Token

MERIT has no token requirement. The protocol is fully functional without one, and the core loop — commit, batch, anchor, reveal, verify, score — never touches a balance.

Two things that will never be built

• More tokens raising a reputation score.
• Payment improving a qualification tier.

Both would convert reputation from something earned into something bought, which would make every figure in the product worthless. Reputation must remain a function of verified behaviour alone.

Where a token could legitimately sit

Plausible future utility is infrastructural rather than reputational: protocol fees, incentives for independent verifiers, funding proof infrastructure, staking as a bond against verifier misbehaviour, and governance over scoring parameters. Each is modular and none is required for the protocol to function, which is why none is implemented yet.