# kaal:claim:3411897-007

**Claim.** eBay's user rating system, despite being its biggest competitive advantage, is clearly flawed, and the persistence of those flaws demonstrates the unmet need for a decentralized reputation verification system, since no better technology has yet been produced.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- applies to centralized platform reputation systems as of 2019

**Source quote.**

> While the user ratings eBay uses clearly have flaws (that illustrate the need for a decentralized reputation verification system – discussed in Chapter 6), so far, nobody has been able to come up with a better technology.

**From.** Wulf A. Kaal, *Decentralization - Past, Present, and Future* (2019), Part I: The Past, Types of Decentralization, page 10

**Cite as.** Wulf A. Kaal, Decentralization - Past, Present, and Future (2019). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3411897

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `82f0aea026b3e3a526ec51bc073b3b864dc06cd9083ff9c54c550037045edaa9` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Kaal%20-%202019%20-%20Decentralization%20-%20Past%2C%20Present%2C%20and%20Future.pdf

**Failure mode.** centralized-reputation-rating-flaws  (family: reputation-system-gaming)

**Topics.** reputation

**Keywords.** reputation-systems, ebay, platform-design, verification

**Related claims.**

- restated_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3808852-014

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.