Many people say that DAO is just voting, whoever has more tokens speaks louder. But is this really fair?

The issue is quite sensitive: under traditional DAO systems, those with ample financial resources naturally hold more influence. APRO wants to flip this — not to let the wealthy be the main players, but to empower those who truly contribute to the community.

So the core question is: how to measure who is more "capable"? APRO's answer is to introduce Soulbound Tokens as reputation credentials.

They categorize contributions into three dimensions for tracking. On the code level, they look at GitHub PR merges and Bug Bounty records. On the operational level, they track node online durations and the number of times a "reporter" successfully identifies on-chain malicious activities. On the community level, they include activities like documentation writing, whitepaper translation, and active participation in governance proposals.

But reputation alone isn't enough; they need to prevent people from just coasting along. So they designed a decay mechanism — your reputation automatically decreases by 2% each month. In other words, Reputation(t) = Reputation(t-1) × 0.98. This means if you don't contribute for a month, your influence will be directly reduced. Continuous output is necessary to maintain your position.

The voting process is even more interesting. They don't directly equate reputation points to votes but adopt a quadratic voting logic — the cost of voting equals the square of the number of votes. What's the benefit of this design? It prevents a few high-reputation individuals from monopolizing decision-making, while allowing more moderate contributors to have a voice.

Under this system, DAO governance shifts from a simple plutocracy to a "practitioner-led" regime.