# SourceCred overview copy

**URL:** <https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/sourcecred-overview-copy/615>\
**Category:** Community\
**Created:** [January 29, 2020, 4:34am UTC](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/sourcecred-overview-copy/615 "2020-01-29T04:34:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![decentralion](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sourcecred.io/decentralion/32/7_2.png) [@decentralion](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/u/decentralion)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2020, 4:34am UTC](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/sourcecred-overview-copy/615/1 "2020-01-29T04:34:24Z")

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I needed to give a brief overview of SourceCred for a talk description, and came up with the copy below. I think it might by my cleanest “short description” of SC to date. Please share any feedback. If people like it, maybe we could put it up on [sourcecred.io](http://sourcecred.io) to help people orient.

* * *

SourceCred is a social algorithm and a cryptoeconomic system. The social algorithm assigns reputational “cred” scores to contributors based on the value they’ve added to the project. The cryptoeconomic system distributes “grain” tokens to those contributors, and creates incentives for sponsors to buy and burn those tokens. We intend it as a general purpose protocol that decentralized organizations can use for reputation, rewards, and governance.

At the same time, SourceCred is an active experiment in incentivized open source, as everyone contributing to the project both earns cred and receives grain.

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**Author:** ![s\_ben](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sourcecred.io/s_ben/32/816_2.png) [@s\_ben](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/u/s_ben)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 2:21am UTC](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/sourcecred-overview-copy/615/2 "2020-01-30T02:21:01Z")

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Reads well and captures a lot succinctly.

Perhaps this is another post, but wondering if we can call SourceCred “credibly neutral”? Vitalik (who will be at Sustain Web3) mentions “[Reputation systems involving transitive trust graphs](https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~defigued/index_files/trustdavis.pdf)” as an example in his recent paper (below).

> **[Credible Neutrality As A Guiding Principle](https://nakamoto.com/credible-neutrality/)**
>
> When building mechanisms that decide high-stakes outcomes, it’s important for those mechanisms to be credibly neutral.