Vine Reputation Program

Program Scope

The VINE Reputation Program is an on-chain reputation framework designed to manage season-based participation scores for a DAO.

It defines:

  • How reputation spaces are created

  • How reputation is issued and tracked

  • How seasons are managed

  • How administrative control is enforced

This program operates independently of governance voting logic and can be integrated into multiple DAO workflows.


Core On-Chain Components

Reputation Space (Config)

A Reputation Space is a DAO-scoped configuration account that defines:

  • DAO identifier (realm / governance address)

  • Authority wallet

  • Reputation mint reference

  • Current active season

  • Program-level settings

Each DAO has exactly one reputation space.


Reputation Accounts

Reputation is tracked per:

  • DAO

  • User wallet

  • Season

Each (DAO, User, Season) tuple maps to a unique on-chain account holding the reputation balance for that season.

Key properties:

  • Immutable past seasons

  • Writable only for the active season

  • Authority-gated updates


Project Metadata

Each reputation space may optionally store:

  • A metadata URI

  • Off-chain JSON describing name, icon, links, or descriptive information

This allows frontends and dashboards to display DAO-specific context without hardcoding values.


Season Model

The program uses a monotonic season counter:

  • Seasons are identified by a u16 value

  • Only one season is active at any time

  • Advancing the season does not modify historical data

When a new season is set:

  • New reputation accrues to new accounts

  • Old reputation remains unchanged and queryable

This model prevents reputation inflation while preserving historical integrity.


Authority Model

Each reputation space defines an authority wallet that can perform administrative actions.

Authority-gated actions include:

  • Setting the active season

  • Updating the reputation mint

  • Issuing or resetting reputation

  • Transferring reputation between wallets

  • Updating metadata

  • Closing accounts

Authority can be transferred at any time via an on-chain instruction.


Reputation Issuance

Reputation may be issued in several ways:

  • Single-user allocations

  • Batch allocations

  • Imported historical data (e.g. CSV backfills)

  • Automated workflows

All reputation issuance:

  • Is explicitly authorized

  • Is recorded on-chain

  • Is scoped to a specific season


Reputation Mutations

The program supports controlled reputation mutations:

Action

Description

Add reputation

Increment a user’s balance for the active season

Reset reputation

Reset a user’s balance to zero

Transfer reputation

Move reputation between wallets (e.g. wallet migration)

Close reputation

Close unused or incorrect accounts

These operations do not affect other seasons.


Seasonal Reputation Decay

Vine Reputation uses a seasonal decay model to ensure that reputation reflects recent participation while still honoring historical contributions.

Instead of permanently accumulating reputation forever, older seasons gradually lose influence over time.


Core Concept

Each DAO operates in seasons (integer-based: 1, 2, 3, …).

  • Reputation is earned per season

  • Older seasons are discounted using a decay formula

  • The current season always has full weight (1.0)

The effective reputation is the sum of all past seasons after applying decay.


Decay Formula

We store a single decay rate on-chain for the DAO:

The weight applied to a season is calculated as:

Where:

  • seasons_ago = current_season - season

  • decay is a value between 0.0 and 1.0


Example

Assume:

  • Current season = 3

  • Decay = 30% (0.30)

  • Reputation earned:

Season

Raw Points

3

95

2

70

1

59

Calculated weights

Season

Seasons Ago

Weight

Effective

3

0

1.00

95 × 1.00 = 95

2

1

0.70

70 × 0.70 = 49

1

2

0.49

59 × 0.49 ≈ 29

Totals

Why This Model?

This approach provides:

  • Recency bias — recent activity matters more

  • Fairness — early contributors are still rewarded

  • Predictability — simple, transparent math

  • On-chain efficiency — no per-season storage overhead

  • Only raw reputation is stored on-chain.

  • Decay is applied deterministically off-chain (UI, indexer, analytics).


On-Chain vs Off-Chain Responsibilities

On-Chain

  • Stores:

    • Raw reputation per (DAO, user, season)

    • Current season

    • Decay rate

  • Guarantees:

    • Authority control

    • Season isolation

    • Data integrity

Off-Chain (UI / Indexer)

  • Calculates:

    • Seasonal weights

    • Effective reputation

    • Aggregated totals

  • Displays:

    • Per-season breakdown

    • Decayed totals

    • Historical contribution

This keeps the program cheap, flexible, and future-proof.


Account Closure

For operational hygiene, the program supports closing:

  • Reputation accounts

  • Project metadata accounts

  • Entire reputation spaces

Closed accounts:

  • Return rent to a designated recipient

  • Permanently remove the account from use

  • Do not alter historical data already finalized on-chain


Data Integrity Guarantees

The program enforces:

  • PDA-derived account addresses

  • Deterministic account relationships

  • Authority validation on all writes

  • Season-scoped isolation of balances

This ensures data consistency and auditability.


Network Deployment

The VINE Reputation Program is deployed on:

  • Devnet for testing and iteration

  • Mainnet for production DAO usage

Program behavior is identical across networks.


Integration Surface

The program is designed to integrate with:

  • DAO dashboards

  • Governance analytics

  • Participation tracking tools

  • Automation pipelines

Frontends may:

  • Query historical seasons

  • Aggregate reputation data

  • Visualize leaderboards

  • Enforce governance logic externally


Summary

The VINE Reputation Program provides a deterministic, season-based, authority-governed reputation system for DAOs.

It separates participation tracking from governance power while enabling transparent, auditable, and flexible reputation management on-chain.

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