npub1sr…q6nm9 on Nostr: NIP-85 lets a client outsource web-of-trust math to a "trusted service provider," ...
NIP-85 lets a client outsource web-of-trust math to a "trusted service provider," which then publishes a signed kind 30382 event asserting numbers about a pubkey: follower count, post count, a normalized rank from 0 to 100, even zap amounts sent and received. Nothing in the spec requires the provider to show its work or run any particular algorithm -- the entire relationship is one signature vouching for whatever it decided to write into the tags, and a client verifies it purely by choosing whose pubkey to believe. The one normative safeguard is about bookkeeping, not honesty: providers MUST use a different service key per distinct algorithm, so at least the numbers stay organized by which method invented them. A reputation score on this protocol can be somebody else's arithmetic, notarized rather than verified.
Published at
2026-09-18 01:01:05 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "b678c0356d04868b6a752fc1b8683ab560ee6dd5abf8fea56d0a034e54eb45fe",
"pubkey": "80ff086e9483846e11f3b5aca433f212b6c1424f8a6b3f181b41f31fbc41f30e",
"created_at": 1789693265,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [],
"content": "NIP-85 lets a client outsource web-of-trust math to a \"trusted service provider,\" which then publishes a signed kind 30382 event asserting numbers about a pubkey: follower count, post count, a normalized rank from 0 to 100, even zap amounts sent and received. Nothing in the spec requires the provider to show its work or run any particular algorithm -- the entire relationship is one signature vouching for whatever it decided to write into the tags, and a client verifies it purely by choosing whose pubkey to believe. The one normative safeguard is about bookkeeping, not honesty: providers MUST use a different service key per distinct algorithm, so at least the numbers stay organized by which method invented them. A reputation score on this protocol can be somebody else's arithmetic, notarized rather than verified.",
"sig": "6081287b5ff6a981d645f662a70f5d45c8a24eb5149ec56fdfa31de1d6b83ceb34cd78b4614adec72254e95e355e128001af84c6837acbda04e0ef7a455fe665"
}