Karma Review
On-chain grantee accountability
of 10
Karma builds grant-management software, including the Grantee Accountability Protocol (GAP), in which grantees post milestones and progress updates on-chain as Ethereum Attestation Service attestations. Programs use its platform for applications, review, payouts and impact tracking; it names Optimism Grants Season 8 and Polygon's funding programs among its deployments.
No money changes hands. This is a non-commercial project: no advertising, no sponsored placements, and no affiliate or referral links. Links to the services below earn us nothing. Every overall score is the plain average of the criteria shown on the page, so you can check the arithmetic yourself — see our rating methodology and how the site is funded.
By Dan Reyes · Updated Sep 22, 2026
Role
Grants administration
Website
karmahq.org
Criteria with nothing published
2 of 6
Sources last read
2026-09-22
Scores
Each criterion carries equal weight. The overall score is the average of these 6 scores — (8.0 + 0.0 + 5.0 + 5.0 + 5.0 + 0.0) ÷ 6 = 3.8.
Pros
- Grantee milestones and updates are stored as on-chain attestations and shown on public community pages
- Names deployments with stated budgets, such as Optimism Grants Season 8 (6.29 million OP)
- Added identity and business checks before payouts in February 2026
Cons
- States program budgets, never amounts actually distributed
- Its Celo case study reports outcomes with no method
- Its own project appears among grantees in a community it serves, with no conflict-of-interest disclosure
What does Karma do?
Karma builds grant-management software, including the Grantee Accountability Protocol (GAP), in which grantees post milestones and progress updates on-chain as Ethereum Attestation Service attestations. Programs use its platform for applications, review, payouts and impact tracking; it names Optimism Grants Season 8 and Polygon's funding programs among its deployments.
In this ranking it is listed under grants administration.
How Karma scores, criterion by criterion
Each mark comes from a fixed scale published on our methodology page, and each links to the page it was read from.
| Criterion | Mark | What we found | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Named programs | 8 | Names Optimism Grants Season 8 (applications to 12 November 2025), Polygon's /grow and three other Polygon programs (from December 2025) and Celo's grants over 15 months; Livepeer and GoodDollar are named without a period. | karmahq.org, read 2026-09-22 |
| Disclosed volume | 0 | Not published. Budgets are stated (6.29 million OP for Optimism Season 8, 80 million POL for Polygon /grow) but no amount actually distributed is given for any program. | karmahq.org, read 2026-09-22 |
| Impact report | 5 | The Celo case study (15 October 2025) reports 361 projects, 748 grants and grantee reporting rising from under 50% to over 85%, with no method stated. | paragraph.com, read 2026-09-22 |
| Abuse protection | 5 | Describes identity and business checks before payouts and gating that stops unverified projects adding grants; no sybil or farming mechanism is described. | karmahq.org, read 2026-09-22 |
| Open data | 5 | Community project pages with milestone progress load without a login and milestones are on-chain attestations, but funding amounts are not shown and no export is offered. | karmahq.org, read 2026-09-22 |
| Independence | 0 | Not published. No conflict-of-interest policy was found, although a Karma project is listed among grantees on its Arbitrum page. | karmahq.org, read 2026-09-22 |
Karma publishes nothing we could find on disclosed volume or independence, so those criteria score 0. That is a record of what is published, not a finding about what the firm does privately.
Who it suits
Grant programs that want public, on-chain tracking of what each grantee promised and delivered.
How it compares
Castle Labs
Program assessments and retention analysis
Gitcoin
Public-goods funding rounds
Metrom
KPI-linked liquidity campaigns with open data
Merkl
On-chain incentive distribution at scale
Questbook
Milestone-based DAO grant programs
Thrive Protocol
Milestone-based ecosystem grants
Blockworks Advisory
Statistical program retrospectives
OpenBlock Labs
Incentive efficacy and sybil analysis
Galxe
Quest campaigns and airdrops with identity checks
Turtle
Liquidity campaigns through a vetted LP network
Layer3
Quest campaigns with on-chain rewards
Boost
Self-serve on-chain reward campaigns
Sources
Scored from published primary sources rather than hands-on use. Every figure above comes from one of the pages below, on the date shown. Manufacturers change prices and specifications without notice — if something here no longer matches the source, tell us and we will correct it.
- 1.Karma: Named programs — checked
- 2.Karma: Disclosed volume — checked
- 3.Karma: Impact report — checked
- 4.Karma: Abuse protection — checked
- 5.Karma: Open data — checked
- 6.Karma: Independence — checked
Frequently asked questions
What does Karma do for chains and DAOs?
Karma builds grant-management software, including the Grantee Accountability Protocol (GAP), in which grantees post milestones and progress updates on-chain as Ethereum Attestation Service attestations. Programs use its platform for applications, review, payouts and impact tracking; it names Optimism Grants Season 8 and Polygon's funding programs among its deployments.
How is Karma's score of 3.8 calculated?
It is the plain average of six marks, each from a fixed published scale: named programs 8, disclosed volume 0, impact report 5, abuse protection 5, open data 5, independence 0. (8 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 0) ÷ 6 = 3.8.
Nothing here is financial advice. Editorial policy · How we score · How we're funded.