How we verify reviews on Trustonion

Trustonion is a darknet marketplace review aggregator. Every review on the platform is tied to a verified buyer wallet, and the verification flow is described below in full. We do not collect clearnet email, browser fingerprints, or IP-derived identifiers.

The four verification steps

1. Wallet attestation. A reviewer signs a one-time challenge with the Monero spend key (or, for legacy buyers, the Bitcoin wallet) tied to a confirmed marketplace settlement. The signature commits the reviewer to a specific historical transaction and is unforgeable without the spend key.
2. Settlement match. The challenge is matched against a Trustonion-side index of confirmed multisig settlements on the relevant marketplace. A signature that matches a settlement gets the review the green VERIFIED BUYER badge; one that does not is rejected silently.
3. Cooling period. Reviews are held in a 48-hour buffer before publication. The buffer eliminates emotional first-impression edits and gives the reviewer time to retract.
4. PGP-optional sign-off. Reviewers can additionally sign their review body with a long-lived PGP key, which appears as a small key icon next to the VERIFIED BUYER badge. PGP-signed reviews carry weight equal to two regular verified reviews in the aggregate score calculation.

What we do not collect

Trustonion runs no JavaScript on the public site. We do not collect clearnet email addresses, do not log IPs beyond the 24-hour rolling buffer required to defeat trivial flooding, and do not run any analytics scripts. Review bodies are stored as opaque blobs encrypted under a per-review key derived from the reviewer\'s wallet attestation; only the reviewer can decrypt and edit.

Frequently asked

Can a vendor verify a review? Vendors can post reply comments under a verified-vendor flag, but cannot remove or edit a buyer review. Vendor replies are subject to the same 48-hour cooling buffer.

Can the marketplace itself influence rankings? No. Marketplaces have no signing key tied to Trustonion, and no API to mutate review state. Aggregate scores are computed by Trustonion-side workers exclusively from verified reviews.

What about fake positive reviews from sock-puppet accounts? Wallet attestation requires a confirmed settlement. Each settlement can underwrite at most one review, so a sock-puppet operator would have to actually transact on the marketplace to produce a fake positive — at which point the “fake” review is, in our framing, a real buyer experience.

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