Eidōlon Points: How Episteme Rewards Real Humans for Building Markets for Scientific Truth

Humanode Core

13 Feb 2026 • 4 min read

Episteme introduces Eidōlon Points, an activity-based system that rewards real participation in scientific prediction markets. With Humanode verification, the system prioritizes signal over noise and enables small, Sybil-resistant clusters.

Episteme is building a market for scientific truth: not as a metaphor, but as a working system where hypotheses become markets and uncertainty becomes something people can participate in, test, and price.

Eidōlon is the first public form of that idea: a live testnet where contributors don’t earn reputation through authority, but through interaction: trading, creating hypotheses, and helping the network learn what “good” scientific markets look like in practice.

To reward the people who actually use, stress-test, and explain Eidōlon, Episteme is introducing Eidōlon Points, an activity-based drop system where contribution is measured as a signal.

Points are an accounting layer for participation. When tokens are distributed in the future, your share is proportional to the points you’ve earned.

What Eidōlon Points Are (and What They Aren’t)

Eidōlon Points are designed to reward real, constructive participation, without turning the system into a click farm.

Points are not:

A speculative asset
Transferable or tradable
A financial instrument

Points are:

A ledger of contribution
A way to weight future token distribution toward people who helped Eidōlon grow and stabilize
A mechanism that intentionally prefers signal over noise

Episteme is explicit about this: the system is capped, some actions require manual review, and the goal is alignment, not extraction.

More info in Eidolon Points 101.

Why Humanode Matters Here: “Real Humans” as a Design Primitive

Activity-based systems are always vulnerable to farming, unless they have a strong way to verify that participants are actually unique humans.

That’s where Humanode verification becomes foundational.

Episteme’s points system includes mechanics that assume personhood matters:

preventing Sybil swarms from overpowering genuine contributors;
enabling smaller groups to coordinate without being drowned out by bots;
rewarding discourse and contribution without inviting spam as the dominant strategy.

In short: points become meaningful only when participation is human.

How You Earn Eidōlon Points: Five Dimensions of Contribution

Eidōlon Points are earned across five dimensions that roll up into a single score. Each accounting period (an epoch, typically one month), contributions are tracked and capped.

More info in Eidolon Points 101.

1) On-Chain Activity: Using the Market

Eidōlon is a scientific market platform, so the most basic contribution is to actually use it.

Per epoch, points can be earned for:

your first trade of the month;
exploring new markets;
trading volume (measured proportionally).

The intent is to reward exploration and conviction while discouraging wash behavior.

2) Hypothesis Creation: Turning Ideas Into Markets

Episteme lives or dies on hypothesis quality.

When a user submits a hypothesis:

launching as a live market earns points;
real engagement (participants, trading activity) can earn a bonus.

To prevent spam, rewards are capped per user at each stage. Past the cap, hypotheses can still gain visibility and reputation, just not additional drop weight.

Submit your hypothesis.

Markets don’t grow in silence. Episteme rewards users who help others understand Eidōlon, create thoughtful discourse, and bring in new participants.

Two categories exist:

One-time actions (rewarded once, hard-capped):

joining communities;
following official channels;
subscribing to updates.

Recurring contributions (possible each epoch, capped and often manually reviewed):

original posts and threads;
quote posts with substance;
thoughtful replies;
longform articles or videos.

The explicit rule here: quality matters more than volume.

More info in here.

Submit using this form.

4) Early Users: Wave Multipliers

Early participation carries extra weight, if it’s real on-chain interaction, not passive watching.

Episteme defines “waves” based on your first verified interaction:

Wave 0 (OG): before public launch
Wave 1 (Early): after announcement, before open access
Wave 2+: regular users

Earlier waves receive a multiplier on base points, reflecting early trust and higher uncertainty. Episteme may also add a one-time OG bonus at snapshot.

5) Clusters: Small Groups That Think Together (TBA)

This is the most Humanode-native idea in the system: epistemic squads.

Clusters are small groups of 2–6 verified humans:

each user belongs to exactly one cluster;
all members must be Humanode-verified (provide biomapped address);
all members must meet a minimum activity threshold each epoch.

If the cluster is active, every member receives a bonus scaled by cluster size. The effect is intentionally modest: enough to reward coordination, not enough to overpower individual contribution.

This mechanism targets a specific behavior: small groups doing real work together, without turning collaboration into an exploit.

🟡 Episteme Eidōlon: Clusters Registration Form.

How the Final Score Works

The scoring logic is intentionally “boring,” by design.

Each epoch:

Episteme sums your Base Points (on-chain + hypothesis + off-chain);
applies your early-wave multiplier (if eligible);
adds your cluster bonus (if eligible).

If the points program spans multiple epochs, your Final Score is the sum across time. That final number determines your proportional token allocation when distribution occurs.

Why This System Exists

Episteme’s point system isn’t trying to turn science into a casino aesthetic. It’s trying to solve a real problem:

If you want markets to help evaluate scientific hypotheses, you need:

participation that’s hard to fake;
incentives that reward meaningful actions;
a mechanism that favors signal over noise;
transparent rules that can be audited and improved;

Eidōlon Points are built to reward:

real market participation;
intellectual risk (hypotheses as markets);
explanation and onboarding;
early trust;
small groups of verified humans thinking together.

And that last piece, verified humans, is where Humanode is more than a checkbox. It’s an enabling layer for fairness.

The Experiment Is Live

Eidōlon markets are live.The accounting has started.Signal is accumulating.

If you’re curious about how scientific truth could become a market primitive—this is the moment to participate early, while the system is still being shaped by the people brave enough to use it.

🔗 Enter Eidōlon: https://app.episteme.space/