Patrick Bass Area: Account (re-run) (audit p1r) · Surface: /recruit (ReferralController@dashboard), src/Models/Referral.php · Dimension: competitor-gap · Severity: major
Circle, Skool, and Mighty Networks all offer real referral incentives — Skool gives affiliates 40% recurring revenue, Circle has built-in affiliate/referral programs with payouts, and community platforms commonly grant the referrer credits/perks when an invitee joins or converts. Mobieus has a fully-built credit economy (credits buy cosmetics, mobieusVerified, boosts) and a referral attribution system, but never connects the two: recruiting someone yields zero tangible benefit. The single most effective community growth lever is making members want to invite people, and that requires a reward. Wiring referral conversions into the existing CreditLedger (e.g. grant N credits when a /join/{code} visitor registers, or a larger bonus when they hit an activity milestone) is low-cost because both subsystems already exist.
Evidence
src/Models/Referral.php has NO reward logic — `grep -iE 'reward|credit|bonus|earn|payout|UserCredit|CreditLedger'` over the model returns nothing. The dashboard copy at templates/recruit/dashboard.php only promises social attribution: "Bring people in, get credit for it" / "through it is credited to you — visible to mods and on [profile]". The model only does findUserByCode/recordVisit/ensureCode/statsFor. There is an entire credit/cosmetic economy (CreditLedger, UserCredit, CosmeticController CATALOG priced at 2500-7500 credits) but referrals are not wired into it.Suggested fix. On successful registration with a pending_referrer_id in session, call CreditLedger to grant the referrer a configurable credit reward (and optionally a milestone bonus when the invitee posts/subscribes). Surface earned rewards on the /recruit dashboard alongside the existing visit/conversion stats.
Filed by the automated tenant-app audit and adversarially evidence-verified. Status: verified. Open — not yet actioned.
Patrick Bass
@mobieus
