Picture this

Who it is for

Seun is new to a P2P lending circle. Five long time friends anonymously rate his honesty, Character Circle publishes only the aggregate, and the circle lets him in without anyone knowing who said what.

Two ways to own it

What you get

Base$199

$50 deposit to reserve

Vouch invites, encrypted ratings, aggregate reveal at threshold, trust badge.

You choose: chain
You choose: name and logo
You choose: accent color
You choose: traits rated

Customfrom $1,600

Built around you

Reshape it entirely: new features, your flows, your brand end to end, integrations you need. We scope it with you.

Everything in Base
Custom features and design
Priority build

Why it is new

What exists today, and what this does differently

What is new

No product found that privately aggregates peer character vouches into a single disclosed score.

Closest things out there

Gitcoin Passport and BrightID verify humanity; VouchMe (ETHGlobal) makes vouch trees public and trust-store computes offchain graph scores, but none do private aggregate character vouching.

Checked with web searches in October 2026. A search is not proof that nothing similar exists, and the market moves fast, so we recheck before every build.

What it unlocks

The human in it

Turns how people experience you into a private, portable trust signal.

The Regatta Board

Races it can enter

buildathon · Fhenix · upcoming

Fhenix buildathon / grants

unknown

Official page ↗

If built on Fhenix FHE; eligibility unknown.

Their rule on existing code: unknown

What you own

The whole app, not a starter kit.

The complete Character Circle app: people who know you rate you in private, only the combined score is revealed, and you get a fading trust badge circles and landlords can check, with a paywall and USDC checkout built in.

Base price · $199

The user app, complete

Every buyer gets the same finished app. Basic branding and copy changes come through a quick form.

Three step onboardingHome

Shown once: people who know you vouch, stars stay sealed, one number shows.

Progress and next actionHome

Invite, sealed, revealed and badge, with one clear next step and recent activity.

Voucher picker with eligibilityRound

Choose who vouches; contacts known for less than the owner's minimum are blocked.

Encrypted ratings and threshold revealRound

Lanterns light as sealed ratings arrive; nothing shows until enough have answered.

Trimmed score against the join barRound

Highest and lowest dropped on encrypted values, then compared to the circle's bar.

Second round per seasonRound

Try different vouchers before the season ends. Gated behind Trusted Plus.

Vouch back inboxAsks

Rate friends in private with stars per trait, relationship length and an unsigned note.

Private comments digestAsks

Unsigned words from vouchers, order shuffled. Gated behind Trusted Plus.

Circle membership and directoryCircles

Your circle's pot, roster and pot month, plus other circles you can apply to with your badge.

Trust badge with fadeBadge

Mint the revealed score on Base or Celo with an expiry and a freshness ring.

Badge check links with view receiptsBadge

Landlords and co-ops check the badge without seeing vouchers. Gated behind Trusted Plus.

Onchain receipt and share cardBadge

Exactly what is onchain and what never is, plus a share card.

Plans, settings and permissionsMe

Plans sheet with USDC checkout, privacy settings, what the app may and may never do.

Open the full app demo

Add-on

Owner console

Your admin side: revenue, paywall editor, users, rules and the agent log.

Revenue, paywall editor and paymentsRevenue

MRR, check fees, incoming USDC payments, payouts, editable tiers and gates, accepted methods.

Rules that change outcomesRules

Traits, reveal threshold, join bar, minimum years known, fade, trimming, ring detection, network.

Ring review queueRings

Loops and shared devices flagged; count as one or clear, never seeing a rating.

Season agent log and roadmapAgent

What failed and how it adapted, running costs, and priced v2 and v3 builds.

Top-up

Growth and referrals

Referral and growth mechanics, switched on when you are ready to grow.

Growth loops, cohorts and referralsGrowth

Circle nights, cohort retention and vouch and invite referrals.

The money path, built in

How it earns for you

Applicants never pay to be vouched for or to vouch. Applicants pay for extra rounds and landlord check links, organisers pay to run circles, and verifiers pay per badge check.

ApplicantFreeOne vouch round per season, sealed score, trust badge, vouching for others

Trusted Plus$3 a monthSecond round per season, badge check links with view receipts, private comments digest

Circle$12 a monthFor organisers: custom traits, threshold and join bar, member roster, ring alerts

Verifiers pay $0.50 per badge check. FHE and badge gas, a few cents per round, can be sponsored by the owner.

Prices are yours to set. Illustrative, not a promise of income.

Growth loops, built in

How it spreads

Vouchers become applicants: every voucher sees the app from the inside and starts their own round
Circle nights where a whole church or market vouches for each other in one evening
Badge check pages invite landlords and co-ops to set up their own circle
Badges fade each season, so everyone comes back to vouch again
Vouch and invite referral: a free month of Trusted Plus for both

Roadmap · build the next phase with us

Where it goes next

v1 included

The full vouching app

Invites, encrypted ratings and threshold reveal
Trimmed score and ring detection
Trust badge with fade and check links
Vouch back inbox and circle directory
Paywall with USDC checkout

Included

Landlord and co-op verify portal

Verifier accounts for landlords and co-ops
Badge check API with per check billing
Community tier for many circles
WhatsApp invite links and reminders

Add-on from $450

Portable reputation across cities

Badges that travel between circles and countries
Aggregate vouch graph insights for organisers
Open schema for other vouching apps
Diaspora circles with multi currency pots

Add-on from $950

For investors and grant reviewers

The pitch, ready

Five people who know you rate you in private; only one number is ever revealed.

Problem: Savings circles, co-ops and landlords decide trust by public vouching. Friends will not be honest in front of others, newcomers are shut out, and fake friends are easy to recruit.

Solution: Encrypted ratings on Fhenix are combined without decrypting any single one, revealed only at a threshold, trimmed against grudges, with rings counted once, and issued as a fading badge on Base.

Why now: FHE chains make private sums practical, humanity checks are free to read, and embedded wallets let non crypto people sign in with an email.

Market: Millions of people use rotating savings circles worldwide, from ajo and esusu to tandas and chamas, plus co-ops and small landlords who need one honest signal on newcomers.

The ask: Pilot with ten circles in south London, then a landlord check partner to prove the second paying side.

Funding is never guaranteed. Check each program's rules.

For hackathons and demo days

Your 2 minute demo

Home: meet Seun, a newcomer the Peckham Ajo cannot vouch for yet
Round: pick five vouchers, send invites, watch sealed lanterns light and one score reveal
Owner Rules: switch trimming off and see Dele's honest 3 pull the score down
Owner Rings: collapse a ring of new accounts into one voucher
Badge: mint the fading badge, read what is onchain, make a landlord check link via Trusted Plus checkout
Asks: vouch back for Kwame in private
Owner Revenue: edit the paywall and see USDC payments arrive
Owner Roadmap: request the landlord verify portal

Many hackathons require code written at the event. See the Regatta Boardfor each race's rule.

Make it entirely yours

Custom work covers your own traits and wording, other languages, circle specific rules, your own badge design, and integrations with your community's tools. Scoped on a call.

Custom from $1,600

BLUEPRINT

Why it matters and how it really works

The need

Savings circles, lending groups, landlords and small communities decide who to trust by asking people to vouch in public. Friends will not say anything negative in front of others, so vouching tells you little. Newcomers with no local history are shut out, and fake friends are easy to recruit.

What exists and what is new

Gitcoin Passport and BrightID verify that someone is a unique human. VouchMe (an ETHGlobal project) builds public vouch trees, and trust-store computes graph scores offchain. Research verdict: fresh, high novelty. We found no product that collects encrypted character ratings from people who know someone and reveals only the aggregate at a threshold. That private aggregation, with collusion rings counted once, is the new part.

The data it runs on

Invites from the applicant, each voucher's encrypted ratings on the traits the group chose, a humanity check and relationship length for each voucher, the vouch graph used to detect loops, and the final aggregate score once the reveal threshold is met.

1.The mission

Let people be honest about each other in private, so newcomers can be trusted on what those who know them really think.

2.Why people can't resist it

One number, no names Nobody, not even the organiser, ever sees who gave which rating. That is what makes friends honest.

Vouch back Every person you vouch for can vouch for someone else, so trust spreads person to person.

Fresh or fading Badges fade after a season unless people still vouch, which brings everyone back each quarter.

3.How it works for real

Invites: The applicant invites 5 people by link. Each voucher signs in with a Privy embedded wallet and passes a humanity check (for example Gitcoin Passport or World ID) and states how long they have known the applicant.

Encrypted ratings: Ratings are encrypted client side and submitted to a contract on Fhenix, an FHE enabled chain, so sums and trimmed means are computed on ciphertexts.

Threshold reveal: Only when the group's threshold of vouchers has answered does the contract request decryption of the aggregate. Individual values are never decrypted.

Ring detection: An offchain service checks the vouch graph and account ages. Vouchers in a closed loop, or sharing devices or funding, count as one voucher.

Badge: The revealed score is attested on Base with EAS, with an expiry, so any circle or landlord can check it without seeing the vouchers.

Notes: A small model (for example Claude Haiku via OpenRouter) writes plain season notes. It sees only aggregates and never sees individual ratings.

4.Cost per use and pricing

FHE operations on Fhenix cost more than normal transactions; budget a few cents per applicant for encrypted submissions and the aggregate. The Base badge attestation is usually well under one cent. Humanity checks via Passport are free to read. Example month with 500 applicants: roughly $15 to $40 of FHE and gas depending on network fees, $3 of model calls, $25 hosting, so under $70.

Applicant Free

One vouch round per season and a shareable badge.

Circle $12 a month

Custom traits, threshold and join bar, member roster and ring alerts for one group.

Community $49 a month

Many circles, landlord or co-op checks, and API access to verify badges.

5.Growth loop

Every voucher sees how the app works from the inside and can start their own round. Organisers who caught a ring tell other circles. Badges get shown to landlords and new groups, and each check page invites the viewer to set up their own circle.

6.Risks and guardrails

Inference: With very few vouchers, someone can guess others' ratings. Minimum thresholds and trimming reduce this, and the app warns when settings are weak.

Collusion: Rings of friends can still inflate scores. Loop detection and humanity checks raise the cost of faking; they do not end it.

Exclusion: A low score can shut someone out. Scores fade, applicants can try again with different vouchers, and groups should never treat the score as the only factor.

Legal: Character scores can touch credit and discrimination law in some countries. Owners must not market it as a credit score and should check local rules.

FHE maturity: FHE chains are young. Keep the encrypted logic small and audited, and have a fallback if the network is down.

7.Build order

Invite flow with Privy sign in and humanity check
Encrypted rating contract on Fhenix with trimmed mean
Threshold reveal of the aggregate only
Basic loop detection on the vouch graph
EAS badge on Base with expiry
Organiser settings for traits, threshold and join bar

8.Where this is going

Now
Savings circles admit newcomers on a private score from people who really know them.
Next
Landlords, co-ops and small lenders accept the badge as one honest signal.
Later
Vouches travel across groups and countries, so moving city no longer resets your reputation.
The world it builds
Trust that reflects how people actually experience you, without anyone having to say it in public.

Costs and tools are estimates at the time of writing. General information only, not legal or financial advice.

OWNER PLAYBOOK

Own it, then chart your voyage

Nine routes from one vessel. Tap a port to open its chart.

Why own Character Circle

Character Circle lets five people who know someone vouch for their honesty privately, then publishes only the aggregate as a trust score. If a lending circle or community uses someone else's reputation service, that service owns the trust graph and decides what counts. Own it, and the vouch flow, the encrypted ratings and the trust badges belong to your community and your wallet.

What’s stopping you?

“Can friends just inflate each other's scores?”

Yes, some will. The score says 'five people who know them rated them', nothing more. Communities should use it as one signal, not a guarantee. Say that on every badge.

“What if someone finds out who rated them low?”

Ratings are encrypted and only the aggregate is revealed once the threshold is met. Keep the threshold at five or more so individual ratings cannot be guessed.

“I can't code.”

Invites, encrypted ratings, reveal and badge come built. You set the threshold and branding.

“Could this be used to exclude people unfairly?”

It could. Encourage communities to use it to let people in, not to shut them out, and to offer another path for people without five vouchers yet.

“Is it really mine?”

Yes. Deployed from your wallet on Base or Fhenix.

The million-dollar ladder

Communities, lending circles and marketplaces pay a monthly fee to use private vouch scores for onboarding, plus per circle fees for one off checks. This is a target, not a promise.

$50

$4,000

$30,000

$85,000

First 10 users

10 people completing circles

$5 per circle

Community onboarding

40 communities

$100 per month

Marketplace trust

100 communities plus 10 marketplaces