The Talent Passport App and the Builder Score were first launched back in March. In the 5 months that passed since then, our user base grew almost 3x to 720K+ Talent Passports and we learned a lot about the needs of onchain builders.
In the past weeks, we’ve been working on an update to our credentials and scoring system, in order to improve the accuracy of the Builder Score.
Key changes include:
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how the Builder Score is calculated,
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introducing Credential categories,
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sunsetting some Credentials,
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and allowing users to bring their Builder Score and Credentials onchain.
What is the Builder Score?
Talent Protocol aggregates a wide range of reputation data points (Credentials), and calculates a Builder Score that represents a user's reputation as an onchain builder.
A Builder Score is calculated for every Talent Passport holder, and its main goal is to distinguish builders from other types of crypto users.
Read more about how the Builder Score is calculated and why it is useful in our Docs.
What does "builder" mean for Talent Protocol?
Our current definition is that “building” means investing time and effort to add value, therefore an onchain builder is anyone creating shared value onchain.
But, as a small team still fighting hard to find PMF and a sustainable business model, we believe the best strategy is focusing on a specific, well-defined audience.
The first segment of builders we are prioritizing are Base Developers.
Base has been super supportive of Talent Protocol (see the recent integration between Basenames and the Builder Score), so it makes sense to give back to this ecosystem.
And focusing on developers doesn’t mean that we will exclude other builder segments. It just means that, when a product decision needs to be made, we will prioritize what can help us identify developers. Once we have a strong user base and compelling value proposition for devs, we will progressively expand to other builder segments, like artists, designers, writers and marketers.
Talent Passport Goes Fully Onchain
You will soon be able to put your Builder Score and Credentials onchain. Bringing your Talent Passport onchain creates a tamper-proof record of your Credentials and Builder Score, and makes Talent Protocol even more interoperable. The Builder Score is stored in a custom smart contract, whereas the Credentials are an attestation with a snapshot of your Talent Passport.
Putting your Talent Passport onchain costs 0.001 ETH.
Paying to bring your professional reputation onchain can be interpreted as an additional signal of commitment and trust, so it will also earn you a new credential and increase your Builder Score.
A new “Talent Passport” Credential will verify that a user has created a Talent Passport account, and will give additional points if the user puts their Talent Passport onchain.
This operation essentially creates a one-time snapshot of your Talent Protocol onchain. To update your reputation data onchain, you will need to repeat the same operation and pay another 0.001 ETH. As an alternative, the Talent Protocol API will always provide the must up to date Builder Score and Credentials.
Credential Categories
The number of credentials on the Talent Passport is expected to continue growing, so it’s important to give them some structure.
We’re introducing 3 categories of credentials (Identity, Activity and Skills), each representing a different type of reputation data:
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Identity credentials help separate humans from sybils, bots and fake accounts. The sum of all Identity credentials will contribute a maximum of 20 points to a user’s Builder Score. If a user’s Identity credentials reach a score of 20 or higher, we will now show a Human Checkmark on their profile.
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Activity credentials help identify trusted actors and value-add members, distinguishing them from farmers and users only capturing value. Activity credentials are also capped, but at 40 points maximum.
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Finally, Skills credentials highlight onchain builders and their specific areas of expertise. This unique layer of reputation is a key feature of Talent Protocol. Skills credentials have no cap, all will count towards your Builder Score.
Each Credential can only belong to one 1 category.
See the full list of credentials per category here.
Why are we capping Identity and Activity credentials? These 2 types of credentials help to create a baseline reputation for all types of onchain actors, but they are not specific for builders. There should be multiple options for a user to prove their identity and activity onchain, but we don't want high builders scores just because a user can prove their identity in multiple ways.
Example: a user that holds the following 3 Identity credentials: Coinbase Verified ID (12 points), World ID (8 points) and ENS (4 points), will only add a total of 20 points to their Builder Score.
Other Credential Updates
As previously announced, we sunsetted 2 credentials: “Talent Tokens” and “builder.fi”. Both represent legacy apps, no longer supported or available to new users.
We’re also sunsetting the “Warpcast” credential today, given that the Power Badge will be discontinued. The majority of Power Badge holders have FIDs lower than 20k, which means they are already getting extra points with their Farcaster credential. On top of that, the Social Capital Rank credential also rewards top Farcaster users.
We’ve been adding new credentials almost on a weekly basis. The most recent credentials made available represent our strong commitment to the Base ecosystem:
We periodically review existing credentials, which means your Builder Score will also change regularly.
Users now have the ability to hide a credential from their Talent Passport. If a user chooses to do so, the credential will be ignored by Talent Protocol, it won’t show on your Talent Passport and it also won’t be considered for the Builder Score.
Builder Score Tiers
In this update, we also reviewed the Builder Score tiers:
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score 0-24 "Newbie”
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score 25-49 "Beginner"
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score 50-74 "Competent"
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score 75-99 "Proficient"
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score over 100 "Expert”
Recalculating your Builder Score
When a user creates a Talent Passport, we check all available Credentials and calculate their Builder Score. We repeat the same global recalculation, for every user, every 14 days. This is a costly computation process that shouldn't be done too frequently.
The Credentials can be updated manually by the user, by clicking on the "Check" button (max 1 check/hour). There's also a "Refresh" button in the Profile Settings, that refreshes your profile data, but doesn't recalculate the Builder Score.
