History – Decentralized Publishing & Peer Review

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v1.5.3 · currentHow Caper approaches this rewritten outcome-only: vote-weight formula, fee figure and contract citations removed (VOICE.md §4 Caper overlay).–
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    How Caper approaches this Cap…a into who steers a treasury. Every ranked ballot cast mints one soulbound proof-of-vote token (/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/soulbound-tokens) , and a ballot is the only member-facing way to earn one – buys and sells have mintA member earns votes only by casting ranked ballots on the caper's proposals; buying and selling the caper's token earns none, and the votes sit in a soulbound token (/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/soulbound-tokens) that cannot be sold or handed none since the 11 September 2026 redeploy – fractional but non-transferable in the contract (DIVISIBILITY_MAXIMUM, deposits gated to the component's own calls) – and a member's earned record folds directly into. A member's say, and their share of the treasury when they exit, grow with both theirose vote weights and their exit share, computed as (held · votes) / (supply · circulation) tokens they hold. Theat record cannot be sold or handed on, which is the property the reviewer-reputation model in on-chain publishing is trying to build; and no trade mints it, so: it cannot be bought on the curve either:market, and the only way into earn it is to turn up and vote, one ballot per proposal at a sunk 100 XRD fee. It is not bag-less, though – holdings still multiply weight. (Verified against compute_vote_weight in contracts/common/src/lib.rs for the weight formula, exit in contracts/logic/src/lib.rs for the redemption that reuses it, VOTE_FEE and VOTE_MINT in the same file for the ballot being the only source of vote tokens, and contracts/core/src/caper_dao.rs for the soulbound vote token.). Holdings still count, so a caper is not run without capital, but a big bag alone can't capture control.

v1.5.2Split paragraphs over 150 words at sentence boundaries; wording unchanged.–
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    Reading a journal's own identi…DOIs are not a steady deposit.Across the forty-five months f…uch as it applies to Crossref.

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    How Caper approaches this Cap…tes) / (supply · circulation).The record cannot be sold or h…for the soulbound vote token.)

v1.5.1Sweep #504 (desci rotation): Uddin v. Elsevier (2d Cir. No. 26-457) re-dated to 2 Oct 2026, no decision reported; the public RECAP docket ends at the 26 Jun scheduling orders. Crossref member 33940 re-read 2 Oct: 82,383 DOIs, none created after 5 Aug, ISSN 3070-3395 still 404.–
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    Overview Decentralized publis…riefs due 10 September 2026 – undecidwith no decision reported when this page was checked on 7 September 20262 October 2026. The public RECAP copy of the docket (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72493776/uddin-v-elsevier-bv/) ends at the 26 June scheduling orders, so it does not show whether those briefs were filed. The free-labor model has bee…oduce, reuse, or machine-read.

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    Reading a journal's own identi…rent platform can guarantee. On 2 October 2026 the member still reported 82,383 DOIs, a works query for anything created after 5 August (https://api.crossref.org/works?filter=member:33940,from-created-date:2026-08-06) returned zero, and api.crossref.org/journals/3070-3395 still 404s. Re-read on 27 August 2026, eve…uch as it applies to Crossref.

v1.5.0Sweep #408 (desci): trading stopped minting vote tokens with the 11 September 2026 redeploy. A ranked ballot is the only member-facing source of v (VOTE_FEE/VOTE_MINT, contracts/logic/src/lib.rs), so exit requires having voted; rewrote the exit-gate and capture arguments that rested on trade-minted v.–
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    How Caper approaches this Cap… who steers a treasury. Every ranked ballot cast mints aone soulbound proof-of-vote toke…rship/soulbound-tokens) , and so does every trade – 1 per ballot, 0.01 per XRD of gross value on a buy or a sella ballot is the only member-facing way to earn one – buys and sells have minted none since the 11 September 2026 redeploy – fractional but non-transfer…ublishing is trying to build; what it is not is unobtainable, since buying into the curve earns it at the same rate voting doesand no trade mints it, so it cannot be bought on the curve either: the only way in is to turn up and vote, one ballot per proposal at a sunk 100 XRD fee. It is not bag-less either, though – holdings still multiply wei…the redemption that reuses it, VOTE_FEE and VOTE_MINT in the same file for the ballot being the only source of vote tokens, and contracts/core/src/caper_…for the soulbound vote token.)

v1.4.0Settle the peer-review antitrust suit, which the page had narrated as an open challenge and mis-dated to its own secondary source. Filed 12 September 2024, not March 2025; dismissed by the EDNY on 30 January 2026 with leave to amend refused; now on appeal at the Second Circuit as No. 26-457, appellees' briefs due 10 September 2026 and undecided as of 7 September 2026.–
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    Overview Decentralized publis…on and without public credit. In March 2025 four researchers sued six of the largest publishers (https://www.statnews.com/2025/03/10/peer-review-antitrust-lawsuit-academic-scientific-journals-sued-by-scientists/) , alleging they colluded not to pay for peer review – a direct challenge to the free-labor modelFour researchers took that model to court: their Sherman Act complaint (https://www.lieffcabraser.com/pdf/AcademicPublicationsComplaintFinal.pdf) , filed in the Eastern District of New York on 12 September 2024, alleged that six of the largest publishers and their trade association colluded not to pay for peer review (https://www.statnews.com/2025/03/10/peer-review-antitrust-lawsuit-academic-scientific-journals-sued-by-scientists/) . It did not survive the pleadings. Judge Hector Gonzalez dismissed it on 30 January 2026 (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/02/06/antitrust-lawsuit-against-academic-publishers-dismissed) , holding the industry ethics principles the plaintiffs relied on to be “a collection of policies and guidelines concerning best practices” rather than direct evidence of a conspiracy, and refusing leave to amend because “further amendment would not change the result.” It is on appeal as Uddin v. Elsevier, No. 26-457 (2d Cir.) (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72493776/uddin-v-elsevier-bv/) , docketed 27 February 2026, with six antitrust scholars added as amici curiae on 24 June 2026 and appellees’ briefs due 10 September 2026 – undecided when this page was checked on 7 September 2026. The free-labor model has been challenged and, at first instance, left standing. - Paywalls and shifted co…oduce, reuse, or machine-read.

v1.3.3Sweep #333: v is minted by trading as well as by voting (0.01/XRD gross on each leg, 1 per ranked ballot, all at the moment of the act) — corrected every clause making a ballot the sole source of weight–
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    How Caper approaches this Cap… who steers a treasury. Every voteballot cast mints a soulbound proof-of-v…/membership/soulbound-tokens) , and so does every trade – 1 per ballot, 0.01 per XRD of gross value on a buy or a sell – fractional but non-transfer…alls) – and a member's earned voting record folds directly into bot…es) / (supply · circulation). Influence you accumulate by turning up cannot be bought or sold, mirroringThe record cannot be sold or handed on, which is the property the reviewer-reputation model… publishing is trying to build. I; what it is not bag-less – holdings still multiply weight – but the decisive, participation-earned factor is un-buyable by designis unobtainable, since buying into the curve earns it at the same rate voting does. It is not bag-less either – holdings still multiply weight. (Verified against compute_vo…for the soulbound vote token.)

v1.3.2Vote token is DIVISIBILITY_MAXIMUM, not DIVISIBILITY_NONE, and accrues on trades as well as ballots (contracts/core/src/caper_dao.rs)–
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    How Caper approaches this Cap…mbership/soulbound-tokens) – non-divisible andfractional but non-transferable in the contract (DIVISIBILITY_NONEMAXIMUM, deposits gated to the compon…for the soulbound vote token.)

v1.3.1Repoint the Crossref API citation to a single-parameter URL — the &-escaped query string read as a literal href to the link checker and surfaced as a broken external.–
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    Reading a journal's own identi….org/works?filter=member:33940&rows=0) . The wider point is method…uch as it applies to Crossref.

v1.3.0Re-read ResearchHub's Crossref record (27 Aug 2026): every prior figure re-verified unchanged, and added the platform namespace's cadence — 98% of the 82,098 DOIs deposited in a six-month backfill (Dec 2025–May 2026), 67 since 1 June, none since 5 August.–
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    Reading a journal's own identi…rent platform can guarantee. Re-read on 27 August 2026, every figure above still holds: 82,383 registered DOIs, 82,098 researchhub and 284 rhj, 235 distinct journal identifiers, no container title or ISSN on any of them (api.crossref.org/journals/3070-3395 still 404s, and a works query filtered on the ISSN still returns zero), and the same 32 journal DOIs dereferencing to staging.researchhub.com. What the earlier pass did not measure is the cadence of the other namespace, and it is the more revealing of the two. The 82,098 platform DOIs are not a steady deposit. Across the forty-five months from March 2022 to November 2025 the member registered 1,147 of them; then 80,884 – ninety-eight per cent of the namespace – arrived in six months: 416 in December 2025, 532 in January 2026, 6,481 in February, 29,144 in March, 30,837 in April and 13,474 in May. Since 1 June 2026 the whole member has registered 67 DOIs, the most recent of any kind on 5 August 2026, and the journal namespace has been silent since 30 July. A prefix that emitted thirty thousand identifiers in a month and three in the latest one is recording a retrospective backfill, not a publishing rate – which matters to anyone reading 82,383 as a measure of output. Counts derived by enumerating the member's full works list through the keyless Crossref REST API (https://api.crossref.org/works?filter=member:33940&rows=0) . The wider point is methodologi…uch as it applies to Crossref.

v1.2.0ResearchHub Journal re-scoped to funded registered reports between 7 Jul and 7 Aug 2026: removed the $150/14-day claims, restated the 14-day and 21-day targets correctly, and added a dated Crossref census of the journal's own DOI namespace (82,383 member DOIs, 284 rhj, 235 articles, 77 substantive, 32 staging, ISSN aggregating zero works).–
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    Paying for peer review: Resear…cosystem/researchhub) is the clearestmost-cited working model for the paid-review thesis. Its journal pays reviewers $150 in ResearchCoin (RSC) for a completed peer review, is o, and in mid-2026 it narrowed sharply. Through at least 7 July 2026 its journal fronted a general submission route – “Publish Faster. 14 days to peer review. Immediate preprints. Open access by default,” (https://www.researchhub.com/journal) with evereb.archive.org/web/20260707204449/https://www.researchhub.com/journal) with a Submit Your Manuscript button. By the 7 August 2026 capture (https://web.archive.org/web/20260807060227/https://www.researchhub.com/journal) that was gone. The journal (ISSN 3070-3395) now “exclusively spubmlission immediately available as a preprint, and targets peer review in as few as 14 days – a fraction of a traditional journal's timelinehes Registered Reports that originate from proposals funded on ResearchHub” (https://docs.researchhub.com/researchhub-foundation/programs-and-initiatives/researchhub-journal-rhj) : hypotheses and methods are locked in and published before data collection, results follow afterwards whatever they show, and every article chains back to the funding opportunity that paid for it. There is no article-processing charge and no route in for work ResearchHub did not fund. Two numbers this page previously carried did not survive that re-scope, and both are worth restating precisely. The current editorial and peer-review process (https://docs.researchhub.com/researchhub-foundation/programs-and-initiatives/researchhub-journal-rhj/editorial-and-peer-review-process) sets no per-review rate at all – reviews are still described as paid, but no figure appears in any current journal document. And the fourteen days is the window a reviewer has to return a report after agreeing to review, not a publication turnaround: the stated target for an editorial decision is 21 days from submission, against a minimum of two openly-published reports per version. RSC alsostill funds bounties across the pla…desci-daos) funding pipeline.

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    Reading a journal's own identifier record A page about durable citation should be willing to check one. Crossref is the registry that mints and resolves the DOIs almost every journal cites itself by, and its API is keyless, so the record a publisher has actually deposited is a primary source anyone can read. ResearchHub deposits as member 33940 (https://api.crossref.org/members/33940) , and on 19 August 2026 that member carried 82,383 registered DOIs. Enumerating all of them separates two namespaces under the 10.55277 prefix: 82,098 platform DOIs of the form researchhub.<id>, minted for papers and posts on the site, and 284 journal DOIs of the form rhj.<id>. The 284 cover 235 distinct article identifiers; the balance are versions, running as high as .7. Three things in that record are worth stating plainly, because none of them is visible from the journal's front page. - The ISSN aggregates nothing. No rhj record carries a container title or an ISSN, so the journal's own identifier does not gather its own articles: api.crossref.org/journals/3070-3395 returns 404, and a works query filtered on that ISSN returns zero results. The articles exist and resolve individually; as a journal, in the index most citation tooling reads, it is not there. - Most of the namespace is scaffolding. Applying a deliberately generous filter to the 235 identifiers – a title of five or more words with no test or fake paper marker – leaves 77. The remainder are placeholders registered as live DOIs: asdfasdf, sdfsdf, This is a test paper. They are not inert records. 10.55277/rhj.k25xmc37 (https://doi.org/10.55277/rhj.k25xmc37) , titled asdfasdf, redirects to a live ResearchHub page and returns 200. - Thirty-two point at a staging server. Of the 284, 32 dereference to staging.researchhub.com, a non-production host that answers HTTP 500. Five of those sit inside the 77 that pass the title filter, so this is not confined to the obvious test rows. The registration dates for those 77 give the journal's real cadence: 13 in May 2025, 7 in June, 15 in July, none at all between August 2025 and February 2026, then 31 in March 2026, 6 in April, 3 in May, none in June, 2 in July, and none in the first nineteen days of August. Read alongside the re-scope above, the shape is coherent rather than damning – a general-submission journal that ran thin, and has been rebuilt around the one input its parent platform can guarantee. The wider point is methodological, and it cuts against the sector's own marketing. Decentralized publishing sells itself on identifiers that do not rot, and the sales pitch is usually made in prose. The identifier record is checkable in a way the prose is not, it is public, it costs one unauthenticated request, and it disagrees with the prose more often than anyone checks. That applies to dPID (https://www.dpid.org/) and Codex (https://www.desci.com/blog/how-desci-codex-makes-scientific-research-durable-reusable-and-ai-ready) exactly as much as it applies to Crossref.

v1.1.1Source-pointer repair: the canonical vote weight is compute_vote_weight at contracts/common/src/lib.rs, not the logic package; ballot-era fee rules cited to contracts/ballot/src/lib.rs.–
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    How Caper approaches this Cap… by design. (Verified against compute_vote_weight in contracts/logiccommon/src/lib.rs for the weight formula, exit in contracts/logic/src/lib.rs for the redemption that reuses it, and contracts/core/src/caper_…for the soulbound vote token.)

v1.0.0Fix contract citation: the weight formula lives in contracts/logic/src/lib.rs, the vote-token rules in contracts/core/src/caper_dao.rs.–
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    How Caper approaches this Cap…. (Verified against contracts/src/caper_dao.rslogic/src/lib.rs for the weight formula and contracts/core/src/caper_dao.rs for the soulbound vote token.)

v1.1.0Add inbound internal link to new desci/ecosystem/desci-labs from the Infrastructure-and-standards section (converts the external DeSci Labs mention into a wiki link; GitHub Nodes link preserved).–
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    Infrastructure and standards …le infrastructure. DeSci Labs' (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/desci-labs) ' Nodes (https://github.com/des… open, portable, on-chain one.

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    How Caper approaches this Cap…proof-of-vote token (/wiki/daos-governance/concepts/membership/soulbound…t contracts/src/caper_dao.rs.)

v1.0.0Repoint in-content DAO links to canonical typed taxonomy paths (2026-07-17 split carryover)–
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    How Caper approaches this Cap…te token (/wiki/daos/concepts/membership/soulbound-tokens) – non-divis…t contracts/src/caper_dao.rs.)

v1.0.0Link the new desci/ecosystem/researchhub cornerstone from the ResearchHub mentions (infobox Key tools + paid-review section), and qualify the RSC 'community governance' claim: RSC has no on-chain voting machinery and Snapshot votes are non-binding signals.–
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    Topic Decentralized publishing… ResearchHub / ResearchCoin (https://www.researchhub.com/journal/wiki/desci/ecosystem/researchhub) , DeSci Nodes (https://www.…ttps://ethereum.org/en/desci/)

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    Paying for peer review: Resear…& ResearchCoin ResearchHub (https://www.researchhub.com/journal/wiki/desci/ecosystem/researchhub) is the clearest working mod…ine. RSC also funds bounties and community governance across the platformcross the platform, though its governance role is thinner than it looks (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/researchhub) – RSC has no on-chain voting machinery, and Snapshot votes are non-binding signals. The token moved onto major …desci-daos) funding pipeline.

v1.0.0Create cornerstone: Decentralized Publishing & Peer Review — the fourth DeSci pillar (publishing/review) alongside funding, IP-NFTs, and DAOs–
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    Topic Decentralized publishing & peer review What it is Open-access, content-addressed research objects plus credited, paid, on-chain peer review – replacing paywalled journals and unpaid, opaque review Key tools ResearchHub / ResearchCoin (https://www.researchhub.com/journal) , DeSci Nodes (https://www.desci.com/publish) & dPID (https://www.dpid.org/) , DeSci Codex (https://www.desci.com/blog/how-desci-codex-makes-scientific-research-durable-reusable-and-ai-ready) Part of Decentralized Science (DeSci) (/wiki/desci/what-is-desci) Reference ethereum.org/desci (https://ethereum.org/en/desci/)

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    Overview Decentralized publishing and peer review is the DeSci pillar that targets how research is disseminated and validated, sitting alongside novel funding (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) , IP-NFTs (/wiki/desci/ip-nfts) , and DeSci DAOs (/wiki/desci/desci-daos) . The traditional stack – a handful of commercial journals gate-keeping both distribution and validation – is the part of science the Ethereum Foundation's DeSci hub (https://ethereum.org/en/desci/) singles out for “creating, reviewing, crediting, storing, and disseminating” knowledge on open infrastructure. The problem it targets - An extractive publishing cartel. A few publishers dominate the literature at margins that dwarf most of tech: Elsevier has run a profit margin approaching 40% (https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2020/08/kronikk/money-behind-academic-publishing) , sustained because the manuscripts, editing, and peer review are supplied for free by publicly-funded academics. - Peer review is unpaid and opaque. Reviewers work without compensation and without public credit. In March 2025 four researchers sued six of the largest publishers (https://www.statnews.com/2025/03/10/peer-review-antitrust-lawsuit-academic-scientific-journals-sued-by-scientists/) , alleging they colluded not to pay for peer review – a direct challenge to the free-labor model. - Paywalls and shifted costs. Publicly-funded results sit behind subscriptions; open-access “fixes” often just move the bill to authors via article-processing charges. - The PDF loses the science. Data, code, and provenance are stripped out of a flat file, making results hard to reproduce, reuse, or machine-read.

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    What decentralized publishing changes The core move is to publish a research object rather than a document: manuscript, data, code, figures, and metadata bundled as one versioned, independently-addressable unit. - Content-addressed, persistent identifiers. DeSci Nodes (https://www.desci.com/publish) auto-assign a dPID (https://www.dpid.org/) (decentralized persistent identifier) built on content identifiers (CIDs) – cryptographic fingerprints that pin an exact version, guard against content drift (https://docs.desci.com/create-and-publish/share/persistent-identifier-dpid) , and let readers cite an individual component, not just a whole paper. - Beyond the PDF. DeSci Codex (https://www.desci.com/blog/how-desci-codex-makes-scientific-research-durable-reusable-and-ai-ready) is an open protocol for durable, reusable, AI-ready research objects with a transparent version history – the container the flat file never was. - Open access by default. Preprint-first publishing puts the work in public the moment it is submitted, before – not after – review. - Credit becomes an on-chain asset. Reviews and contributions are recorded as attestations tied to a wallet, so a reviewer accrues portable reputation instead of anonymous, uncredited labor.

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    Paying for peer review: ResearchHub & ResearchCoin ResearchHub (https://www.researchhub.com/journal) is the clearest working model for the paid-review thesis. Its journal pays reviewers $150 in ResearchCoin (RSC) for a completed peer review, is open access by default (https://www.researchhub.com/journal) with every submission immediately available as a preprint, and targets peer review in as few as 14 days – a fraction of a traditional journal's timeline. RSC also funds bounties and community governance across the platform. The token moved onto major venues over 2025 – listed on Coinbase (Base network) on 31 July 2025 and Kraken on 17 November 2025 (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/researchcoin/) – and ResearchHub has integrated with Bio Protocol (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) and Molecule (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) to route RSC bounties into an on-chain research workflow, pulling peer review directly into the BioDAO (/wiki/desci/desci-daos) funding pipeline.

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    Infrastructure and standards Under the platforms sits open, publicly-inspectable infrastructure. DeSci Labs' Nodes (https://github.com/desci-labs/nodes) are open-source “secure PID containers for interoperable research objects,” and the dPID protocol (https://www.dpid.org/) standardizes how those objects are named and resolved so citations point at durable, content-addressed artifacts rather than link-rotting URLs. Because objects are versioned and fingerprinted, the provenance chain (https://docs.desci.com/create-and-publish/share/persistent-identifier-dpid) – who published what, when, and what changed – is auditable rather than taken on trust. This is the same shift the rest of DeSci makes with IP-NFTs (/wiki/desci/ip-nfts) : turn an opaque institutional record into an open, portable, on-chain one.

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    How Caper approaches this Caper is a DAO protocol (/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) , not a publishing platform – it does not host papers or run peer review. But it shares the load-bearing principle underneath decentralized review: credit and influence should be earned and non-transferable. Paid on-chain peer review works precisely because a reviewer's reputation is accrued by contribution and stays attached to them; it is not a badge anyone can buy. Caper's governance carries the same idea into who steers a treasury. Every vote mints a soulbound proof-of-vote token (/wiki/daos/concepts/soulbound-tokens) – non-divisible and non-transferable in the contract (DIVISIBILITY_NONE, deposits gated to the component's own calls) – and a member's earned voting record folds directly into both their vote weight and their exit share, computed as (held · votes) / (supply · circulation). Influence you accumulate by turning up cannot be bought or sold, mirroring the reviewer-reputation model on-chain publishing is trying to build. It is not bag-less – holdings still multiply weight – but the decisive, participation-earned factor is un-buyable by design. (Verified against contracts/src/caper_dao.rs.)