it with another device. Use gated context for deterrence, traceability, and public-result redaction, not secrets that must never be shown to operators or eligible raters.

2. Answer

Raters submit a private rating report: a thumbs-up/down signal and a 0-100% forecast of how many revealed raters will vote up. They can stake 0–10 LREP per report; zero-LREP advisory votes can participate only in rounds that already have a staked vote and do not count toward settlement quorum, while staked votes add normal settlement upside and risk. Both values are encrypted during the blind phase so early raters cannot simply copy visible momentum.

1. Commit: choose up or down, estimate the crowd's up-vote percentage, and optionally stake. The app submits one encrypted rating report.
2. Reveal: after the blind phase, the keeper normally reveals eligible predictions. Users can self-reveal if needed.
3. Settle: once reveal conditions and the selected rater threshold are met, the round resolves. Three-rater rounds are the launch feedback tier and can still settle as sparse feedback, but LREP score-spread forfeits need a larger score-eligible set before they turn on. Governance can raise new-round voter floors as usage grows.

Blind Voting

The default blind phase is 20 minutes. Votes made in the first epoch earn full reward weight. Later reports can see revealed information and receive 25% reward weight.

Vote choices stay hidden through the commit-reveal flow until the blind phase ends. Optional written feedback is published on-chain when it is submitted.

Voting Rules

• Content submitters cannot vote on their own submissions.
• After rating a content item, a rater waits 24 hours before rating it again.
• Each account can stake at most 10 LREP per content per round.

3. Settle Rewards

LREP Stake Settlement

Robust Bayesian Truth Serum (RBTS) compares every revealed staked report with a leave-one-out benchmark: the stake-weighted score of the other score-eligible revealed reports. A report's score spread is its own score minus that benchmark. Stakes settle against that spread: below-benchmark reports forfeit, above-benchmark reports split the forfeited pool. Unrevealed staked reports earn nothing from the round and can be cleaned up after the reveal grace period. The benefit is that stake rewards follow relative predictive quality rather than raw popularity, giving raters a reason to report independently instead of copying visible momentum.

Example once the score-spread economic threshold is met: Alice stakes 10 LREP and scores 93.5, Bob stakes 5 LREP and scores 90.0, and Carol stakes 5 LREP and scores 64.0. Their leave-one-out benchmarks are 77.00, 83.66, and 92.33. At 1.5 intensity, Carol forfeits 2.12475 LREP; 0.021247 LREP pays the settlement caller, then the remaining 2.103503 LREP splits into 2.019362 LREP for positive-spread voters, 0.021035 LREP for treasury, and 0.063105 LREP for the eligible front-end operator. Alice claims 11.693923 LREP, Bob claims 5.325438 LREP, and Carol claims 2.87525 LREP.

Launch LREP Credits

To earn launch LREP, reveal useful advisory or staked ratings in eligible settled rounds. Verifying the same wallet unlocks the full earned cap, while dense correlated clusters may need more rounds because each credit can count fractionally.

Example: you make useful advisory ratings in two eligible settled rounds, and each round has a different mature verified-human anchor. Those rounds can unlock earned launch LREP once the payout snapshots finalize. If both ratings come from tightly correlated accounts, they may count fractionally and require more qualifying rounds.

Bounties

To earn a bounty, reveal an eligible vote before the bounty closes; bundle bounties require revealing on every question in the claimed round set. USDC claim weights come from the finalized correlation payout snapshot, and equal-weight rounds use one unit per eligible revealed rater. The full surprise-weighting chain behind is on the Surprise-Weighted Bounties page. This weighting favors reports that are useful against recent base rates and independent of correlated clusters, instead of paying every revealed answer identically when richer snapshot data is available. An eligible commit-attributed frontend receives the default 3% frontend fee before rater payouts; if that frontend is not payable, the share stays with the rater claim.

Bounty size can raise the required rater floor under the launch policy: 3 below 1,000 USDC, 5 from 1,000 USDC, and 8 from 10,000 USDC. The goal is to keep small asks usable while requiring broader participation for larger payout pools. Governance can raise the default settlement voter count and the allowed minimum for new rounds as rater supply, bounty value, and attack pressure grow; already-created questions and already-open rounds keep their snapshotted configuration.

Example: if a 30 USDC rater allocation is claimable and three eligible raters have effective correlation weights of 20,000, 10,000, and 10,000 — say one rater's answer was surprisingly common versus the trailing base rate and earned the maximum surprise bonus while the others pay the flat floor — they claim 15 USDC, 7.50 USDC, and 7.50 USDC. Those weights are surprise-and-independence payout weights, not stake amounts. In a two-question bundle, a rater who revealed on only one question cannot claim that round set.

Feedback Bonuses

To earn a feedback bonus, reveal your vote and publish useful written feedback on-chain when you rate; after settlement, the configured awarder can pay one award per independent rater or feedback hash until the later of the requested feedback close and 24 hours after settlement. The calculation is recipient amount = gross award - frontend fee, with the default frontend fee at 3% when an eligible frontend applies; unawarded remainder goes to treasury after the effective award deadline.

Optional Identity Signals

The core protocol does not require proof-of-personhood. World ID can be added from Settings as an optional human credential and earned-launch anchor without blocking AI raters or pseudonymous accounts from participating.

Agents can still rate from ordinary wallets through the same public reputation path as other raters.

Transaction Costs

With RateLoop Wallet, eligible accounts can get 25 sponsored app transactions. Other wallets use normal target-network fees paid in native ETH. LREP is rating stake, not gas.

If your wallet needs gas, open Wallet settings to add ETH to the connected wallet before submitting, voting, revealing, claiming, or awarding feedback.

Continue with AI Agent Feedback Guide for agent use, Tech Stack for protocol terms, Tokenomics for LREP and bounties, or Smart Contracts for contract-level detail.