Trust Index
Score from 0 to 100 qualifying an ACTOR, aggregated from its verifiable proofs: anchored attestations 30 %, certifications 27 %, HACCP audits 18 %, carbon transparency 15 %, B2B endorsements 10 %. Recomputed on demand — freshness is what makes it credible. Tiers: platinum ≥ 85, gold ≥ 70, silver ≥ 50, bronze ≥ 25, otherwise unrated.
Not to be confused with
- Transparency score
Score from 0 to 100 measuring what a producer DISCLOSES, not how good they are: profile completeness 20 %, lots signed over twelve months 30 %, valid certifications 30 %, recency of activity 20 %. An impeccable but silent producer scores low — by design, since the measure is about disclosure.
- Proof score (discovery)
RANKING score computed from the already-loaded fields of a listing, so a result list can be ordered without one store read per entity. It shares the tier scale of the other scores but not their inputs: for the same listing it may differ from the transparency score. The list badge is therefore labelled « proof », never « transparency ».
- Trust capital
Per-owner aggregate of the signed attestations they have accumulated: a volume, not a grade. Where the Trust Index weights and normalises to a hundred, trust capital counts what has been produced and surfaces it inside its owner’s workspace.
What the blog says
- The Market for Lemons: What Akerlof Tells Us About Traceability
George Akerlof’s (Nobel laureate 1970) “market for lemons” theory explains why, absent proof, a product’s invisible quality ends up priced at the market average — and how traceability answers that.
- Why Labels No Longer Convince Anyone
Michael Spence (Nobel 2001), costly signaling, and what separates proof from a promise: why a label anyone can slap on no longer signals anything — and how proof changes the game.
- Who Sorts, When No One Proves Anything?
Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel 2001), screening, and why food sovereignty begins with verification: when the seller doesn’t signal, it’s the buyer who organizes the sorting.
- Why the Orchard Never Gets Planted
Oliver Williamson: asset specificity, the fundamental transformation, the hold-up. The real cost of opacity is not in the disputes — it is in the orchards that are missing.
- Nobody Is Cheating — And That’s Exactly the Problem
John Nash, the prisoner’s dilemma and the stag hunt: why an entire food chain coordinates on price without a single one of its players behaving badly.
- Everything Was Fine the Day Before
Taleb’s turkey, the optimization that hides its trade-off, the aviation industry that learns: why an opaque chain breaks silently, then all at once.
- La moelle inventée
Mirapolis avait dressé un Gargantua de 33 mètres. Rabelais avait prévenu : le risque n’est pas seulement de rester à la surface, c’est d’inventer le fond.
- We Don’t Reassure. We Leave Fear Behind.
We do not fight one fear with another: why reassurance is never enough, and how proof leads out of food-related distrust.
Where it is implemented
lib/trust-index.ts