Workplace Reputation, Backed by Destroyed Capital

3 min read Original article ↗

How It Works

01

Enter Email

Search for any coworker by their work email address.

02

Verify Domain

Confirm you work at the same company. Domain match required.

03

Burn Money

Choose positive or negative. Pay any amount. It's destroyed immediately.

04

Stay Anonymous

Your identity is never revealed. Only the money and sentiment remain.

Real Money. Real Signal.

Example ledger showing actual coworker sentiment

Sarah Chen

Product Manager @ TechCorp

22 contributors

£1,240

Contributors: 18

Average burn: £69

£380

Contributors: 4

Average burn: £95

Notice: 4 people felt strongly enough to burn £95 each on average for negative sentiment. That's expensive signal.

Why Costly Signals Matter

Traditional reputation systems are broken because opinions are free. r8d fixes this with game theory.

Traditional Reviews

  • Free to leave = easy to game
  • Anonymous trolls with no skin in the game
  • Brigading and coordinated attacks
  • No way to gauge intensity of feeling

r8d

  • Costly = self-filtering for genuine sentiment
  • Must be verified coworker to participate
  • Economic cost prevents spam and brigading
  • Amount burned = intensity of feeling

The Economics of Truth

When you have to burn £50 to leave feedback, you think twice. When someone else burns £200, you pay attention. This is Vickrey auction theory meets workplace reputation—the cost reveals true preference, and prevents the noise that plagues free systems.

FAQ

Isn't this defamation?

No. There are no comments, no text, no claims—just numbers. You can't defame someone by burning money. The ledger shows amounts and sentiment direction, nothing more. It's financial expression, not speech.

What stops abuse and harassment?

Economics. Abuse is expensive here. To harass someone costs real money that's destroyed forever. Plus: (1) Must verify same company email domain, (2) Can only rate current coworkers, (3) Pattern detection flags suspicious burns, (4) Both positive and negative columns visible—shows full picture.

Where does the money go?

The platform keeps it. That's the point. We're not pretending to be noble—we profit from your need to signal. The costlier the signal, the more valuable the information. We're the trusted third party that makes proof-of-burn work.

How is privacy protected?

All contributions are completely anonymous. Not even we know who burned what. You verify your email once to prove coworker status, then all ratings from your account are cryptographically anonymized. The ledger shows only: amounts, sentiment direction, and aggregate statistics.

Can I rate anyone?

Only current coworkers at your company (verified by email domain). No dogpiling on people who left. No brigading from outside. This keeps it relevant and prevents coordinated attacks.

What if someone has only negative ratings?

Then multiple coworkers felt strongly enough to burn money expressing that. The data speaks. Remember: this only works between verified coworkers—people with actual workplace experience with the person. If 10 teammates burn £500 combined on negative sentiment, that's signal worth examining.

This seems dystopian.

Maybe. But is it more dystopian than the current system where toxic people hide behind broken HR processes and missing feedback? Where real problems fester because reporting is ineffective? This makes reputation legible and costly—which means honest.

Ready to burn money
for the truth?

Join the waitlist. We'll contact you when we launch at your company.