Between September 26 and October 25, 2024, Ethos published a run of weekly product updates from its newly launched testnet. Over those weeks the team changed how people find others to review, let them review directly from Twitter, began optimizing for mobile, and started showing how a review or vouch would affect someone’s score before it went onchain.
Read together, the updates show one theme. On Ethos, people write reviews and vouches for each other, and those reviews and vouches affect other people’s scores. As Ethos put it, the value of the network depends on people contributing, so most of these changes aimed to make contributing easier.
September 26: profiles start to fill in
On September 26, 2024, Ethos pointed to profiles from its first week that were starting to get built out, using @yukokosaka’s profile as an example. Ethos shared a live screenshot from sepolia.ethos.network/profile/x/yukokosaka and said profiles like this were already “incredibly useful.”
Ethos described two ways to use that information:
- Scores in Twitter, to separate signal from noise quickly
- The full profile in Ethos, to read more deeply
September 27: suggesting who to review
On September 27, 2024, Ethos said it had launched its testnet the week before, had already learned a lot, and had shipped many changes. The team committed to sharing release notes and updates weekly.
The first lesson: users weren’t sure who they could or should write reviews for. In response, Ethos began experimenting with showing profiles to review on the home page.
- The profiles were hand picked at the time, pulled randomly from a list of 50 profiles.
- In the future, Ethos suggested, the list could be more curated to each user, their network and the people they know.
Ethos said it would measure how well the feature retained users and kept them engaged, and that it had further plans to encourage contribution beyond this one change.
October 4: reviewing directly from Twitter
On October 4, 2024, Ethos made it possible to review people directly from Twitter using the Ethos Chrome extension.
Ethos explained the reasoning plainly: “Twitter IS our system of engagement.” The team said it didn’t expect people to open Ethos every day, at least not yet, so it brought the act of leaving a review to where people already spend their time. Ethos said to expect more changes like this, because it understood that the network’s value depends on people contributing.
October 11: v0.2.10 and a focus on mobile
On October 11, 2024, Ethos released Testnet v0.2.10 with two main updates:
- Ethos as a PWA. Users could install Ethos as a progressive web app. Ethos described it as “a glorified bookmark right now” and cautioned people not to get too excited, while calling it maybe “a sign of things to come.”
- Mobile-friendly screens. Ethos said it was focusing heavily on mobile and had started optimizing some screens for it. The Review and Vouch modals were vastly simplified to work better on phones.
October 25: score impact and sharing
On October 25, 2024, Ethos shipped two changes around what happens when you contribute:
- Score impact previews. Users could see exactly how much their vouches and reviews would affect another person’s score, before writing them onchain.
- Sharing to Twitter. After writing a review or vouch, users could share it to Twitter directly from within Ethos. Ethos also made it as clear as possible how a user had affected the other person’s score.
Ethos said this sharing flow hinted at functionality it was planning at the time: XP. The posts did not describe how XP would work.
The pattern across the month
Each update addressed a different point where contributing could stall:
- Not knowing who to review, addressed by suggested profiles on home
- Not opening Ethos often, addressed by reviewing from the Chrome extension
- Using a phone, addressed by the PWA and simpler modals
- Not knowing what a review would do, addressed by score impact previews
Each one aimed to make reviews and vouches easier to write, and those reviews and vouches affect other people’s Ethos scores.
This story first appeared on X.
