Use case · Reviews & marketplaces

One real device, one rating. Hardware-enforced.

Fake five-star ratings cost you real sales. They bleed the trust your buyers place in your ratings, and once shoppers stop believing your reviews, they stop buying on them. (For scale: the fake-review economy drives an estimated ~$770B in annual consumer harm, and Amazon alone blocked 275M fake reviews in 2024.) The structural defense is one rating per real device per period — a cryptographic check, not an ML signal you can spoof.

Economics

Where fake reviews cost you.

A fake review sells for $5–$18 (premium markets up to €15). Making one now costs a real $30+ machine, an order of magnitude more than it earns. A farm running $0.10 cloud servers turns a profit; a farm buying real $60 Chromebooks for one review each does not.

Marketplace fake reviews

$5/review, €15 premium

Solved
$30 floor

Per-identity yield

$5 – $18

Rational ceiling

< $5 per identity

Hardware floor exceeds yield by an order of magnitude.

Integration

One review per device per period.

Verify with rh.verify() at submission, bind (device.ueid, productId), enforce a uniqueness window. The same chip can review a different product, but can't post ten reviews of one product across ten accounts.

review submission · @rootherald/nodets
import { RootHerald } from "@rootherald/node";

const rh = new RootHerald({ secretKey: process.env.RH_SECRET_KEY }); // rh_sk_…

// Earlier: rh.issueChallenge() -> send the one-time challenge code to your app,
// which collects the sealed hardware proof and posts back { challengeId, evidence }.
const verdict = await rh.verify(evidence, {
  challengeId,
  policy: "rootherald:builtin:strict-hardware",  // our "real physical chips only" rule
});
if (verdict.device.verdict !== "pass")
  return res.status(403).json({ error: 'device_check_failed' });

const existing = await db.reviews.find({ deviceId: verdict.device.ueid, productId, since: '90d' });
if (existing) return res.status(409).json({ error: 'one_per_device_per_window' });
await db.reviews.create({ deviceId: verdict.device.ueid, productId, body, stars });

Adjacent applications

Marketplace reputation, dating, rideshare.

The same check solves adjacent problems where a single "real user" signal is the structural defense:

Banned-seller return

A banned chip stays banned across emails, names, payment methods, and shipping addresses.

Dating-app re-signups

One account per device per period closes the spam-account spigot that defeats email/phone verification.

Rideshare re-onboarding

Deactivated-user re-onboarding cycles defeat email and phone changes; hardware doesn't change.

One device, one rating. Hardware-enforced.

Free up to 10K device checks a month, no card.

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