UTU is announcing the first Based Founders Fellowship Africa, addressing critical barriers to scale for the African web3 ecosystem through support to elite founders and creators. Hosted by UTU, Sponsored by Base. 🟡+🟦 BFF

UTU is also announcing our upcoming deployment of UTU’s trust infrastructure on Base, making Web3 safe for everyone.

1: Based Founders Fellowship (BFF) — Africa 🌍

UTU is thrilled to work with Base and BFF’s VC Partners Lava, Electric Capital, 1confimation, and a16zcrypto to launch the Based Founders Fellowship Africa. This program offers 26 top African Founders and Creators a transformational 10-day fellowship in Kenya (October 22–31). It’s a free program, focused on tackling the specific barriers blocking each company’s 10X growth.

Meet our incredible first cohort of Based Founders and Creators:

🇰🇪Paul Gachora — Project Mocha — Turning Coffee Consumers into Coffee investors

🇳🇬Chizaram Ucheaga — Timon Financials Inc — Your financial passport for global travel

🇺🇸 Adamu Umaru — Plu — Plu is a blockchain-powered financial platform that enables Africans to spend, save, and — soon — access credit globally through debit and credit cards seamlessly connected to stablecoins.

🇳🇬Uthman YUSSUFF — Payrit — A FIAT to FIAT instant crossborder payment service for travellers powered by stablecoins.

🇰🇪Chris Oketch — Minisend — An offramp miniapp on the baseapp & Farcaster

🇺🇸James Okuzor — Storipod — Storipod is a social storytelling platform where readers discover, share, and support great stories through an engaging, creator-driven experience.

🇧🇼Humphrey Mwamba — mystocks.africa — Financial tokenization platform for africa and the world on BASE.

🇺🇸Elo Mukoro — Cr3dentials — Verification infrastructure for financial institutions

🇬🇭Joshua Adeola — Cryptomomo — Cryptomomo is a digital finance platform that uses stablecoins to make sending, receiving, and cashing out money in Ghana fast, easy, and affordable.

🇰🇪Martin Chege — Sargo — Sargo is the coordination layer for wallet liquidity, solving Africa’s fragmented on/off-ramp problem by unifying buy/sell offers across wallets, chains, and chat apps into a single non-custodial marketplace.

🇳🇬Chiagozie Iwu — Ledig — Ledig is bringing institutional FX to DeFi by building stablecoin to fiat rails and on-chain hedging tools that unlock reliable liquidity across 17+ African currencies.

🇰🇪Radhika Bhachu — Ndovu — Robinhood for Africa

🇬🇭 Paul Kwesi Damalie — Geny Labs,Inc — A voice powered business assistant for skilled service businesses.

🇳🇬Emeka Nwosu — Ribh Finance — Stablecoin-powered B2B payments solution for SMEs in Africa

🇳🇬Daniel Anwuli — Spenda — Crypto Spending app for Africans

🇰🇪Derrick Bundi –Pretium — A payment platform that bridge existing payment rails with blockchain technology.

🇳🇬Florence Isika — Centry — Centry allows users convert crypto to cash at a near instant speed, powering cross border payments in Africa

🇰🇪Eric Michubu — Yiksi — A simple platform that enables users to buy and sell stablecoins.

🇨🇲Tierno Tall — Ejara — Allow users to buy crypto currencies and fractional shares.

🇰🇪James Orengo — Hurupay — The first stablecoin-native banking platform that lets businesses open a true global USD account in minutes — without an EIN, US tax ID, or a physical US address.

🇳🇬Abayomi Semudara — @semudaraabayomi — Product designer and tech content creator known for his “60 Seconds Startup Pitch” series that gives founders one minute to pitch their startups.

🇰🇪Aurelia Mutua — @mwikali_aurelia — Business development and KOL management specialist in Web3 and fintech, co-founder of Decentrix Africa, driving crypto adoption and strategic partnerships across African markets.

🇰🇪Dada Boipelo — @hvrmemoirs — Chief Marketing Officer at Cr3dentials and creative professional specializing in Web3 and NFT marketing, founding member of African Meta Club and former marketing lead at AfrofutureDAO.

🇳🇬Kokocodec — @kokocodes — Ecosystem growth strategist and community manager working with Base blockchain, Saige, and CreatorX, building Web3 communities and hosting spaces.

🇰🇪Wanjiru Mwoka — @CryptoChic56 — Web3 and NFT content creator based in Kenya who demystifies blockchain, NFTs, and crypto for enthusiasts and newcomers.

🇳🇬Qin —  qingthecreator_— Visual StoryTeller, Founder @TheCreative_Hut, Public Speaker, Web3 Content Strategist. Creative Lead at Base West Africa, vibe-coding the future.

We could not be more excited to work with Base to accelerate a cohort of the continent’s most based founders and creators!

To celebrate the creation of Based Founders Fellowship Africa, UTU will:

2: Deploy UTU Protocol on Base 🔵

We will deploy UTU’s Trust Infrastructure on Base, bringing better trust to the whole Base ecosystem, giving Based projects access to a social reputation, reviews, and a trust system driven by users’ personal networks and economic incentives for building trust online.

3: Deploy an UTU Trust Mini App for the Base App 🟨

UTU will also deploy its trust infrastructure into the incredible new Base App (yes, we got early access, it’s very cool), using the Base MiniKit. We love this for its inherently social approach to web 3 that mirrors UTU’s belief in the power of our networks to keep us safe and help us find things we love.

Bringing our technologies together is a dream come true, as UTU and Base work together to make web3 safe for the next billion users.

1: Based Founders Fellowship Africa — Surgical Problem-Solving for Elite Founders and Creators 🎯

Africa’s crypto market is exploding. 1.4 billion people, rapidly expanding digital infrastructure, and founders who build solutions that actually work for real users with real constraints. But scaling from 1,000 to 100,000 users? That’s where most promising projects hit the wall.

African founders have cracked something others are still figuring out: how to build crypto solutions people actually need and use. From remittances to savings groups to supply chain verification, African web3 projects solve immediate problems for users who can’t afford to lose money on experiments.

The scaling challenge: Most promising African web3 projects often plateau around 1,000–5,000 users. Not because the market isn’t there, but because founders hit specific, predictable barriers that require specialized knowledge to overcome.

BFF isn’t a generic accelerator. It’s 10 days of targeted problem-solving designed around each founder’s three biggest blockers to 10X growth.

How it works:

• Pre-program Context: Deep dives into each company’s specific scaling barriers
• Customized mentor matching: Pair founders with mentors who’ve solved their exact challenges
• Targeted sessions: Focus exclusively on the 2–3 issues blocking each founder’s next growth phase. One founder at a time, the collective brainpower, experience, and networks of the entire Base and UTU ecosystems, put in service of your goals.
• Implementation support: Leave with concrete action plans and ongoing mentor relationships and the means to execute on those plans.

The type of blockers we’ll help these founders solve:

• Regulatory navigation across multiple African markets
• Liquidity to settle trades
• Token model design and stress-testing
• Technical infrastructure that breaks under load
• Fundraising strategies, tools, and connections that work for African founders
• User acquisition beyond early adopter communities
• Partnership and customer development with key industry players
• Cross-border payment integration and compliance that keeps you out of jail

The mentor network:

• African founders who’ve scaled past 100K users
• Global VCs with active Africa investment theses
• Technical leaders from successful crypto infrastructure and consumer companies
• Regulatory experts who’ve navigated multi-country expansions
• Business development strategists with proven African market experience
• Ecosystem builders with deep reach into African web3 communities
• Technical partners ready to spin up to solve your product challenges with you

Demo Day: Global VCs are actively hunting for African deals. BFF’s invite only Demo Day will connect proven founders with investors who write checks, not just offer advice.

We are also pleased to introduce Joan Jerop as our BFF Associate. Joan Jerop brings her deep passion for technology, education, and ecosystem growth across Africa. Joan is the Founder of OneDev, an edtech platform that trains developers in Web3 and Artificial Intelligence (AI) while creating meaningful opportunities for them across the globe.

Want to meet the first BFF Africa Cohort? Reach out for an invite to Demo Day!

2: UTU on Base 🟡+🟦 Reclaiming Trust for the Humans

What would BFF be if our technologies didn’t vibe together? So to mark the occasion of the Based Founders Fellowship, UTU will deploy on the Base network. UTU is already on Optimisim but this move brings us to exactly where the action is! Deploying UTU Trust on Base means Base users can interact with UTU directly on Base, including making on-chain endorsements and earning rewards without ever switching networks.

What UTU Provides for Base Users:

• Authentic reviews from your social networks about anything you can find online
• Rewards for helping to build trust online
• Easy access to UTU signals from all networks through the UTU Trust App and UTU Trust Browser Extension, right there on Base
• No bots, spammers, scammers, miscreants, or naredowells in the UTU airwaves 🔉

What UTU Provides for Based Projects:

• Authentic reviews from your users’ social networks via our Trust API that improve conversion
• A fully featured review mechanism to capture your users’ feedback
• Network-based reputation that reduces CAC and increases satisfaction and retention
• Easy integration via our Trust SDK. Full API documentation at docs.utu.io with Base-specific examples and integration guides.

3: UTU Trust Mini App 🟡+🟦 Better Trust for Mass Adoption

The mobile problem: Crypto on mobile means small screens, quick decisions, high stakes. Users get scammed faster on mobile, which kills mainstream adoption before it starts.

UTU will build an UTU Trust Mini App for the new Base app using MiniKit. By integrating UTU’s trust signals directly into your Base app, you’ll get just-in-time trust signals from your entire network about any token, wallet, app, or address that you’re about to interact with, right at that critical moment before you sign, send, or connect.

This sort of social trust integrates perfectly with Base’s inherently social approach to Web3, creating the foundation for mainstream adoption, thus a perfect host for UTU’s Trust Infrastructure. This addresses a critical crypto adoption barrier that affects every user and every founder trying to reach those users.

Mini App solution:

• Native trust signals, from your networks only, within Base app transactions 🛡️
• Social network warnings before users interact with tokens, addresses, etc.
• Quality endorsement system that builds ecosystem-wide confidence
• Zero friction integration — no separate downloads or complex setup
• Network effects that benefit all Base ecosystem participants

The Full Stack for African Web3 Growth 🔥

This collaboration continues UTU’s role as champion for African web3 builders, brings UTU’s tech to one of the hottest L2s on Earth, and will see us integrated into the Base App via an UTU Trust MiniApp.

Most importantly, it recognizes that African founders are building the infrastructure that the rest of the world will eventually adopt. We know, and soon they will too.

Follow @ututrust on X

#BasedFoundersFellowship #BaseBlockchain #AfricaWeb3 #ScaleUp #DigitalTrust

About UTU

UTU is building the trust infrastructure of the internet to help people interact in an easier, safer, and more trustworthy way. At our core, we are a decentralised reputation and reviews tool that rewards users when their content helps others get good outcomes from their online interactions.

Starting with Web3 and DeFi apps, we provide AI-powered curation of trust signals from your network at just the right places and times to help users connect, send, swap, stake, and borrow with confidence.

A suite of trust tools have already been built atop UTU’s Trust Protocol, including the UTU Trust Browser Extension for consumers, and Trust API/SDK for developers. We can’t wait to see what you’ll build atop UTU, to bring better trust to the internet.

UTU is proudly based in Nairobi, Kenya with trust guardians all over. Learn more about UTU on our website, Twitter,Telegram, Discord, LinkedIn,Reddit, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Ever felt that pit in your stomach when connecting your wallet to a new app? Or that moment of doubt when reading a 5-star review that seems… suspiciously perfect? You’re not alone.

The internet promised to connect us all, but it forgot to build in the trust layer that makes those connections meaningful. Instead, we got fake reviews, scam sites, and that constant feeling of “Can I really trust this site or (d)app?” 

We thought that we were moving to a trustless system, but we forgot that those systems and the people behind them can’t always be trusted… UTU brings trust to the trustless. UTU brings trust to the internet.

UTU’s mission is to make the Internet more trustworthy. UTU is building a foundation of trust for the internet, making it easier and safer for people and platforms to interact online.

Think of us as a reputation system for the digital world. When you help others make good decisions online, you earn rewards through UTU. We use two types of tokens: UTT (which represents your reputation and can’t be traded) and $UTU (which has cash value and is freely tradeable). You can use UTU to review the entire internet, including websites and pages, as well as on-chain addresses such as wallets, apps, and tokens. The most powerful trust signal you can send is to stake part of your reputation on things. When you stake your UTT to endorse something and it helps someone else succeed, you earn rewards in both UTT and $UTU.

Today, we’re sharing our 2025/26 development roadmap as we prepare for a slate of releases that our core Dev crew has been hard at work on.  This roadmap represents our collective understanding of ideal solutions to the very real trust problems we all face online every day. It’s also a call to our trust guardian community out there to mobilise with us. We are rounding the bend on the buildout of UTU’s system, mechanisms, and distribution mechanisms and could not be more excited to begin shifting toward large-scale user acquisition enabled by our recent and upcoming development efforts. So let’s dive in to the UTU Trust Roadmap 2025/26: Building the Internet Trust Layer We Deserve.

Solving Real Trust Problems in Web3 and Beyond

“How do I know if this _______ I found online is safe?”

Our Browser and Wallet Extensions are evolving to become your trusted companion when navigating both web2 and web3. Have you ever visited a site and wondered if anyone in your network has used it before? Our extension will provide you with honest feedback from the people whose opinions truly matter to you.

• Version 2 of the UTU Trust Browser Extension is more streamlined, more stable, and stays out of the way, and will be released imminently. It provides a stable foundation for building out UTU’s complete feature set and opens up the floodgates for several features we’ve built but haven’t yet released. This release includes key updates to UTU’s SDK’s wallet handling, and accessibility/security features.
  
• Disapprovals and Stake Withdrawal: This feature allows you to formally reject things and warn others; it also enables edits to previously made stakes, allowing you to remove, reduce, or increase your staked UTT. Disapprovals are the formal mechanism in UTU that trigger penalties to the staked reputation of previous endorsers. The introduction of disapprovals marks the last major component of the UTU economic model to go live.
  
• Firefox Support is coming soon because your browser choice shouldn’t limit trust. Whether you’re on Chrome, Firefox, or Brave, we want you to have the same protection against scams and confidence in trustworthy services.
  
• Oh Snap! Gives you the power to view and share trust signals directly from your MetaMask Wallet. Connect, send, sign, and swap with confidence! Found something sketchy? Something awesome? Review, Endorse, and Disapprove of the web with the UTU Trust snap directly from your MetaMask wallet. No more “I wish I could warn my friends about this” moments, now you can, right when it matters most.
  
• Browser Extension support for arbitrary blockchain addresses brings the existing UTU App capability to leave and view signals about any arbitrary on-chain address directly to the browser extension. This solves for that nerve-wracking moment when you’re about to connect your wallet to a new app, buy a token, or send funds.
  
• Support for subdomain and page-level reviews allows you to leave and view feedback on specific webpages, not just top-level domains, meaning you can review individual users on a platform like X or individual products on a platform like Amazon. This includes archiving via the Wayback Machine. This feature enables the selection of individual text or graphical elements on a page for comment or review.
  
• In-line signals on DEXes, DeFis, and Wallets make UTU signals even more prominent in precisely the time and place you want them to be. This upgrade to UTU’s protocol will provide users with indicators of existing signals, in-line, for unique assets that appear on a page as you’re viewing it. That could be a list of tokens on a DEX, a wallet address or web URL on a page, or a liquidity pool you’re about to lock funds in. You will see a yellow highlight or underline, along with a small UTU logo, which will take you directly to the signals for that person or thing. Instead of searching multiple sources to verify legitimacy, trust signals appear right where and when you’re making the decision, in real-time. This story complements another user story we’re working on, enabling developers and platform operators to define custom traits for endorsement within their environments. 

The pain is real: 74% of web3 users report feeling anxious when connecting to new protocols, and 68% have abandoned transactions due to concerns about trust. UTU’s State of Trust in Web 3 Report confirmed the problems. Our Browser Extension transforms that anxiety into confidence based on real signals from people you actually trust, helping you navigate both decentralised applications and traditional websites with greater security.

“Whose voices do I actually trust?”

Your actual social connections contain powerful trust signals that current platforms ignore entirely, opting instead to show you farmed, paid, or at-large signals. UTU currently shows you signals from the network of wallets you’ve interacted with by default and lets you connect your Telegram and GitHub networks presently. 

• More Social Media Connectors let you tap into the collective wisdom of people you already know and trust across different platforms. Why trust random internet strangers when you can see what your actual network thinks? This is the whole point of UTU. We’ve got a list of social networks to integrate. Add your favourite to the list!
  
• V2 of the Social Connector scheme goes beyond simple connections to understand the strength and context of your relationships.
  
• ENS/UD Resolution means that signals from wallets in your network with ENS names or Unstoppable Domain Names will display the names, not just the wallet address, helping you identify exactly who every signal you see is from.

The problem is clear: 83% of people claim to have been misled by online reviews, and fake reviews cost consumers an estimated $152 billion annually. Our decentralised social trust network transforms anonymous noise into meaningful signals by prioritising feedback from people in your actual trusted circles, creating a web of authentic reputation that works across web3 and traditional platforms.

“But does it work where I need it?”

With 65% of web3 users spread across multiple chains and the average user active on three or more blockchains, fragmented trust is a significant problem. Our multi-chain trust protocol ensures your reputation and trust relationships follow you everywhere, regardless of which blockchain you’re using today – from Ethereum and Optimism to emerging chains like Liks and ICP. Trust shouldn’t be limited by which blockchain you prefer. UTU is already running on Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, Near, Lisk, and BNB.

• Deployment on ICP leverages the Internet Computer’s web speed and scale to bring trust signals directly into dApps, eliminating added friction and wallet switching. We’ve fully implemented our first grant with ICP and are now seeking additional funding to complete the project and bring UTU live on ICP. Feel free to voice your support for UTU on ICP so they feel the strength of the UTU Trust Community.
  
• Celo integration with Opera Mini/MiniPay brings trust to mobile-first users in emerging markets who often face even higher risks when navigating online services. We are excited to explore how we can bring UTU to this ecosystem to enhance trust for its users. If you’re part of the Celo Community or a Min/MiniPay user, tell us about how you’d use UTU!
  
• UTU for Shopify & WooCommerce: Shopify and WooCommerce together represent ~46% of the global ecommerce market. Stamped, Judge.me, Loox, and me dominate the review market on these platforms, yet all fall short of the UTU model for driving end-user trust and managing misinformation and fake reviews, nor do any of them empower users to own their content or monetise it.
  
  With Account Abstraction implemented and crypto-savvy no longer a blocker, UTU is excited to make forays into the web 2.0 e-commerce space, offering a value proposition of authentic human trust and a user experience that people are familiar with.
  
• Enabling Platform Owners to Pay Users’ Trust Fees – This enables visionary platform operators to implement UTU’s Reviews, Reputation, and Trust mechanism on their platform without requiring their users to pay any fees for either gas or UTU signals. We have several platforms collaborating with us to develop this capability, as they believe in the UTU model of trust and want to pass that value proposition to their users at no cost. This will be a huge step forward for UTU’s B2B capabilities.

“How can I access better trust without being a crypto person? 

UTU is making better trust online accessible to everyone, whether or not they have a wallet or know anything about crypto:

• UTU is about to release its implementation of Web3 Auth/Account Abstraction, meaning anyone can create and view UTU trust signals directly from their email, without ever interacting with wallets or gas fees, removing a central friction point from bringing UTU to the mainstream. Users will be able to access and interact with UTU fully from their email, meaning UTU can also target web 2 users, use cases, and ecosystems.
  
• We are also implementing a Swap and Buy mechanism for UTU API calls via the Unlock Protocol, meaning even non-crypto users can buy $UTU on Uniswap directly with a credit or debit card, without leaving the checkout flow to view UTU trust signals. UTU Signals are currently still free on Mainnet and will remain so for a while. However, when we transition to paid signals on Mainnet, this checkout flow will provide a seamless user experience for UTU newcomers.
  
• New UTU Website – Our new website tells the UTU story in simpler terms, focusing on how we deliver trust to end users through the key digital interactions they face daily. We can’t wait to reveal it!
   
• Monetisation of UTU Trust API in $UTU creates sustainable incentives for honest signals. In a world where fake reviews can be bought, we’re building a system where honesty is more profitable than deception. Right now, Monetisation is live on UTU’s Testnet, where you must pay in 1000 UTU Mock via Unlock Protocol for a 30-day membership to view UTU signals. In the future, we’ll transition this to a pay-per-view approach for UTU Trust signals.

Research shows that 62% of users abandon new web3 services during the onboarding process due to trust concerns, resulting in billions of dollars in lost economic activity. These trust protocol features transform that moment of doubt into a confident decision based on relevant trust signals, creating a smoother and safer onboarding experience for decentralised applications.

“How can I help build better trust on the internet? 

Why does this matter? Because 91% of users say they’re more likely to trust a service that has human verification behind its ratings, and 87% of consumers specifically look for “verified” indicators before trusting online reviews. Guardians are the bridge between cold blockchain technology and warm human trust relationships.

• UTU Trust Guardian Communities – UTU Trust Guardian Communities represent our most ambitious initiative yet to decentralise governance while accelerating protocol development by engaging global communities.
  • How it works: Communities earn through a dual-incentive model, where individual contributors receive bounties for protocol development, user growth, and educational initiatives. Their communities, in turn, receive matching endowments to their treasury at key milestones. When your community members earn $5,000 in bounties, your community treasury receives $10,000. At $10K earned, you unlock $20K, and at $25K earned, you unlock $50K.
    
  • Why it matters: These endowments aren’t just rewards—your community governs them through a multisig structure and are specifically designed to fund community member projects that integrate and leverage UTU. This creates a sustainable ecosystem where communities have both the resources and the governance power to shape how trust evolves online.
    
  • The opportunity: Beyond direct economic rewards, Trust Guardian Communities gain technical expertise, build respected web3 credentials, and most importantly, secure an enduring voice in UTU Protocol governance. Want to become a UTU Trust Guardian Community? Reach out! We’re seeking communities that are ready to help build a more trustworthy internet while earning meaningful rewards for their contributions to the reputation network.

• UTU Protocol Governance addresses the fundamental question: “Who decides what ‘trustworthy’ means?” By decentralising governance, we ensure that trust standards evolve according to community needs rather than corporate interests. Our draft governance plans are outlined in our White Paper.
  
• Badges, Text, and Video reviews made trustless and verifiable solve the growing problem of AI-generated fake reviews. With cryptographic verification on every piece of review content, you’ll know that feedback came from real people, who you know, with real experiences.
  
• The Integration of third-party signals creates a more comprehensive trust picture by bringing together different types of signals from various sources. Because trust is multidimensional—financial reputation, community standing, and technical reliability all matter in different contexts. There’s also a ton of great signal already out there that just needs cleaning, sifting, and sorting. If you have a signal you think could leverage UTU’s trust infrastructure, feel free to reach out to us on Telegram.
  
• Ingest and Filter Signals from Across Web 2 – It’s not that we think all the content on the review sites is rubbish; it’s just the majority of it. The balance is poorly sorted and presented according to brands’ wishes, rather than human desires for better trust from people they know. By ingesting all this signal and filtering it through UTU’s social algorithms, we flip these platforms’ content edges in UTU’s favour.
  
• Allowlisting DIDs and Proof of Human Protocols – To ensure UTU’s economics remain bot-free, withdrawal of earned $UTU Coin Rewards requires users to pass one of our allowed proof of human protocols. We are working on implementing several so users will have a choice of how to verify their humanity. This includes ZKme, Gitcoin Passport, World ID, and others.
  
• Share UTU signals on other platforms – Many users have expressed a desire to share the content of their UTU reviews on various social platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, X, and others. We are working on packaging our review content to be easily consumed on these platforms, as a key means of increasing UTU’s viral user acquisition. 

These forward-looking projects address emerging challenges in the digital trust landscape, ensuring that as the web evolves, our trust mechanisms evolve alongside it.

Join the UTU Web3 Trust Movement

We’re not building just another blockchain app—we’re leading a movement to transform how trust and reputation work in the digital world. Every project on our 2025 roadmap brings us closer to an internet where trust isn’t just a marketing claim but a verifiable, decentralised reality.

The trust revolution won’t happen overnight, and it certainly won’t happen without you. Here’s how you can be part of the UTU community:

• Try the UTU Trust Browser Extension and MetaMask Extension to start experiencing a more trustworthy internet
• Join our Telegram community to connect with fellow trust pioneers and get early access to new features!
• Follow us on X for the latest updates on our trust-building journey
• Contribute to our open-source projects to help build the technical foundation for a more trustworthy Web3.
• Earn $UTU and UTU Trust Token by participating in our trust ecosystem and providing valuable insights that help your friends and followers stay safe online and find things they love.

See you on the trusted side of the web! ????

The UTU Trust Team

We’re thrilled to announce two exciting upgrades to the UTU Protocol TestNet that brings us closer to our vision of a more trustworthy internet. This update introduces the first version of our paywall for accessing trust signals via simple subscriptions using Unlock Protocol! We’ve also re-released our upgraded MetaMask Snap (Wallet Extension) for MetaMask Flask!

Why These Changes Matter

Strengthening the UTU Economic Model

The introduction of subscription-based access to trust signals, denominated in $UTU, represents a crucial milestone in implementing UTU Protocol’s economic model as outlined in our white paper. This paywall creates a sustainable economic loop that rewards users for contributing to a more trustworthy internet.

Here’s how it works: 

For users to access UTU trust signals, they need to acquire $UTU to buy their membership. While the monthly subscription cost is intentionally kept low to encourage widespread adoption, the typical transaction costs on exchanges naturally encourage users to purchase larger amounts of $UTU at once. This dynamic creates conditions where users are likely to hold $UTU, spending only a little each month, contributing to its long-term stability and value.

The subscription fees flow into UTU Protocol’s economic engine. After sharing revenue with UTU Technologies for development, these fees capitalize the $UTU reward pool. This pool is the source of rewards distributed to users who contribute valuable trust signals and help others make better decisions online. 

It’s a virtuous cycle: users pay for access to trusted information, and those who help create that trust get rewarded for their contributions. Check this infographic for a helpful reminder on the economics of UTU.

Improving Access to $UTU with Unlock Protocol

When this goes live on mainnet, through Unlock protocol’s “swap and buy” widget, a user who clicks the feedback details button will be able to buy $UTU from Uniswap directly within the flow of the UTU app! For now you’ll just have to get $UTU Mock (Sepolia) from us via the request form linked below. What’s more, when this hits Mainnet, you will even be able to buy $UTU with your credit card! 

Ensuring that users can easily acquire $UTU to gain access to UTU Trust signals without leaving the app will help us drive conversion and usage by new users of the UTU Trust Browser Extension, a new version of which, with some major upgrades, is forthcoming.

UTU Signals directly inside MetaMask Flask

Another key upgrade in this release is the rebuilt and expanded UTU Snap for MetaMask. This wallet extension works just like our browser extension, providing you just-in-time trust signals about wallets, tokens, and d-apps, directly inside your wallet, at the exact moment when you’re about to interact with them. 

Direct integration of UTU at the wallet layer provides maximal user safety as it ensures that the signal you’re viewing is about the actual asset/address that your wallet is about to interact with; no bait and switches possible. Try the UTU Trust Snap for MetaMask Flask here!

For those that don’t know, Flask is a developer version of MetaMask. Once we’re sure that the UTU Trust Snap is working correctly in Flask, we will make it available for the regular version MetaMask.

What’s New in This Update?

Subscription-Based Trust Signals via Unlock Protocol

We’re introducing a new subscription model that makes accessing trust signals simpler and more convenient. We’re starting with monthly access, and based on community feedback, we’ll soon add annual, daily, and pay-per-view options to give you more flexibility in how you engage with the protocol.

An Improved Version of the UTU Trust Snap for MetaMask Flask

The MetaMask Snap architecture is developing fast and UTU Protocol Developers have been at the forefront of pushing for increased functionality and have even contributed code to the cause. This new version of the UTU Trust Snap takes advantage of expanded Snap capabilities like the inclusion of images and links directly in the Snap. UTU will continue to push the edges of Snap functionality to provide users with the safest way to navigate web 3 for themselves and their networks. 

Getting Started with the UTU Protocol Testnet

Step 1: Set Up Your Wallet

First, you’ll need a web3 wallet like MetaMask connected to the Sepolia testnet. If you haven’t done this before, here’s what you need to do:

1. Install MetaMask 

2. Switch to Sepolia test network on your MetaMask:

   – Click the network-chooser drop-down on the top left

   – Enable the switch to “Show test networks”
  – Choose “Sepolia”

Step 2: Get Test Tokens

To use the testnet, you’ll need two types of tokens:

1. Sepolia ETH for gas fees which you can get from the Alchemy faucet

2. $UTUM (UTU Mock) tokens for subscriptions ($UTU on Sepolia)

Currently, you can request $UTU Mock tokens by:

1. Filling out our token request form: $UTU Mock Form

2. Including your wallet address and intended use case

3. The team will send you the tokens within 24 hours in most cases. Feel free to ping us on telegram if you don’t receive your $UTU Mock.

A public faucet for $UTUM is coming soon to make this process even easier! We’ll be offering a bounty for anyone that builds it in fact. 

Step 3: Subscribe to Access Trust Signals

Once you have your $UTU Mock tokens:

1. Browse on over to the UTU TestNet D-app

2. Connect your wallet and request signal on any web domain or blockchain address! You’ll hit this paywall:

3. Subscribe and click through the payment screens:

4. Approve the $UTUM token spend in your wallet

5. Complete the subscription transaction

Your subscription will activate immediately after the transaction is confirmed, giving you access to trust signals across the platform. 

What to Test?

We encourage UTU Trust Guardians and community members to test out these key features:

1. Purchase an UTU Monthly Subscription via Unlock Protocol

Go to the UTU Testnet D-app (Sepolia) and view signal for any on-chain address, the d-app should ask you to purchase an UTU subscription via Unlock Protocol. 

2. View trust signals for different entities on the web using the UTU TestNet D-app

Experience how subscriptions control access to detailed UTU trust signals for web 2 and web 3 assets.

3. Install the UTU Trust Snap (TestNet) and try giving and viewing signal 

for on-chain addresses/assets directly in your MetaMask Flask Extension. 

Need Help? We’re here to support your testing journey:

Join our Discord and Telegram for real-time support

Share Your Experience

Your feedback is crucial for improving UTU Protocol. After testing, please share your experience in our Discord and Telegram channels so we can keep improving!

We’re excited to have you test these new features and help shape the future of decentralized trust. Your participation and feedback are invaluable as we work toward launching these features on UTU mainnet.

About UTU

UTU is building the trust infrastructure of the internet to help people interact in an easier, safer, and more trustworthy way. At our core, we are a decentralised reputation and reviews protocol with a non-tradable, stakeable reputation token (UTT) that yields rewards in both UTT and $UTU (our tradeable token) when users’ UTT-staked endorsements help others get good outcomes from their online interactions.

Starting with Web3 and DeFi apps, we provide AI-powered curation of trust signals from your network at just the right places and times to help users connect, send, swap, stake, and borrow with confidence.

A suite of trust tools have already been built atop UTU Protocol, including $UTU, UTU Trust Token (UTT), UTU’s Browser Extension for consumers, and Trust API/SDK for developers. We can’t wait to see what you’ll build atop UTU, to bring better trust to the internet.

UTU is proudly based in Nairobi, Kenya with trust guardians all over. Learn more about UTU on our website, Twitter, Telegram, Discord, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

What is Digital Trust?

Digital trust is about feeling safe and confident when using the internet. It’s important for things like online shopping, social media, and accessing information.

Why Digital Trust Matters in Web3

Web3 is a new version of the internet where users have more control. In this world, trust is even more important because there’s no central authority overseeing everything.

How does UTU fit In?

You can think of UTU like a decentralized “trust pilot” for any web2 or web3 asset – websites, individual webpages, wallets, dapps, tokens, etc. 

How the UTU Trust Browser Extension Helps

The UTU Trust Browser Extension is a new tool that helps make the internet more trustworthy.

1. The UTU Trust Browser Extension shows you, just in time, how trustworthy a website is according to your own network’s reviews and ratings without needing to browse away.
2. The UTU Trust Browser Extension lets you share your own experiences and feedback about anything you find on the web, with your networks in a way that helps them get better outcomes from their online interactions.

Try the new version of the UTU Trust Browser extension on Chrome or Brave.

Key Features

• Easy to use while browsing to give you signal just at the right place and time when you need it
• Stores information securely using blockchain technology
• Social-network-based curation ensures you see only high quality signal, filters out fake reviews and bot-generated content
• Economic model pays you in reputation UTT and $UTU when your endorsements help others find things they like and endorse

The UTU Trust extension helps you make better decisions about which websites to trust, making your online experience safer and more reliable.

UTU Trust Browser Extension: Key Value Props

• Enhanced Trustability of the Internet: UTU extension revolutionizes online trust by providing you with trustable feedback from across your social networks. recommendations, ensuring users are well-informed about who and what they should interact with online.

• Earn Reputation and Money from Building Trust online: Make and view UTT endorsements directly from your UTU Trust browser extension. When your UTT endorsements of sites and on-chain addresses help others find things they also like, you’ll earn rewards in both UTT (reputation tokens) and $UTU, UTU’s ERC-20 that is freely convertible to ETH on various DEXes. 

Benefits of the the UTU Trust Browser Extension

• Seamless Integration: It integrates seamlessly with your browser, offering trust insights without disrupting your online experience. 
• Data Privacy: Prioritizes user privacy by utilizing data securely to generate trust signals, without compromising sensitive information.
• User Empowerment: Empowers users with control over their data and trust preferences, fostering a user-centric trust ecosystem.
• Machine Learning: Utilizes cutting-edge machine learning algorithms to analyze trustworthiness, curating signals from across your personal networks according to familiarity, credibility, and reliability.
• Social Proof: Leverages social connections and community feedback to provide authentic social proof, enhancing decision-making online.
• Cross-Platform Support: Works across multiple platforms and services, ensuring trust is consistent and portable wherever you go online. UTU protocol is live on Optimism, Polygon, and NEAR meaning you can make UTT endorsements natively on those chains without switching networks and you can always view endorsements across all networks. 
• Real-Time information: Offers real-time trust assessments, keeping pace with the ever-evolving online landscape for up-to-date trust insights.

A detailed walkthrough of the product release

Under the hood, A rock-solid new connection architecture keeps your UTU protocol connection stable across tabs and reduces frequency of wallet connection.

The Banner has become a Floater to get out of your way but be there when you need it. 

1. Click the the UTU logo on the floater to go do the UTU dApp, where you can connect your socials to UTU protocol to earn UTT. 
2. Click the “Give feedback” button to leave feedback on a website in the form of on-chain reputation token (UTT) endorsements, video reviews, badges, stars, and text reviews.
3. Click the “Show feedback” button to view feedback from your social networks on any website in the form of on-chain reputation token (UTT) endorsements, video reviews, badges, stars, and text reviews.

Right-click for Trust! Wow…now you can hide the banner globally and access both the view/give feedback functions with a right-click on any webpage. Future releases will allow you to clip the URL wherever you like to give even more targeted feedback and endorsements about specific pages, not just top level domains.  

Local/Global Hide buttons, speaking of getting out of the way, now you can easily choose to hide the UTU Floater on specific pages, sites, or globally across the web, without turning off its protection. Just click the UTU Trust Extension Icon in the browser extension bar and tick your preferred settings.

Try the new version of the UTU Trust Browser extension on Chrome or Brave.

How UTU Trust Browser Extension improves UX in web3

The UTU Trust Browser Extension is not just a tool for enhancing digital trust; it is a catalyst for an improved user experience in web3. By providing clear and concise reputation and reviews from the people whose opinions actually matter to you, the extension aids users in making informed decisions, reducing the friction often associated with navigating the decentralized web.

In web3, where interactions are peer-to-peer and autonomous, the extension serves as a guide, helping users to discern the trustworthiness of unknown parties and smart contracts. This level of transparency is critical for fostering a sense of security and encouraging wider adoption of web3 technologies.

Furthermore, the UTU Trust Browser Extension’s emphasis on privacy and data security resonates with the core principles of web3. Users can rest assured that their engagement with the extension does not compromise their digital sovereignty. Instead, it enhances it by providing a trust mechanism that aligns with the decentralized nature of the web3 ecosystem.

Try the new version of the UTU Trust Browser extension on Chrome or Brave.

Conclusion: The future of digital trust – the UTU Trust Browser Extension

As we gaze upon the horizon, the future of digital trust looks brighter than ever with the UTU Trust Browser Extension at the vanguard. This pioneering tool stands as a testament to our collective commitment to a more trustworthy internet, one where confidence in digital interactions is not just a luxury, but a standard.

The UTU Trust Browser Extension is more than a technological innovation; it is a beacon of hope for a web that upholds the values of integrity, security, and trust. It is a call to arms for all who venture into the digital domain, to take up the mantle of trust guardians, to contribute to a safer, more reliable web3.

We invite you to join us – try the new version of the UTU Trust Browser extension on Chrome or Brave. Together, let us chart a course towards a future toward a safer, more trustworthy internet.

About UTU

UTU is building the trust infrastructure of the internet to help users and platforms interact in an easier, safer, and more trustworthy way. At our core, we are a decentralised reputation and reviews protocol with a non-tradable, stakeable reputation token (UTT) that yields rewards in both UTT and $UTU (our tradeable cryptocurrency) when users’ UTT-staked on-chain endorsements help others get good outcomes.

Starting with Web3 and DeFi apps, we provide AI-powered curation of trust signals from your network at just the right places and times to help users connect, send, swap, stake, and borrow with confidence.

A suite of trust tools have already been built atop UTU Protocol, including $UTU, UTU Trust Token (UTT), UTU’s Browser Extension for consumers, and Trust API/SDK for developers, as well as the Africa DeFi Alliance as a showcase of UTU’s Fintech APIs. We can’t wait to see what you’ll build atop UTU, to bring better trust to the internet.

UTU is proudly based in Nairobi, Kenya with trust guardians all over. Learn more about UTU on our website, Twitter, Telegram, Discord, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

ICP Hub Kenya has awarded a $25k grant to UTU to deploy UTU’s internet reputation on ICP, making UTU’s universal reviews mechanism available natively to ICP developers and users.

We are thrilled to announce that we are starting to build on Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) with special thanks to ICP Hub Kenya for funding these efforts. This project will ensure that UTU Trust Token will be available on ICP so apps can easily integrate UTU’s review and reputation mechanisms and users can stake UTT on their endorsements and earn without ever switching their network from ICP.

TLDR…What will UTU build on Internet Computer?

We will make UTU’s internet reputation directly available on Internet Computer so that it can be easily integrated into IC ecosystem apps and easily used by IC users to discern if they should trust any arbitrary domain, webpage, IC (or other) blockchain address, smart contract, wallet, d-app, or token. UTU will also build and deploy the mechanisms to enable IC users to make reputation endorsements directly on IC via UTU protocol without having to switch chains, or wallets.

Some Background on UTU’s reputation model

UTU Protocol is a decentralised reputation system and trust infrastructure that prioritises the role of relationships and context in establishing trust in digital interactions. It provides users with feedback about web3 (and generally web) entities — such as websites, wallets, d-apps, smart contracts etc. — from other, trusted users in a user’s own personal network. 

The main mechanism is built on a non-transferable token representing reputation, the UTU Trust Token (UTT). It further allows users to not only provide good or bad feedback, but also to make staked endorsements (and soon also explicit disapprovals), and it rewards “successful” endorsements — those which led to another user using and then also endorsing the endorsed entity — both with UTT an UTU Coin ($UTU). In this way, UTU Protocol addresses the limitations of existing digital platforms that overlook the importance of human relationships and context in building trust. Check out this infographic for more details.

Currently, the main UTT smart contract is deployed on the Polygon network, while $UTU is deployed on Ethereum. Other EVM chains like Optimism and NEAR are supported via a proxy UTT contract, connected to the main UTT via Oracle (Chainlink), and bridged $UTU. We could not be more excited to add ICP to this list. For more details, please refer to our White Paper.

A Look Under the Hood – Bringing UTU to ICP

In this project, we will lay the foundation to make UTU Protocol directly available on IC. This involves the development of an IC UTT Proxy that runs as an IC canister and facilitates direct interaction with the main UTU Trust Token (UTT) contract on the Polygon network. This will allow IC users to make endorsements using their IC wallets. Our focus will be on ensuring efficient and secure communication between the IC and the Polygon network by leveraging the chain interoperability features of the IC. We’ve split the work into three milestones:

Milestone 1: Architecture and Initial IC UTT Proxy Version. UTU will define the technical architecture, requirements, and implementation strategy of the IC UTT Proxy (most likely using AssemblyScript). Our team will start by developing an initial and incomplete version of the IC UTT Proxy, including only a bare-bones implementation of the proxy side of the integration with the UTT contract. Attaining this milestone will be a necessary precursor for defining all the architectural modules of the IC UTT Proxy, along with its communication and data flow representation. 

This milestone will serve as the reference for developing the best architecture for the product as various parameters, such as the best design approach, risk assessment, product robustness, design modularity, functionality, and endorsement simulation will be put into consideration.

Milestone 2: C UTT Proxy – UTT Initial Integration. UTU will deploy the proxy on an IC testnet. If necessary for the integration, we will develop a new UTT version and deploy it on sepolia testnet. Additionally, we will run successful integration tests and regression testing for a simulation of making endorsements on the IC UTT Proxy. These integration tests are successful when endorsements are correctly created (or not, in case of unfulfilled preconditions) in the relevant UTT version on Polygon Mumbai. 

Basic unit test coverage and rudimentary integration testing will be crucial as defects will be identified, tracked, addressed, and retested until the IC UTT Proxy reaches the quality standards defined initially. Once this milestone has been attained, the IC UTT Proxy will be ready for more in-depth testing.

Milestone 3: Completion of IC UTT Proxy Functionality. UTU will complete the IC UTT Proxy implementation, including the implementation of the required functionality. We will complete unit tests for the proxy, and ensure that they have at least 90% coverage and that all are successful. Additionally, we will continue writing and performing integration tests for UTT integration, and fix any issues that arise. The IC UTT Proxy will be ready for deployment once this milestone has been achieved.

The project will be implemented over a three-month period. Each of the three milestones will be completed after each month. The proposed timeline strategically prioritizes the implementation of vital components of the integration development with UTT, including the initial testing phases during the early stages. The chosen approach will ensure that all potential and actual challenges are identified early to provide sufficient time to create and implement adjustments or solutions.

Oh the places we could go

After UTU deploys internet reputation on Internet Computer, we are excited to take on follow-on projects including all required dependencies such as bridging of UTU Coin, deploying oracles, etc. Following this, UTU is further committed to providing continuous support and improvement for the UTU Protocol integration on the IC. We will provide support by actively engaging with the IC community, collaborating with other developers, working with other teams with related projects, and promoting the adoption of UTU. We will also explore various follow-up projects, including: 

• Deploying our Solidity UTT Proxy (including dependencies) on Bitfinity.
• Building IC-native user-facing apps to enable users to manage still more of their UTU usage directly on IC. This might include future features such as managing privacy and anonymity settings or UTU governance.
• Providing extensions of the IC UTT Proxy and UTT integration. This will include future extensions to UTU Protocol and the main UTT contract.
• If the integration of the IC UTT Proxy and UTT on Polygon work well, our team may also consider moving the main UTT contract to IC and integrating with other supported chains directly from there.

UTU’s Chief Trust Guardian Jason Eisen is also mentoring the current cohort of startups being incubated by ICP Kenya Hub, through the Olympus program, remarking: 

“I’m excited for UTU to deploy internet reputation on Internet Computer and to see the energy in the Kenyan web 3 ecosystem brought about by ICP Hub Kenya and the unique bundling of user-centric features and services of ICP. The combination of strong tech, user obsession, and great community are a winning recipe. This is what excites me about bring UTU to ICP; I am pretty confident of the role they’ll play in the next internet and UTU very much wants to support that mission for our part of reputation, reviews, and trust.”

– Jason Eisen, Chief Trust Guardian, UTU

ICP Hub Kenya Co Founder Yvonne Kagondu said this of the collaboration with UTU: 

“This partnership with UTU serves as a significant milestone for both UTU and ICP Hub Kenya as it guarantees the integration of a robust trust infrastructure directly into the Internet Computer ecosystem. By enabling seamless access to UTU’s review and reputation mechanisms, we aim to empower developers and users to build and interact with applications that prioritize trust and transparency, ultimately enhancing the overall user experience and security on the ICP network.”

-Yvonne Kagondu, Co-Founder, ICP Hub Kenya

About ICP Hub Kenya 

ICP Hub Kenya is a pioneering force dedicated to advancing blockchain technology across the region and beyond. As one of the esteemed ICP Hubs worldwide, our mission is clear: to empower individuals and organizations through education, collaboration, and innovation in the realm of blockchain. With a steadfast commitment to fostering a vibrant ecosystem, we strive to catalyze growth, drive adoption, and unlock the transformative potential of blockchain technology for a brighter future. ICP Hub Kenya envisions a world where blockchain technology empowers individuals and organizations, enabling them to unlock their full potential. The Internet Computer is our chosen vessel for this vision, and we are dedicated to fueling its growth and adoption throughout East Africa. 

Learn more about ICP Kenya Hub by visiting icphubkenya.io where you can learn about their education programs, startup incubator, and grant opportunities.

About ICP

The Internet Computer is a revolutionary blockchain that hosts unlimited data and computation on-chain letting developers build scalable Web3 dapps, DeFi, games, and more. The Internet Computer is a general-purpose blockchain that hosts canister smart contracts. It is designed to provide a World Computer that can replace traditional IT and host a new generation of Web 3.0 services and applications that run solely from the blockchain, without the need for traditional IT. It can also play the role of Web 3.0 orchestrator, by interacting with other blockchains. ICP’s vision is that most of the world’s software will be replaced by smart contracts. To achieve this vision, ICP is designed to make smart contracts as powerful as traditional software.

About UTU

UTU is building the trust infrastructure of the internet to help users and platforms interact in an easier, safer, and more trustworthy way. At our core, we are a decentralised reputation and reviews protocol with a non-tradable, stakeable reputation token (UTT) that yields rewards in both UTT and $UTU (our tradeable cryptocurrency) when users’ UTT-staked on-chain endorsements help others get good outcomes.

Starting with Web3 and DeFi apps, we provide AI-powered curation of trust signals from your network at just the right places and times to help users connect, send, swap, stake, and borrow with confidence.

A suite of trust tools have already been built atop UTU Protocol, including $UTU, UTU Trust Token (UTT), UTU’s Browser Extension (beta) for consumers, and Trust API/SDK for developers, as well as the Africa DeFi Alliance as a showcase of UTU’s Fintech APIs. We can’t wait to see what you’ll build atop UTU, to bring better trust to the internet.

UTU is proudly based in Nairobi, Kenya with trust guardians all over. Learn more about UTU on our website, Twitter, Telegram, Discord, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

UTU is the trust infrastructure of web3. If you’ve not been following us in detail, let’s get you caught up with all things UTU tokenomics and roadmap. You can (mostly) follow the thread from these historical posts from April 2021 and October 2021, summarized and updated below. You’ll note some key changes in the model since then which are detailed in this blog post which also links to our updated white paper. 

Get a snack, let’s do this. We’re gonna get you all up to speed on UTU’s past, present, and future as the trust infrastructure of the internet. 

Tokenomics – A quick Refresher

UTU Protocol has two tokens – UTU Trust Token (UTT) is a non-tradeable, non-purchasable Reputation Token that represents a user’s useful contribution to trust on the internet. Users can stake their UTT-denominated reputation on domains, subdomains, tokens, and blockchain addresses as a show of confidence in those assets, entities, and services. 

UTU Coin ($UTU) is a freely tradeable ERC20 Utility Token on Ethereum Mainnet, BNB, Optimism, Polygon, and NEAR. It is used to govern access to trust signals from the UTU Trust API, and will play a key role in UTU protocol governance in the future. The Infographic below explains the token model in more detail.

$UTU Coin Metrics

UTU Protocol provisions for 1 billion $UTUs broken into three pools, designated for Treasury (400M), Team/Advisors (300M), and Ecosystem Growth (300M). Below we summarize the state of these $UTU Pools as of February 2024 and the expected use of these coin pools over the coming year as we round out protocol development and begin to shift our focus to ecosystem growth and user acquisition. 

UTU Treasury Pool – Originally 400M $UTUs

To fund development and operations to date, UTU Protocol has sold 158,143,277 $UTUs in our initial Token Sale and subsequent OTC deals. We remain with a balance of 241,856,723 $UTUs that we will use to continue funding development. Treasury will be primarily spent in two ways going forward:

Team Pay

Historically UTU has paid its team in USD and Kenya Shillings meaning that we’ve needed to sell $UTU for fiat to pay salaries every month. With the growth of UTU Protocol now imminent, UTU’s co-founders Jason and Bastian have both moved to taking 100% of their compensation in $UTU, watch their wallets at JasonEisen.eth and databu.eth. Much of the team have also switched to majority $UTU compensation, a further display of belief and commitment to the cause. With no plans among us to sell our $UTUs anytime soon, downward pressure on price from team salaries will be greatly reduced going forward. Since these $UTUs to be paid to the team replace our normal fiat salaries they’ll be pulled from the UTU Treasury Wallet and not subject to lockups though I don’t expect anyone to be liquidating much at all, as we are all true believers and in it for the long haul. 

OTC Token Sales

To ensure these $UTUs don’t cause excessive downward pressure on the $UTU price, we are moving all our future OTC sales to the Frictionless platform which enables our community to buy $UTUs safely, in almost any quantum, without impacting the price. Furthermore, we will offer $UTUs for sale at discounted prices in some cases, where buyers agree to special lockups enabled by Frictionless, helping us generate additional fiat to cover expenses while demonstrating the strength and belief of the $UTU hodling community. One of our Trust Guardians has committed to a $2k monthly OTC buy that will help us acquire various fiat-denominated services. We’ll make some additional announcements soon on how you can start buying $UTU on Frictionless! 

Team & Advisors Pool – Originally 300M $UTUs

The $UTU Team & Advisor Pool originally comprised 100M Advisor Tokens and 200M Team Tokens. These serve as the primary economic incentives for our team to continue working toward UTU’s mission and vision. 

Vesting for Team Tokens: Starts 1 year after Protocol launch, then monthly over 24 months. UTU protocol MainNet launched on September 29, 2022. Therefore monthly vesting for the team should have started on September 29, 2023, though we’ve been delayed in implementing this, aside from a 1.1M $UTU team bonus last year. We need to start unlocking these team tokens though and will be setting up these vesting contracts soon on Sablier, so our community can monitor them. You may take the fact that we’re about 6 months behind on doing this as evidence of our team’s priorities around product and growth as opposed to token grabs. We’ll get around to this at some point though…

Vesting for Advisor Tokens – UTU made a number of commitments to Advisors in the early days that we have honored over the last couple years with the unlocking (to date) of ~104M $UTUs. Our unlockings from the Team and Advisor pool were initiated on a somewhat irregular schedule. This wasn’t helped by the sometimes long time that it took to get all signatures for the unlock txs together, often caused by ledger support in wallets breaking now and again. This led to larger unlocks for our advisors accumulating, and at some point an error where we ended up unlocking the equivalent of 2 monthly payouts too much. However we haven’t sent these tokens anywhere, and will use them according to the existing allocation of the pool. To prevent further unlocking confusion, we’re looking to utilize vesting contracts going forward as mentioned above.

Sadly a number of our advisors and early buyers were not the Trust Guardians they represented themselves to be and have dumped significant portions of their tokens causing some of the downward price action we’ve seen, and creating some great buying opportunities for the real trust guardians. Turns out not everyone in crypto stands by their words. UTU chose to honor our commitments even in these cases. 

UTU Ecosystem Growth Pool – 300M $UTUs

The Ecosystem Growth Pool has two main purposes, 1) to pay out $UTU Rewards generated by successful endorsements on UTU protocol, and 2) to build the ecosystem of UTU Partners, communities, and trust guardians globally in line with our efforts to decentralize our token ownership, safeguard and advance the mission of UTU, and grow our market penetration. A portion of $UTU denominated revenues generated from the UTU Trust API will always go back to the ecosystem growth pool to replenish the supply of $UTU rewards to be paid out.

$UTU Rewards

$UTU Rewards are the heart of UTU protocol – an economic incentive to build trust online. $UTU rewards are paid out to UTU protocol contributors whose feedback and UTT endorsements help facilitate good outcomes for others – i.e. that helps folks from your network understand which things to interact with online, and which things are best avoided. $UTU Rewards will only be claimable by protocol participants who have satisfied the whitelisting requirements described below. 

Ecosystem Growth

Bounties

UTU launched our first bounties program late last year in tandem with our first ever UTU protocol hackathon – part of the ETHSafari 2023 hackathon. Initial bounties to become available will be focused on expanding the number of social connectors (e.g. telegram, twitter, etc.) on UTU. We’ll be launching our bounty program on Charmverse, a decentralized Notion that the UTU team is falling in love with. 

Social Connectors

The UTU Protocol Documentation details the full process to integrate web 2 and web 3 identity and social networks into UTU. Each social network that a user connects, earns them UTT to start making endorsements with and establishes their network from which we’ll source signal to show them. At the moment only telegram is there but we’re mobilizing team and community assets as we speak to rapidly scale this component. 

Signal Integrations

Signals from your network are the foundation of UTU of course, but we recognize that other forms of trust are also important. We’ve built the UTU protocol to be expandable such that developers can integrate other types of signal from other sources into UTU and serve it up to users alongside native UTU signals. This could include smart contract audits and analyzers as well as custom metrics based on the type of asset being considered, and others. A keen dev may decide to integrate signal from coinmarketcap or chainalysis or any other source of signal. A startup may choose to integrate their own signals into UTU’s infrastructure as a channel to market for distribution of their own signals. In addition to new signal streams, we’ll offer bounties to developers who can improve current signal streams either by computing useful metrics from existing data that help instill trust or by improving the presentation of signal in terms of language, especially for the summary signal that is shown before the detailed signal. 

UTU on New Networks

The future is multi-chain, and so is UTU. UTU Protocol is currently live on Ethereum MainNet ($UTU Coin only), Polygon, Optimism, BNB, and Near. In time, we’d wish to extend UTU to all major protocols and ecosystems – decentralized and centralized. For EVM compatible blockchains, UTU has developed scripts that allow us to quickly and easily deploy UTU protocol. For non-EVM compatible ecosystems, the process is a bit more complex and the affiliated bounties will reflect this in the size of the bounties available.

Project-based Grants

Conditions permitting, UTU will launch in Q4 a project-based grants program, to fund developers building on UTU that align to our core goals and targets for the year. Project based grants, given the downward pressure they can exert on token price in the short term, will be limited in size and scope with expansions of the program based on user growth and token price/liquidity. 

Subsidies for API/SDK Integrators

We recognize that the imposition of a paywall on UTU signals could have a constraining effect on growth and potentially create frustration among users if there is limited signal on UTU that actually helps inform their decisions as will inevitably be the case in the early days. To overcome this, we are looking to develop a subsidy program where UTU protocol partners that integrate the UTU Trust API/SDK can qualify for user subsidies to cover the cost of accessing UTU signals for some initial user base and time period. We think this path is preferable to leaving the Trust API without a paywall as establishing the precedent of users paying a small amount of $UTU to see signal will help acclimatize the market to this new model of trust. 

Retroactive Grants

Inspired by the Optimism RPGF, UTU intends to launch a Retroactive Grants program next year. We’d love community feedback on this but currently planning to split the grants program into four work streams:

Attention – Get more eyeballs on UTU, measurable by follows of our accounts, views of our content, and otherwise exposure of UTU to the world. 

Activation – Get more humans on UTU, measurable by new wallets connecting to UTU and connecting their socials.

Action – Get more content on UTU, measurable by UTT reputation endorsements made and other feedback left.

Amplification – Extend the functionality and reach of UTU, measurable by code contributions to UTU’s github repos, the deployment of products that make UTU better, help it reach new communities, or otherwise advance progress toward our mission.   

More information about the UTU Retro Grants program will be available later this year but we expect to commit a substantial portion of our treasury to this initiative.

Roadmap

UTU has a clear roadmap for the coming year that spans product, growth, and decentralization goals. You can always check out and comment on our public roadmap.

Product

Our Product roadmap can be further divided into core protocol capabilities, the Trust API and SDK as the key point of access for B2B integrations, and our consumer applications including the UTU Trust Browser Extension and UTU Trust Snap for MetaMask.

Protocol

The development of UTU protocol over the past several years has been slow and steady, with the full system coming into view finally and all major remaining components slated for completion this year, marking a key milestone in our progress and the beginning of shift towards user acquisition and growth.

Disapprovals and Edits to UTT Reputation endorsements

We’ve thus far implemented most of the components of our feedback system including star ratings, badges, video reviews, text reviews, and UTT endorsements. Sadly life isn’t always sunny though and neither is the internet. Sketchy people, shady projects, scams, tricks, traps, and other schemes to part you from your hard-earned cash pervade the internet. Recognizing this, and integral to UTU protocol, is the ability for a user to disapprove of something as much as to endorse it.  

The economics of disapproval work slightly differently though, requiring the user to actually burn (not stake) some of their UTT-denominated reputation to disapprove of something. Building on successful similar concepts such as stack overflow, this fee helps ensure that disapprovals are not done antagonistically or sprayed across the network. While we believe vehemently that building positive trust should earn you revenue, we don’t believe that folks should be able to economically benefit from disapproving of things – that is UTU protocol pays rewards when positive endorsements help others transact successfully but UTU protocol does NOT pay $UTU rewards for disapprovals that help people avoid scams. It would be almost impossible to implement such a system (based on actions not taken) and we tend to think that keeping your friends and family safe from scams is intrinsic incentive enough to flag these things as scams with UTT-denominated disapprovals.

We are also finalizing a user’s ability to make changes to a previously staked endorsement, i.e. to increase, reduce, or remove a UTT stake you’ve previously made. With these two functions implemented (within Q1), the core of UTU protocol will be complete.

Paywalls with Revenue Shares

Access to UTU Trust Signals has been free up to now, meaning the $UTU economic model has not been fully spinning as the requirement to pay some amount of $UTU to see signals is the persistent buy pressure that creates and sustains demand for $UTU over time. We are super excited to be finalizing development and testing of this capability currently, in collaboration with Unlock protocol. Expect a testnet release of this very soon.

Bringing all Review content on-chain

Currently only UTT endorsements are stored on-chain, with video reviews, text reviews, star ratings, and badges, stored on a centralized server and called via oracle. We aim to bring all forms of review content on-chain this year to make the system even more decentralized and transparent. 

Whitelisting

UTU protocol’s economics depend in part on ensuring that only real people (humans) can earn $UTU coin rewards. If bots were to be able to access and act with impunity in UTU protocol, the economic model would surely break under the strain of bot-scaled usage and pressures. To address this challenge, an effective proof of personhood is required to whitelist users that should be eligible to claim $UTU rewards. We are exploring various whitelisting mechanism and platforms including World ID (tools for humanity), Next ID, Gitcoin Passport, traditional KYC tools, and others. More information will be forthcoming on this over the next several months. 

Account Abstraction

UTU is web3 native but your parents and grandparents surely aren’t. If you’re reading this, we probably agree that at some point in the future web 3 will simply be the web with the entirety of the digital world moving toward web3 concepts and architectures over the decade – but that’s a ways away. In the interim, integration of key technologies like account abstraction and web3 auth can simplify the user experience massively and help UTU transcend web3 to make its mark across the legacy internet as well. For a regular person, imagine the ease and simplicity of interacting with UTT as ‘points’ and $UTU as a cash equivalent. 

The value proposition of UTU becomes obvious across the entire internet – a global trust system to replace all the review platforms (trust pilot, google reviews, trip advisor) and internal feedback systems (amazon reviews, etc.) with a system that:

• Can’t be manipulated 
• Creates an economic incentive to help others find good things and avoid scams
• Curates signal based on your relationships and context of the transaction

Privacy 

The construction of UTU leaves some important questions about privacy. For example, there may be signal/feedback you’d wish to leave but only if the audience for that signal could be limited to a certain subset of people. Or perhaps you’d like to endorse a specialized doctor that treated you well but don’t really want the whole world to know that you had/have a certain condition. With differential privacy mechanisms like K-anonymity, this type of privacy can be preserved without sacrificing trust. We’ll begin work on these privacy mechanisms toward the latter half of the year and next year.

Governance

With the vast majority of UTU protocol built, and core products built atop UTU launching, we are excited to launch in earnest our governance model as part of our next phases of decentralization. Over time, we expect more and more decision-making to fall under governance but we’ll start with grant funding allocations and roadmap prioritization on our path to full governance of the $UTU reward function and UTT endorsement smart contract. Our resident governance guru, Bastian (fun fact: Bastian was one of the early liquid democracy proponents in the German Pirate Party) is on the case and you can bet he will be sharing his more detailed thoughts with you all soon.

Browser Extension

The UTU Trust Browser Extension is our flagship consumer product, currently available in open beta with limited functionality. Robust user testing over the past several months have helped us make huge advances in the product’s architecture, stability, user experience, and feature set. When it comes out of beta (soon), it will enable users to leave and view signals about any domain, webpage, or blockchain address as they surf the web. It’s a bit like community notes (on Twitter, now X), but for the entirety of web3 including blockchain addresses as much as web domains. The pace of iteration and feature development should increase rapidly as we build onward from a stable foundation.

Snap

Congrats on reading this far, you get the first-ever access to the UTU Trust Snap! The UTU Trust Snap (on Polygon Mumbai Test Net) integrates UTU’s capabilities directly into your MetaMask (currently only for MetaMask flask though – a developer-focused version of MetaMask). We are actively working toward getting UTU integrated into the main MetaMask wallet to enable users to get UTU signal at just the right time when they’re about to send tokens or connect their wallet to a dApp, and need that extra bit of confidence to pull the trigger. Please note, that UTU’s testnet is exactly that, a testnet for UTU devs and the larger developer community integrating or building on UTU protocol. This means that it goes down from time to time as updates are made and systems upgraded.

API/SDK Docs

As much as UTU is trust system designed and built for people, we have long believed that integration with sites, apps, and dApps as a complement to or replacement for their existing internal feedback and review mechanisms is a key part of UTU’s growth strategy. We released our updated API/SDK Docs recently and are in the process of simplifying and improving them based on feedback from our already vibrant community of developers, that we are supporting through our new initiative discussed below, UTU Studios. Look for UTU to start showing up embedded in some of your favorite products around web3!

The Trust API is the key access point to all of the rich recommendation content, reviews, star ratings, badges, and reputation endorsements across UTU protocol. The SDK provides a standard set of visual components to easily serve all this great feedback content up to your users transparently based on their personal networks, even if they’re not connected to your dApp. Any junior dev can integrate UTU into your product in a Snap. :0

Growth

As the bull market charges and many new market entrants begin to awaken to the opportunity and potential of a decentralized web, UTU will be there with the right products launching into the market to keep users safe as they explore the bounties of web3. Timing is everything, they say. We split our growth efforts into a two main baskets: Direct and Catalytic Growth initiatives.

Direct Growth Activities

The first basket comprises many of the typical approaches to digital marketing with content and social media, though you can bet we’ll always look for ways to inject our UTU style into these campaigns. We’re not so big on ads though, and given the social nature of UTU protocol we are far more inclined to run socially-centered campaigns that drive growth through organic approaches to value creation using UTU protocol, UTT endorsements, and $UTU rewards to build trust sector by sector. This will also include plenty of partnerships with brands contribute to or distribute UTU signal, improve user experience, and scale up content on UTU protocol. We are particularly interested in partnerships with browsers, exchanges, and wallets that can integrate UTU signal directly into users broad-based experience of surfing the web and interacting with tokens, dapps, NFTs and more.

Catalytic Growth Activities

Catalytic growth activities can be further broken down into the various Ecosystem Growth initiatives and grant programs described above as well as new initiatives, such as UTU Studios and UTU Trust Guardian Communities described below.

UTU Studios

In addition to typical marketing and sales activities, which you’ll start to see a lot more of with the consumer products launching, we’re very excited to announce the launch of UTU Studios to help drive UTU protocol into the market via consulting and incubation/acceleration of projects that integrate UTU or contribute to our progress toward our vision. UTU Studios is an effort to formalize our support to the various projects that build on UTU, create new revenue streams, and encourage more projects to build on UTU. Some of the projects UTU that are currently part of UTU Studios:

MaraMoja – This is where it all started. Jason and Bastian co-founded MaraMoja back in 2013 as Africa’s first taxi app, read the UTU Origins blog post from 2020 for more history.  Today they have 50,000 taxi drivers across Kenya and hundreds of thousands of users that are supported by UTU Trust signals inside the taxi app that help users choose the driver that they feel most safe with. With their recent incredible growth in the school transport sector, their high trust value proposition is even more critical to their success.

Africa Defi Alliance/Labs (ADA/L) – UTU, along with a group of Africa-based DeFi proponents and industry stakeholders, instigated the Africa DeFi Alliance and Labs in 2022 as a pair of interwoven DAOs, to advance the functionality, relevance, accessibility, awareness and utilization of decentralized finance to transform working capital markets for African MSMEs. UTU’s position has always been that creditworthiness is a specialized form of trust and accordingly built a suite of tools (the UTU Creditworthiness API and Mpesa APIs) which have been used to facilitate nearly 15,000 loans worth $2.2M to 1,500 micro, small, and medium enterprises in Kenya and Rwanda with default rates below 1%. UTU charges between $0.1 to $0.5 per API query to assess creditworthiness of ADA Borrowers in addition to ADL protocol fees of 0.5% on all pass through volume. ADA Pilots to date have spanned mobility, informal retail, and informal foodsellers, reducing their cost of capital by up to 10X in some cases. We are incredibly excited about what the Africa Defi Alliance will do in 2024.

Trustify – Trustify is an UTU-powered on-chain freelancer marketplace. Long-known to be one of the most high value sectors we could penetrate, gig work platforms are rife with fraud and manipulation – a burden we’ve faced ourselves and has often kept us from using such platforms. We’ve also announced similar collaborations in the past with other projects pursuing similar goals, though they sadly didn’t make it through the winter. We’re super optimistic about Trustify though and can’t wait for their first release so you can see UTU in action in the gig economy.

Symbiont – Symbiont is a social media platform that has a chrome extension that allows one to create a comment thread leading off any web page on the internet. Symbiont has the concept of self censorship built into the platform. In order for the system to not be abused we need to know whether someone who tags content as being unacceptable is a real person who is trusted by others. For this purpose Symbiont integrates with UTU trust which gives us the reassurance that the person tagging content is trusted by people in our networks.

Web 3 Guardian – Among the winners of our hackathon last September, Web 3 Guardian has built a telegram bot to extend the reach and capabilities of UTU directly into your telegram app. You’ll be able to query the UTU trust API to get signal about any user on telegram just by typing /utu! We’re supporting this great team to bring this product to market soonest.

Antugrow – Antugrow is the latest effort by East African Blockchain OG Eddie Kago. Antugrow is building credit models for farmers that directly connect and plug into UTU’s work with the Africa Defi Alliance. We’re currently cooking up another pilot, that demonstrate the vastly scalable and transformative impact of DeFi for agricultural working capital across Africa. 

Other Projects/Clients – UTU team members are supporting other clients with specialized AI, Blockchain, and software development expertise as part of our efforts to grow the ecosystem and generate additional revenue. There’s even a fortune 500 company in the mix…can’t wait to say more 🙂 Have a project that you need help from UTU Studios? Don’t be shy to reach out in the UTU telegram group or discord communities.

Trust Guardian Communities 

We’ve been actively thinking about and discussing how to effectively decentralize UTU and further our growth goals through endowments of UTU coins to global web 3 and developer communities. We see communities such as Space Ya Tech and Safari DAO in East Africa which are values aligned to UTU and comprise large cohorts of stakeholders who could demonstrably improve our global market position, as a critical part of our global expansion and decentralization efforts.  We are starting to explore other communities around the world where we could make $UTU coin endowments that will balance global token holdings as we launch full protocol governance via $UTU Coin. We will make some announcements in Q2 around how communities and DAOs around the world can apply to become trust guardian communities.

Conclusion

There’s a LOT going on at UTU to bring to life the trust infrastructure of the next internet. 2024 is looking like the year that it all comes together with the completion of the core UTU protocol and launch of our core consumer and b2b products. We’ve been hard at work on this mission for a long time, and while much has changed in our tactics and we’ve made tweaks in our model, we’ve maintained our north star around building a trust mechanism for the internet that actually works for people…and we’re more energized than ever. Join us on telegram and discord.

Subscribe to our newsletter on your journey to becoming an UTU Trust Guardian!

Trust in Web3

We asked questions about awareness and experiences with trust (and mistrust) in web3, the frequency and type of interactions that people fear (and don’t), how they manage to get by in an untrustworthy web, and finally what people and platforms might take away from all this research.

The survey findings revealed that a significant majority of respondents have encountered scams, fake information, and fraudulent websites, highlighting the prevalent trust issues across the space. Additionally, the lack of transparency, privacy concerns, and insecure connections were reported as major challenges.

Sample this: 

Connecting to new dApps is a challenge, with only a third of respondents expressing more than 5/10 confidence in doing so, and the average confidence at only 4.7/10.

On the other hand, people feel safer sending tokens (Avg of 7.4/10) than connecting to dApps, with more than 73% expressing confidence at 7 or higher.

Emerging Trends

Our data analysis identified key trends, including the reluctance of users to connect with new dApps and the cautious approach towards sending tokens. There is a need for robust trust mechanisms and user education in the Web3 ecosystem to address these trust issues. 

More than 80% of respondents say they interact with trust products on a monthly or greater basis with nearly half of them interacting on a weekly or greater basis. 30% daily!

In addition to this trend, over 70% of respondents cited earning reputation and tokens as the value propositions that attracted them most to the UTU Trust Browser Extension.

We believe strongly in the power of well-designed incentive mechanisms and indeed have built UTU as our best effort to align trust technology to a foundational incentive model that promotes more digital trust instead of the current system, which has been a race to the bottom.

Recommendations

Based on the report’s insights, we recommend the implementation of trust-building tools such as the UTU Trust Browser Extension, which was rated as effective by the majority of respondents. Additionally, incentivizing trust-building actions and enhancing user education are crucial for fostering trust in Web3.

Download the full report to gain a comprehensive understanding of the state of trust in Web3. Be sure to let us know what you think and join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #TrustInWeb3 to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on trust in the Web3 ecosystem.

For the full report, please visit https://utu.io/state-of-trust-in-web3-2024/.

In a strategic alliance, Frictionless and UTU Protocol are combining their strengths to enhance trust and efficiency in decentralized networks. This collaboration is a pragmatic effort to elevate user experiences and privacy within the decentralized realm.

UTU Protocol stands as a decentralized trust pioneer, emphasizing real-world trust dynamics. Our partnership is not just about collaboration; it pioneers a paradigm shift in on-chain volume trading. By combining UTU’s trust infrastructure with Frictionless technology, users will experience a revolutionary approach to trading. This synergy ensures that every transaction is underpinned by trust layers and data transparency.

Our value proposition in a nutshell

• Credit Trust Oracles and DeFi Integration: UTU Protocol’s integration with Frictionless technology for assessing creditworthiness in DeFi promises lower collateral requirements, making DeFi more accessible.
• Decentralized Reputation Mechanism for DeFi: UTU’s trusted recommendation mechanism contributes to establishing a decentralized reputation mechanism within DeFi. This step fosters trust in oracles and creates a more inclusive ecosystem.

Merging UTU’s trust infrastructure with Frictionless technology, users will experience a practical shift in their trading experiences. While Frictionless contributes its expertise in private OTC liquidation, focusing on providing users with a secure environment for asset liquidation. This collaboration adds another layer of reliability to our decentralized transactions.

To deepen the mutual understanding of our tech frameworks, UTU will be among the first to use and test the Frictionless Offer and Switch technology.

Learn more about Frictionless:

Website: www.frictionless.network

Telegram: https://t.me/FrictionlessX

Announcement Channel: https://t.me/frictionlessnews

Twitter: https://Twitter.com/FrictionlessX

Discord: https://discord.gg/2qHzxkPv

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frictionlessnetwork

We hope you enjoyed this article! If you did, please share it with the share buttons below so others can discover it. 

Let us know what you think about this article by commenting below or messaging us on Twitter, Telegram, Discord, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

Sneak Peek

The State of Trust in Web3 report sheds light on the current level of trust in web3 and its significance. The survey collected responses from participants regarding their trust in web3, trust issues they have experienced in the web3 ecosystem, and their usage of the UTU products, more specifically, the UTU Trust Browser Extension. We analyzed the data to identify trends and patterns, providing valuable insights into the state of trust in web3.

Challenges in Trust

The survey revealed several challenges that hinder the establishment of trust in Web3. Scams, fake information, and fraudulent websites have plagued the internet, with 72.5% of respondents reporting experiences with scams, 63.8% encountering misleading information, and over half falling victim to fraudulent websites. Additionally, participants reported major issues such as a lack of transparency, privacy concerns, and insecure connections.

Building Trust in Web3

To foster trust in Web3, we need to take practical steps and initiatives. Transparency is key, with platforms and services needing to provide clear and accurate information to users. The report highlights the opportunities for enhancing trust in Web3. 

Platforms must address the concerns of users by implementing robust security measures, feedback tools and user-friendly interfaces. Educating users about best practices, such as conducting their own research and staying informed, can empower them to make informed decisions and mitigate risks. Collaboration between platforms, developers, and users can foster a culture of trust and accountability within the Web3 ecosystem.

Trust in Web3 is a critical factor in shaping the future of the decentralized web. While challenges exist, there are significant opportunities to enhance trust through transparency and community collaboration. The survey also confirmed the role of incentives in trust systems and how they can promote more digital trust.

By addressing the concerns of users — implementing robust feedback and fostering a culture of trust — web3 can realize its full potential as the trusted and reliable iteration of the internet.

Stay tuned for the release of the comprehensive state of trust in Web3 report. Subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to receive the report.

Greetings UTU Trust Guardians! We excited to announce that we’ve deployed UTU Protocol on Optimism! Optimism (OP) is a cutting-edge Ethereum layer 2 (L2) blockchain that has many of us UTU Trust Guardians are feeling optimistic! This deployment marks another significant milestone in our journey towards our multi-chain future, following closely on the heels of our recent deployment on NEAR Aurora. With UTU now accessible on Optimism, developers have even more options to seamlessly integrate UTU into their (d)apps and enhance trust within their systems.

Optimism: A Game-Changing Solution

Optimism is a low-cost and lightning-fast Ethereum L2 blockchain designed by Ethereum developers, for Ethereum developers. Leveraging its EVM-equivalent architecture, Optimism scales Ethereum applications at a fraction of the cost, providing an optimal solution for developers seeking to enhance their projects. We are incredibly excited about this deployment as it empowers developers with a high-performance platform to integrate UTU and build trust in their incredibly fast growing ecosystem of dApps and developers!

Seamless Integration and Testing

To facilitate a smooth integration process, we have deployed a UTTProxy contract on Optimism, which seamlessly forwards endorsement and $UTU reward claims to the main UTT contract on Polygon. While client applications supporting Optimism are not yet available, we are actively working on adding support for Optimism to the UTU SDK and browser extension. Additionally, we eagerly anticipate the integration of UTU into various applications on the Optimism network.

UTU Coin on Optimism

In addition to the deployment of UTTProxy on Optimism, we have also bridged $UTU to the Optimism network. This will allow users to claim their $UTU rewards directly on Optimism, thereby making it unnecessary for users to interact with other chains to use UTU.

Contract Addresses on Optimism

We have deployed UTU protocol on both testnets and mainnets, so you can try it out e.g. using the Optimism testnet explorer. For your reference, here are the contract addresses related to UTU on the Optimism network:

Main Nets

• UTT proxy contract on Optimism:
  • Upgradable proxy: 0xb2e9dB661F992d2F3013e4AFcE01C72d52f58A37
  • Current implementation: 0x53b6B5477193cCEdF9457F42a1591759cE75A095
  • Oracle operator contract: 0x6934c1F62a6d28a573E2b4071a754DDd29B81E54
  • UTU Coin (bridged from Ethereum): 0xf7dC37493e2e375dFDEbec75E71D555af68648Bf

Test Nets

• UTT proxy contract on Optimism Goerli Testnet:
  • Upgradable proxy: 0xfD458e4fb718eFAAEf0e28597b9cF6D5C240E8f7
  • Current implementation: 0xbdF3b87B410C50Ba9620d8Ac416A81e6bF7296eF
  • Oracle operator contract: 0xbeF02f42F30b1233977DF88986DbB4D27D9c5b09
  • UTU Coin (bridged from Ethereum Görli testnet): 0xd40530105E196B3ad21fA94b6D4ce5f9DcB50b1a

Conclusion: Unlocking the Potential of UTU on Optimism

The deployment of UTU protocol on Optimism represents a significant step forward in expanding the accessibility, potential integrations, and use cases within the Optimism ecosystem. OP Devs now have the opportunity to deliver even more value to their users with UTU’s reputation and reviews mechanism natively on OP, and across web3 with UTU Protocol now live on Optimism, Polygon, & Near Aurora.

Experience the power of UTU on Optimism by delving into our UTU developer documentation today and unlock the full potential of better trust in your (d)Apps!