How records become trust decisions

REKKN follows the EMILIA Protocol principle: “A Decision, Not a Score.” The primary unit of trust is the structured record — verified transactions, filed claims, merchant responses, dispute outcomes, and anchored evidence. These records are always visible and inspectable on every merchant profile.

The numeric summary indicator exists only as a convenience derived from these records. It is never the primary display. If the score and the records appear to conflict, the records are authoritative. Summary indicators are derived from structured records, response behavior, dispute outcomes, and evidence presence.

The summary indicator is a 0–100 composite computed from four weighted inputs. These weights are hard-coded in our scoring engine and cannot be changed per-merchant.

Anti-gaming note: the best way to improve your score is to actually resolve claims. That is the intended behavior.

When a claim is first validated, it enters “Response Window Open” — a limited public record state. During this window, the claim is visible but carries dampened scoring weight. This means a newly published claim does not immediately hit the trust score at full force. The business has a fair window to respond before the claim reaches full impact.

If the business resolves the claim during the response window, it is marked “Resolved During Response Window” — a positive signal that counts favorably in the resolution rate. If the window expires without resolution, the claim moves to “On Record” and applies full scoring weight retroactively.

This hybrid model ensures businesses are not penalized before they have had a fair opportunity to respond, while still maintaining public accountability once the window closes.

The trust score maps to one of eight named states. States are evaluated in rule order — the first matching rule wins.

The internal state IDs (trusted, responsive, mixed, needs_attention, consumer_warning, under_review, improving, unrated) are used in the API and codebase. The display labels above are what users see.

Not all claims are equal. Claim severity affects the issue rate calculation:

An informational report does not affect the score. A severe issue counts three times as heavily as a minor one.

Confidence is a 0–100% scale based on verified transaction volume:

Full confidence (100%) is reached at 50 verified transactions. Below 3, no trust state is assigned.

An evidence-backed transaction object in the REKKN system. A transaction must include documentation (receipt, invoice, confirmation) and pass verification level 2 or higher to count toward the score.

A moderated experience report tied to a verified transaction. Claims are reviewed by human moderators before publication. Once validated, a claim enters “Response Window Open” (limited public record with dampened scoring weight). After the response window, it moves to either “Resolved During Response Window” or “On Record” (full public record with full scoring weight). Only validated claims affect the trust score.

Severity-weighted validated claims divided by verified transactions. This is a fraction: 0.05 means 5% of verified transactions generated a claim. The severity weighting means one severe claim counts as much as three minor ones.

A claim is considered resolved when the reporter confirms the issue was addressed, or when staff verifies the business provided evidence of resolution (refund, replacement, corrective action).

Today, REKKN computes scores from verified transactions — records where the consumer provided evidence of a real purchase or engagement. We do not yet have access to every transaction a business processes.

This means the trust score reflects patterns among people who engaged with REKKN, not a complete census of all customers. We are transparent about this limitation. As merchant integrations come online, the denominator will expand. Until then, the confidence indicator tells you how much data backs the score.

All uploaded evidence is anchored through the EMILIA Protocol, which creates a cryptographic fingerprint at the moment of submission. Evidence cannot be altered after the fact by anyone — not the reporter, not the business, and not REKKN — without the change being detectable.

Trust scores are recomputed on every trust-affecting event: a claim enters Response Window Open, a claim moves to On Record, a business responds, a resolution is confirmed during the response window, or a moderation hold changes. There is no daily batch — recomputation is event-driven. There is no manual override. There is no pay-to-improve. The trust engine source code will be published as an open-source repository.

We are still refining: how to weight merchant-initiated positive evidence, how to handle businesses operating across multiple categories, how to normalize scores across industries with different complaint baselines, and when to introduce positive-experience ratio as a scoring input. These decisions will be documented here as they are made.

REKKN is built on EMILIA-style trust principles and uses EMILIA-backed evidence integrity where applicable.