Why Karma GAP

A brief introduction to why we are building GAP (Grantee Accountability Protocol)

Problem

Grant programs in the crypto ecosystem lack a standardized method for grantees to publish progress updates and milestones, leading to several issues:

Limited Accessibility: Currently, it is challenging for grant managers and the community to easily access and track project progress and milestones, as information is scattered across forums and external links.

Reputation Portability: Grantees who apply for grants from multiple organizations struggle to establish and carry their reputation consistently across the ecosystem. This is particularly difficult for individuals who are new to the ecosystem and need opportunities to showcase their work and build their reputation.

Inadequate Data Structure: The absence of structured data that can be accessed in a permissionless manner hampers the development of applications and analytical tools for evaluating grant impact and builder reputation.

Solution

To address the aforementioned problems, we built GAP (Grantee Accountability Protocol) where grant teams can post information about the grant and grantees can post milestones and progress updates onchain. This solves a number of problems explained below

Onchain Reporting: Grantees will utilize the protocol to self-report their progress and milestones directly on the blockchain through EAS (Ethereum Attestation Service). Leveraging the existing support for EAS schemas, we defined schemas tailored to various reporting needs.

Universal data access: By storing all grant-related data onchain, we eliminate the need for manual searching and external links. We built an interface for grantees and grant teams to interact with the protocol. Communities are not obligated to use this interface but are welcome to build their own interface to present this information in interesting ways.

Enhanced Reputation Building: Our protocol enables the linking of team member profiles to specific projects. This feature empowers team members to build and showcase their reputation for their contributions. Additionally, this reputation can be carried over to other DAOs, opening opportunities for involvement in various areas of DAO governance or similar initiatives.

Grant Farming: It is well known in the ecosystem that there are teams who simply try to get grants and either don’t fully execute or do it with no goal of making the project a success. Having better visibility can help community and grant admins evaluate teams before issuing grants.

Facilitating Novel Applications: With comprehensive on-chain data available, the protocol encourages the development of innovative applications. Few applications we can think of that can be built on top of this protocol are:

• Grantee reputation systems

• Project impact analysis tools

• Signaling for future grants

• Auto monitor milestones and progress updates and alert the community

• Endorsing teams and team members working on projects