People, vouches and your tribe
Souspli has no usernames, no follower counts and no reputation score. It has keys, and three ways of attaching meaning to them — each deliberately different.
File → People… lists every key whose letters you hold.
Petnames: private
A petname is what you call a key: "Ada", "the ops account", "landlord". It is stored only on your machine, never enters a letter, and nobody else ever sees it.
That is exactly what makes it worth something. A letter can claim any name for its author; a petname is the one name nobody else can influence. In the header it is shown without a ✓, because it is your label and not a verified fact — and the key's address stays visible beside it, so the name labels the fact rather than replacing it.
Naming someone records that you recognise a key, and nothing more.
Vouches: public
A vouch is a signed letter saying I know this key — who they are to you, and optionally how you checked. Press Vouch… on a person.
Two things the app tells you before you publish one, because they are true:
- A vouch discloses your social graph. Whoever receives it learns that you know this key.
- A signed letter cannot be unsaid. To change your mind you publish a newer vouch; only your latest word about a key is counted, so repeating yourself buys no weight.
A vouch says you recognise a key. It does not say they are honest, that they are who they claim to be, or that anything they signed is true.
Petnames are private; vouches are public. That is the whole difference, and it is deliberate.
Your tribe
Vouches are free to manufacture. Anyone can mint a thousand keys and have them vouch for each other in a circle, so counting vouches proves nothing.
What cannot be faked is a path that starts at your key. Your tribe is:
- everyone you have vouched for, and
- everyone they have vouched for —
and no further. Two hops. Past that, "vouched for by someone vouched for by someone I once met" is a stranger with extra steps.
The header says you vouched or vouched by someone you vouched for. It never shows a number, a percentage or a ✓ for this. A key outside your tribe gets no badge at all — a "0 hops" label would read as a score and stamp a trust-shaped mark on every stranger.
Your tribe is what makes the rest meaningful:
- forum posts rank by votes from your tribe first — "47 votes, 6 from your tribe";
- attestations lead with how many came from your tribe.
The first number is free to manufacture. The second is the part that carries.
What does not put someone in your tribe
- Being on a roster. A group is free to write; if membership fed your tribe, anyone could enter your trust graph by publishing a group that named themselves beside you.
- You upvoting them. A vote is about a letter, not a person.
- Their vouching for you. Only paths from you are walked.
Verified names
The design also supports names that provably map to a key — an ENS name such as
alice.eth, confirmed in both directions, shown with a ✓. The code is in place but
is not active in current builds. See status.