The problem Onchain Reviews solves

This web app addresses the need for authentic and reliable reviews of decentralized applications (dApps) by allowing users to share their experiences 100% onchain via the Ethereum Attestation service. This approach solves several key issues:

1. Transparency and Permanence:

• Traditional databases can be opaque and prone to manipulation. Onchain reviews ensure transparency and immutability.
• If a centralized platform fails, its reviews disappear. Onchain reviews are permanent and accessible to all.

2. Fragmentation of Reviews:

• Reviews stored on different platforms lead to fragmented opinions. Onchain storage provides a unified, aggregated view of user experiences across the ecosystem.

3. Human-Curated Content:

• In an era dominated by AI-generated content, real user reviews offer more trustworthy and relatable insights. Just like travelers trust bloggers over AI tips, web3 users value genuine experiences shared by peers.

Why Onchain Matters

Storing reviews onchain offers unique advantages:

• Transparency: Reviews are tamper-proof and verifiable by anyone.
• Composability: Onchain reviews can be seamlessly integrated into various projects, enabling a richer ecosystem of interconnected dApps.

Future Benefits

The long-term vision for onchain reviews includes:

1. Enhanced Social Graphs: Users can leverage social graphs to see what dApps their friends have used and recommended, fostering a more connected and informed community.
2. Integration with dApps: High aggregate scores can be displayed as badges on dApp websites, similar to Product Hunt, enhancing credibility and trust.
3. Safety and Informed Decisions: Wallets and other apps can use onchain review data to trigger warnings for low-scoring dApps, helping users make safer and more informed choices.

By building a comprehensive repository of onchain reviews from web3 participants, we can collectively create a more transparent, trustworthy web3.

Challenges I ran into

One significant challenge I faced while building this project was ensuring the trustworthiness of onchain reviews. Since anyone can add a review onchain through various methods (our frontend, the Ethereum Attestation service web app, or direct smart contract interaction), there needed to be a robust scoring mechanism to evaluate each review's credibility.

Scoring Mechanism for Trustworthiness

To address this, I developed an algorithm to determine the trustworthiness of reviews based on the reviewer's profile. This involved creating filters and criteria to evaluate the legitimacy of a review, generally I would say reviews from wallets with a long history of onchain interactions are considered more trustworthy:

• Verification by Coinbase: Reviews from verified Coinbase users are deemed more reliable.

• Gitcoin Passport: Reviewers with a high Gitcoin passport score are given higher credibility.

• Farcaster Activity: Active users on Farcaster are considered more credible.

• Crypto Holdings: Reviewers with substantial crypto holdings in their wallets are trusted more.

• POAPs Claimed: Reviewers who have claimed numerous POAPs (indicating participation in various events) are given higher scores.

• ...

Technical Challenges

Another major hurdle was abstracting gas fees for the Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS). I wanted to sponsor the gas fees for users to leave reviews, making it free or extremely cheap for them. However, this introduced several challenges:

• Cost Management: Sponsoring gas fees for everyone would be prohibitively expensive and could open the system to spamming.

• Conditional Sponsorship: To manage costs and prevent abuse, I needed to establish conditions for covering gas fees. This included criteria such as the reviewer having an ENS name for instance.