  Decentralized reputation schemes present a promising area of experimentation
in blockchain applications. These solutions aim to overcome the shortcomings of
simple monetary incentive mechanisms of naive tokenomics. However, there is a
significant research gap regarding the limitations and benefits of such
solutions. We formulate these trade-offs as a conjecture on the
irreconcilability of three desirable properties of the reputation system in
this context. Such a system can not be simultaneously generalizable, trustless,
and Sybil resistant. To handle the limitations of this trilemma, we propose
MeritRank: Sybil tolerant feedback aggregation mechanism for reputation.
Instead of preventing Sybil attacks, our approach successfully bounds the
benefits of these attacks. Using a dataset of participants' interactions in
MakerDAO, we run experiments to demonstrate Sybil tolerance of MeritRank. Decay
parameters of reputation in MeritRank: transitivity decay and connectivity
decay, allow for a fine-tuning of desirable levels of reputation utility and
Sybil tolerance in different use contexts.
