Digital Identity Shouldn’t be Static

The Llamas is an experiment in building an on-chain reputation system to reward positive-sum actions — to spur growth, reward existing contributors, onboard a new generation, and in time build an anon workforce.

To achieve this mission, the Llamas protocol is launching Badges— a mechanic to target and reward specific actions on and off chain. These Badges will be housed in the Marketplace, which will be a permissionless hub for users to complete bounties, earn their share of treasury yield, and collect reputation-building digital collectibles from protocols and DAOs.

Together, Badges and the Marketplace create an incentivized participation layer built on Curve, which unlocks a new tool for greater ecosystem coordination and human-capital efficiencies.

Powered by the Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS), the Badges system allows the Llamas and partner protocols to offer permissionless, flexible, gas-friendly, and time-weighted jobs for users to complete.

Each badge is essentially a wrapper for:

• A claim on the yield-flow from the Llamas treasury for a stated amount of time

• A bounty from the badge deployer (if applicable)

• A reputation-building artifact that will be kept in each Llamas user’s personal inventory

The Badges Ecosystem

Initially, Llamas users can earn three different types of Badges: Raid, Class, and Veteran. As the ecosystem develops, more use cases will emerge. The Marketplace will be permissionless, so badge deployers can explore and create use cases that best fit their needs.

Raid Badges are used for short term, heavy weight yield. This type of badge will be used for product launches, design sprints, and other use cases where an entity wants to gather a large share of attention, energy, or liquidity into one place.

Examples: A protocol might launch a pool or offering and create a liquidity lock badge for Llamas users to help bootstrap the new pool. At the end of the Badge’s epoch, participating Llamas are paid in a bounty, yield-weight from the Llamas’ treasury, and reputation.

Or this Badge could be used for a new protocol that wants to create art, content and propaganda around itself. This entity could pay prompt engineers, artists, memeooors, video editors, analysts, whitehats, and other creators to help it garner attention and get into the spotlight.

Class Badges are skill-based, reputation-heavy badges and will offer lower yield for much longer timeframes, or even be permanent boosts. This type of badge will be used to level up users and attract talent. Class badges allow protocols, entities and self-organizing groups of Llamas users to recruit, coordinate, and pursue greater mastery of their disciplines.

Example Classes: contracts, front end, creators, designers, growth, tokenomics, whitehat, strategist, media, etc.

Example Uses: A protocol could create a badge for contribution to the Vyper codebase. Devs who participate can earn a Badge that shows everyone that they have mastered a new coding language — along with additive treasury weight from the Llamas treasury.

Or an entity could do a call for entries for video editors to develop and create content around a new offering. Or to further the storytelling of that protocol and its community.

Veteran Badges are proof a user is a core part of a community. They were present at a key moment in the community’s history, have been there since the day the discord opened, or are a powerful part of the project’s voice.

Example: Collecting a mirror article, participating in governance, being there when a bearwhale is slain, coining the next great meme, etc.

Attesters are the elite Llamas who specialize ad have exhibited mastery in one or more skill-sets. These users or protocols will be the ones signing off on a badge and will be the anons in charge of the quality of work within the Llamas ecosystem. It is critically important for the Llamas protocol’s scaling to elevate talented Llamas to attesters when they showcase mastery of a discipline. Attesters will earn bounties, rewards, and reputation just like Llamas users who are completing jobs.

Badge Combinations is a mechanism for highly specialized, confidential, and complex jobs where a user must have a certain level or combination of Badges to be able to work on a job.

Examples: A protocol wants to hire a prompt engineer who “gets” their culture for a high stakes launch. They create a badge combination for prompt engineers who are more senior and who have a Veteran badge in the specific protocol.

THE MECHANICS

Badge Distribution Flow

1. A badge action is a targeted task that's completed on-chain or off-chain. Once the job is completed by a user, they are qualified to claim the badge.

An Attester, the anon in charge of signaling completion of the project from the Badge Deployer’s perspective, will be chosen by the entity deploying the badge — along with a number of check-in rounds specific to the task and method for verifying job completion.

2. Depending on the use-case, the verification method may be a contract or a script run off-chain. The Llamas will provide standard plug-ins that can verify Github repos, liquidity-locked for specific time periods, participation in governance, video or art created, etc..

If a third party is chosen as the Attester, they must either:

1. Develop their own validation script/contract

2. Work with the Llamas protocol to develop it for them

3. Use a pre-existing validation strategy plug-in developed by the Llamas protocol.

A) An example of an off-chain verification method would be a script that authenticates the users Github profile, and checks their commit history to a specific repo. If the user has committed to that repo in the past, then they are eligible for a badge.

b) An example of an on-chain verification method would be a contract that queries if a user has staked an LP on Convex in the last 6 months.

1. An Attester is chosen to be responsible for making sure the action has been properly completed. This Attester can be the Llamas protocol, a partner protocol, or another third party (whitelisted).

2. After a user earns their badge, their work will be validated by the protocol. Once they are validated, then an attestation will be signed by the Attester and submitted to the Llamas protocol.

3. The signed attestation will be stored on-chain or in IPFS depending on how it will be used later. If storing on-chain gas expenses will need to be taken into account.

Badge Verification Flow

1. The stored badge attestation is pulled from on-chain or IPFS.

2. Attestation is verified: Ensure the attestation was signed by an Attester that has the correct permissions to distribute the badge, and the attestation is not expired or revoked.

3. Now the user can be rewarded for completing the criteria. They claim their badge, any attached bounty, and their treasury yield is boosted. The badge will be collected in their inventory.

At this point, the user has a badge signed by a trusted Attester proving they contributed to the Curve ecosystem in some beneficial way, and has been rewarded for their work.

The Badge Marketplace and 3rd Party Badge Deployments

1. Criteria for a badge is defined.

2. Attester is approved by the Llamas protocol.

3. Attestation (badge) is signed by the whitelisted Attester and submitted to the Llamas protocol.

4. Attestation (badge) is stored on/off chain for later use.

5. Script/Contract verifies completion of criteria by the user.

   Ex. Lock liquidity for X amount of time to bootstrap a pool, commit to Github, or create an educational or promotional video piece.