I believe the trading feature helps to prevent manipulation. The investments you make in others counts towards the TRU Score for you and the other person. So, if you make "bad" investments in others, it will only serve to reduce your TRU Score. Of course, some people might be willing to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others. But, that should be easy to identify.

Example: If a high-reputation person vouches for someone, does it have more meaning compared to the endorsement from a person with no/low reputation?

Which is why the TRU Score is more than just the share price and your investments. It also includes other platform activities [Ex. member reviews, review scores, number of investors, etc.]. Not claiming we have solved this problem. But, we think it is a step in the right direction.

But the investment is directly proportional to the number of people you know and can coerce/bribe in some way. If you know many people, you can rig the numbers in your favor, at least temporarily, which might be long enough to get another position (or whatever it is you're after).

Not sure that manipulation can be entirely eliminated. Instead, we are trying to incentivize good behavior and make it easier to identify fakes.

If you sell services and/or need to find a service provider, you need some method to perform [1] discovery, [2] evaluation, and [3] decision.

This is what we tried to build, in a manner which we hope promotes trust and good behavior. That said, as the platform develops, we will no doubt need to make adjustments.

But the focus will remain on maintaining an efficient marketplace for buyers and sellers to interact and transact.

Does the platform give an opportunity for a group of people to "cancel" someone out of spite?

Not sure if I understand the question entirely. There is no "short selling" allowed. Thus, the only shares you could sell are the shares you own.

A group of people that might deliberately attempt to manipulate the system would be relatively easy to identify. Obviously, that would not be acceptable behavior.

Thanks for the clarification. It may be worth thinking about obfuscating the TRU score in some way or the algorithms that control it as way of deterring any kind of manipulations.