Today, we’re thrilled to introduce our new reputation system, which we call STAR. Designed with our community in mind, this system acknowledges and rewards active engagement and helps combat spam.
Stars are onchain reputation. As you earn stars, your reputation within Tribes grows, reinforcing trust and authenticity — actions such as sending high-quality feedback and inviting trusted friends add to your reputation score.
Levels is our user tiering system, each distinguished by a unique badge, allowing you to showcase your reputation and your trust signal.
Let's dive deeper and explore the facets of the star system that will improve your experience going forward. And please send us your thoughts and feedback! As usual, we’ll be building this together, and we might just drop you some stars along the way.
Stars
Stars, short for Super Tribes Appreciation Rewards, are our onchain homage to the classic kindergarten gold-star sticker.
They’re a way to build your reputation over time by taking actions that make Tribes better — for yourself and others. This is intentionally broad because we’ll keep adding starred actions to help improve the experience.
As we wrote last week in Why Tribes Vibes NFT drops?: “This model is a virtuous cycle — at their best, these new systems can reward individuals, improve the community, and strengthen the network all at once.”
Stars are initially granted offchain but are weekly airdropped as ERC-1155 tokens on the Base blockchain to the top 100 users. Look forward to these airdrops every Monday, with the inaugural drop set for October 30th.
Earning Your Stars
Here’s a peek at the initial activities that will earn you stars. Please note that this table is subject to changes as we improve our reputation system. For the latest and greatest, check out the Official Star Guidelines.
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Signup: 100 ⭐
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Linked Farcaster account: 900 ⭐
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Linked Lens account: 900 ⭐
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Linked ENS: 900 ⭐
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Enabled push notifications: 100 ⭐
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Daily activity: 5 ⭐
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The first message of the day: 10 ⭐
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Invite verified user: 100 ⭐
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Approved feedback, bugs, or reporting bad actors: 10 → 100 ⭐
Leaderboard
Every Monday at 4:20 p.m. PST, the Tribes’ leaderboard resets, ushering in a week of fierce competition. As the board clears, top participants receive their payouts, with the leading 100 players sharing a 100 USDC with the following distribution:
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🥇 First Place: Dominating the board and pocketing 20 USDC.
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🥈 Second Spot: Close on the heels with a solid 10 USDC.
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🥉 Third Position: Gracing the podium, capturing 5 USDC.
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🏅 The Next 97 contenders: These determined players will split the remaining 65 USDC.
To sweeten the deal, the top 100 also see their stars minted onchain as ERC1155 tokens on the Base blockchain. Follow us on X.com for the upcoming leaderboard announcement.
Levels
Levels represent the progression of your onchain reputation in Tribes. Just as stars are our digital translation of the cherished gold-star sticker, Levels are the badges of honor, showcasing your dedication and commitment.
As you accumulate stars, you climb the levels ladder. Each level is characterized by a unique avatar or badge, acting as a beacon of your active involvement and trustworthiness within Tribes. The more you engage, the higher your level and the more pronounced your digital presence in the network.
The beauty of levels lies in its simplicity: it is designed to foster genuine interactions, sideline bad actors, and make good on the promise of personal, peaceful chat experiences — even when your address is public.
Learn more about each level below, and see how it serves these goals.
🌱 Unverified
New or empty wallets are considered unverified accounts. Although we know nothing about these individuals — whether they are real people — they are welcome to build up their identity and reputation in Tribes.
Two notable limitations: unverified users can’t initiate chats with verified members. Secondly, throughout the app, unverified users remain invisible to verified users. These safeguards protect our network from spammers — who can rapidly create multiple new wallets — from tarnishing the reputation of fresh users or causing disruptions. In an upcoming release, we’ll allow new users to reach verified members for a fee.
Most unverified users are here to explore. When they’re ready to make a home here, they can step up to Verified status on their own, anytime, by meeting one of the following criteria:
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Depositing $50 to your wallet that’s at least 90 days old
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Acquiring a well-known name service username such as ENS
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Having a Farcaster or Lens Protocol account
Alternatively, users who collect 1000 ⭐️ are automatically stepped up to verified status.
✅ Verified
A verified account is what we consider real users. Their wallet/profiles hold assets and have some history — important context when deciding whom to chat with.
Benefits of being a verified user include:
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Enhanced visibility: Engage freely with any members within the app.
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Trust signal: Your blue profile badge acts as a signal of trustworthiness, letting others know you’re an active and validated member of the Tribes network.
Verified users are the beating, pixellated heart of Tribes. Thank you for being here!
✅ Verified + 🐳 Whale
Verified users that are either well-known or have substantial assets. Their accounts are marked by a yellow checkmark so that others can quickly identify and confirm they’re talking to the right person.
To be classified as a Whale, users meet one of the following criteria:
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Your wallet balance is $10K+ USD (automatic)
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You’re well-known, with a verifiable, valuable identity to our network, like a public figure.
While Whales enjoy all the core benefits of verified users, they also receive added perks, such as exclusive early access to certain future features and guaranteed weekly onchain star NFT minting.
Making Tribes Strong Together
Stars and Levels are designed to make your Tribes experience better, full stop.
In addition to the everyday improvements discussed above, we believe these systems’ second-order benefits will help position the Tribes network for sustainable, healthy growth and shared success. How?
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Initiate network momentum. It’s time to BeReal: establishing early momentum for a consumer social product is hard, and we’re tackling this creatively and collaboratively with you all.
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Promote productive behavior. Positive reinforcement is a hell of a drug. We aim to codify helpful behavior so that we can actively reward it while discouraging those who damage our community for personal gain.
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Encourage chit-chat. “Engagement” is jargon, but one thing is sure: a chat app like Tribes can only thrive when its participants are active and interested in one another.
Conclusion
As we continue exploring this fascinating intersection of economics, social, and crypto rewards, the mechanics of our reward system might see some tweaks and changes. Our ultimate goal is to create a rewarding experience for all users, appreciating your support and contribution while maintaining the security and integrity of our platform — constantly making Tribes better for everybody. The STAR points you earn today aren’t just numerical values but a symbol of influence, reputation, and (soon) an opportunity to shape the future direction of our platform.
Working as a community, we can achieve our parallel goals of hosting a rewarding community experience for all people while maintaining a secure, high-integrity, crypto-native tech platform.
We’ll make tribes better together. Here we go — Let’s chat @ https://chat.tribes.xyz! ✌️