Reputation Feudalism: Blockchain Replaces Old Gatekeepers with New Ones

• Mechanism: Earn-to-vote systems reward platform engagement, not credentials — but still concentrate power.
• Conflict: Recreates hierarchy under a new banner.
• Example: RSC’s token emissions and upvote mechanics favor early adopters and power users.

Previous section

The “Reputation Feudalism” problem exposes how so-called decentralized science platforms, like ResearchCoin (RSC), swap one form of hierarchy for another. These systems claim to democratize research, but their earn-to-vote models simply replace academic gatekeepers with crypto-rich insiders and relentless engagement farmers. You don’t need a PhD or a Hirsch index—just time, tokens, and a knack for gaming upvotes.

RSC’s model rewards users for peer reviews, uploads, and upvotes, but let’s not pretend this is meritocracy. Early adopters and high-frequency users amass tokens, giving them disproportionate influence over governance and visibility. The more you play the game, the more power you get—regardless of whether your work advances science or just feeds the platform’s engagement metrics.

This isn’t the cypherpunk vision of a permissionless, egalitarian research commons. It’s a new digital enclosure where influence accrues to those with the most time, tokens, or social savvy. By anchoring reputation to platform activity and token holdings, RSC and similar projects risk entrenching a new elite—one that looks a lot like the old, just dressed in Web3 jargon.

So, instead of smashing academic hierarchies, DeSci risks building a blockchain-powered aristocracy. If the goal is to liberate research, it’s time to admit that tokenized reputation systems are just swapping one set of gatekeepers for another.

Next section