Trust is breaking down. Countries don't trust each other. Communities are divided. People question leaders, media, and even their neighbors. Without trust, people runs on survival mode, and it's harder to cooperate and move forward.
Scaling Trust exists to help trust grow in our world. We do it by designing social structures, games, environments, and architectures that create the right conditions for trust to flourish. Based on each specific environment, we design a different architecture and activate different mechanisms to achieve this. By understanding the fundamentals of trust and carefully analyzing each context, we can identify and move the precise levers needed to help trust flourish where it matters most.
Our Products
Groundery
A platform that helps teams build trust through structured conversations and feedback loops. Groundery creates environments where honest communication can flourish, aligning interests and increasing predictability.
BrutalGPT
An AI assistant that provides direct, honest feedback without sugar-coating. BrutalGPT demonstrates how clarity in communication can build trust by eliminating ambiguity and setting clear expectations.
Core Principles of Trust
The five fundamental principles of trust are: Interest Alignment, Predictability, Clarity, Risk-Reward, and Repeated Interaction. Read more
Environments
Civilizations, nations, and cities are different from communities, families, couples, cells, molecules, and atoms. Wherever there are boundaries, trust is at stake.
Inspirations
Structures
Zero Trust Architecture
Zero Trust Architecture rejects the idea of default trust. It continuously verifies users and devices based on identity, behavior, and context. This matters because in software, trust is expensive but verification is cheap. If we lower the cost of verification, we can raise the value—and amount—of trust in a system.
Market Equilibrium
In economics, economic equilibrium is a situation in which the economic forces of supply and demand are balanced, meaning that economic variables will no longer change.
Borders Rules
Border rules such as the Blood-Brain Barrier and Immigration Policies are structures that were designed to authroize only trusted and beneficial entities to enter a system.
Presumption of Innocence
`Innocent until proven guilty` is a structural choice that signals fairness and restraint. Like the handicap principle in biology—where costly signals prove sincerity—this approach builds trust by showing the system is strong enough to hold back judgment, even when pressured. It may lead to some false negatives, but it earns long-term credibility by proving it won't bend to fear or impulse.
Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Zero-Knowledge Proofs let you prove something is true without revealing how you know it. You don't show your cards, but others can still trust you. It's smart because it neutralizes a core problem in trust systems: the risk that comes with exposing yourself. Instead of forcing players to show vulnerability, it builds trust without that cost.
Products
X's Community Notes
Community Notes increased trust on X (Twitter) by improving clarity and aligning incentives—between users and the platform, and between minorities and majorities. They did this through a crowd-sourced system with high transparency. What made it unique: notes only get published when people from different viewpoints agree. Instead of relying on majority rule, the algorithm looks for consensus across political or opinion divides. Users are grouped by how they typically rate notes, and the system values input from across these "opinion groups." A note won't be published unless it gets approval from both sides. This bridging approach helps reduce polarization and makes the information more trustworthy.
NewsGuard
NewsGuard provides trust ratings for news and information websites based on nine journalistic criteria. Their approach is unique because they employ trained journalists to evaluate websites rather than algorithms, and they make their methodology transparent. They publish detailed explanations for each rating, allowing users to understand why a site received its score. This human-centered approach with clear criteria helps users make informed decisions about which sources to trust.
People
Michael Levin
Biologist studying how cells and tissues cooperate to form complex organisms. His research explores how decentralized systems make decisions, remember, and adapt—offering deep insights into trust, signaling, and goal alignment in collective intelligence.
Ram Rachum
From his website: `I propose to solve the problem of AI Safety by improving the social behavior of AI agents. Most AI research is focused on getting AI agents to solve bigger and more complex problems in the most efficient way possible; my research is focused on achieving cooperation, reciprocity and teamwork between AI agents.`
Resources
Join Us
We host Zoom meetings every 2 weeks to discuss and develop ideas around scaling trust. If you're interested in joining these conversations, reach out to us.