Honour

TL;DR:

Honour is a coordination mechanism that surfaces non-financial forms of value—like care, reliability, relational trust, and integrity. Instead of funding or voting, participants give public recognition to one another, building a social ledger of what’s valued and by whom.

In practice, Honour can look like:

Giving thank you tokens or public endorsements
Creating onchain attestations for good work
Holding rituals or ceremonies to acknowledge stewards
Issuing badges, artifacts, or non-transferable NFTs as symbols of appreciation

These signals can later be used in funding mechanisms (e.g. filtering registries, seeding retro rounds) or simply stand on their own as legitimacy infrastructure.

Honour is often used to:

Recognize invisible labor (e.g. care, emotional support, governance work)
Strengthen community memory
Build trust in the absence of formal credentials

It is not about competition—it is about careful witnessing and meaning-making in public.

Best For

Communities with strong relational values
Acknowledging labor that isn’t easily priced
Seeding social legitimacy for later funding
Building trust in early or grassroots ecosystems

Good At

Surfacing invisible or underappreciated contributions
Strengthening culture and social cohesion
Reducing reliance on financial or token incentives
Building a community’s sense of shared history and value

Dependencies / Requirements

A culture of witnessing and appreciation
A mechanism for issuing or recording Honour (onchain or offchain)
Optional: rituals, badges, attestations, or artifact mints
Alignment on what kinds of contributions deserve Honour

Not Good At

Directly allocating capital
Systems needing precise metrics or accountability
Environments without strong social cohesion or context
One-off funding decisions or high-stakes disputes

Who Should Use It?

Public goods communities with deep cultural layers
DAOs that value emotional labor, stewardship, and care
Projects building long-term trust infrastructure
Coordinators seeking low-cost but high-impact ways to recognize contributors

Example Use Cases

A community mints Honour badges for contributors who supported others emotionally during a crisis
A DAO steward is recognized through a ceremonial ritual and receives a non-transferable NFT to mark their contribution
A public goods ecosystem uses Honour attestations to inform eligibility for future funding rounds