S6. Ep. 2 - On-Chain Reputation & Optimizing Grants Resource Allocation W/ Dani & Mahesh

Transcript

welcome to the green pill. network podcast in September green pill will be hosted by the cartographers a high context community of individuals and teams dedicated to advancing the web3 grants ecosystem they'll explore the web3 grants ecosystem with topics ranging from novel funding mechanisms Grant councils and governance to emerging trends like Ai and direct to contract incentives this series seeks to bridge theory and practice by examining real world examples and featuring discussions with those who are closest to the action the next voice you hear will be Sav who contributes at getcoin and founded the cartographers sa will be hosting this entire season and I think that it's going to be a great season because Sav brings deep experience in web 3 grants

and capital allocation I'm excited for you to hear some of the perspectives from him and his guests without further Ado the next voice you'll hear is Sav enjoy welcome everyone to another episode of the green pill podcast i s and I am here uh filling in for Kevin aukee as we decentralize this season uh and have other guest hosts come in so I'm joined today by a couple people that I really enjoy working with I worked with them in various ways um and we'll talk a little bit about that this episode is about reputation and how reputation uh specifically onchain reputation can really help to optimize the grant resource allocation process

and the possibilities uh so we'll start with some intros and we'll jump into the discussion so first mahes I will turn it over to you to give a quick intro on who you are and what you do thanks so excited to be here um again my H my second uh episode with green pill um in the last few months so I'm excited to be here um my name is Mahesh morti I'm the founder of karma um at Karma we build um um reputation systems for onchain communities um and we primarily focus on um uh dowg governance of the delegates and lately over the last year we have um a new product called Gap a grantee accountability protocol uh which is used by um thousands of grantees and um a

number of Grant programs across the ecosystem to um get visibility into all the grants uh being given out and also for grantees to build their reputation nice thanks Danny I'll turn it over to you now hello I'm Danny I work at Wu I'm the product manager of truthful a reputation aggregator a block for building public goods focusing on open Open Source Products for uh Dow governance we are also official service providers for Dows like ANS Dow and shter DOW and over the past year my primary focus has been on reputation um a journey that started with um e Argentina hackathon I won like prizes

there it was very nice and as I said do the trustful repetition agregator for members and GR programs this one nice it's great to be here welcome to you both so let's jump into it first I think it would be good to start with a little bit of historical context and just kind of background when we look at Grant allocation methods today um you know we've got traditional methods like direct grants but really what crypto unlocks is more uh Democratic allocation of capital so quadratic funding retr funding different variants of those and and new types of methods that could even be more automated in taking human decision-making out of that process as we do that there's challenges in Grant allocation even in with more traditional methods things like civil attacks and

Grant farming are things that um are topics that are um widely discussed in the web three Grant space today and so I'm a big believer that onchain reputation can help in some ways to solve these if you can start to have better reputation systems around grantees as well as Grant programs it essentially makes the the whole process much more streamlined so that programs can find the right kinds of grantees be matched to those grantees know the capabilities of them and from a grantee perspective I can find the the kinds of programs that match to my needs my skills and the things that I'm really good at most programs are not allocating uh a majority share of the budget that they actually allocate to Grant programs

which means that quite a bit of their time is wasted and kind of going through applications that maybe are malicious or maybe just not a fit for the types of of Grants and incentives that they're putting out there and from an applicant perspective I may need to submit to 10 different programs fill out 10 different applications have 10 different experiences and not really know from a program side of things um is that program really dispensing the types of Grants and and incentives that you know align to me and my skills and you know what has that looked like in the past in terms of how active they are and those types of things and so um I think these are all things that you know onchain reputation can can definitely help with so we look at that let's jump into one chain reputation systems and just you

know kind of talk a little bit about um how they work and and their benefits for Grant allocation so maybe I'll start with you on that Mahesh I mean I think that was probably a lot of your thinking is you know Karma evolved from um kind of governance and more governance dashboards to taking a look at Gap and you know how you start to solve that problem or that opportunity maybe of reputation so when you think about the benefits for Grant allocation through these what comes to mind for you yeah so um I have a lot of thoughts around this um I've thought about this for like for many years um when it comes to Grant allocation um I see it as there three components so you have the grant programs who are giving out these

they're allocating capital and then there's these grantees and their projects and then there is the when we do it through this Democratic way um for example quadratic uh funding there are other funders who go and uh vote with their wallet um and then there's like a qf matching right so there's these three components and all three of these users or stakeholders need some kind of a reputation so grantees need to build up their reputation so that they can attract funding like they they buil up a reputation for doing good work so they can attract funding and then Grant programs need to have good reputation because if there is a grant program which doesn't even like

respond to you they're like they don't like do a good job of processing applications on time like and it's really difficult to work with them like if they don't have a good reputation like good quality builders don't want to work with them uh so they need a reputation like they need reputation and then if you go into the um in the quadratic funding rounds where you have to like do this Cil detection and uh there is the reputation part there of like funders like are these legit people who are reporting or is it civils right uh so there's these three components um today Gap uh we are like trying to solve the grantee reputation um and also grant program to some extent um grantee reputation is like it was just we built

it because to solve our own pain problem pain Point um we as grantees were like we're building this and then showing it to these Dows and then we it felt like we're starting from zero when we go to Every Dow because they're like we don't know what you have done done like have people like liking what you have built like should we fund you right there is like all these questions I'm like all these answers are spread across different forums or in emails and everywhere like I'm like we're building a public good so can we just put it all out there um so that that was the uh that was the reason behind starting Gap and that's what we're really um like solving or trying to solve today that

has opened up into so many other problems but like that the core of it we want to solve this granty reputation um to help them find funds to continue to work on their projects right and it's like because there are so many like Grant farming happening like how do you like how do you solve for that like how do you how does Grant programs know who is there for like the Long Haul working on these projects like or someone just like getting a grant working on it moving on right if we put all of this on for everyone to see then I think that solves the problem totally so um you know Danny maybe to turn it over to you from the program side of things right because I know you've been thinking a

lot about that um you know Mahesh is very has been very focused on you know grantee reputation obviously that has some impacts on the program side of things and with the registry you know that we've been working on you know with Karma and the cartographers I think that there's a lot of possibilities there but maybe dive in a little bit to program reputation you know some of the recent work you've done with trust and how you've been thinking about that problem yeah sure um first of all I remember when I first heard about reputation when reputation and I search it on the internet and I found like alchemic page of like 23 or 26 um reputation dabs and I saw like gy ceramic and gitcoin passport and I was like okay so

repetition is everything we don't know how to define reputation which is crazy and then I started to study and I was focused on uh Agate reputation to members and then I found a craphy Syndicate and I remember St saying okay but now we're going to agregate reputation to br's program and I was like okay now that's a different perspective and I I dive dive deep into this topic with with the team the trust team and we were like okay what what would Define a good reputation to br's program um and then I remembered many times I have applied to br's program prog and answering like a thousand of questions and then I even receive an a

mail for example saying that oh congratulations having F not even that I was like okay this is really hard um because this kind of grant program can disincentivize good builders in system and we thought about many reputation badges to agregate to GRS program like Smooth application and uh easy to integrate for example does this um chain or protocol has like a good good documentation sdks uh and we we thought about seven badges very cool smooth application granty viewer Fair rounds I think this is very very important also because um I saw like many grants program in the same

again and again asking for money but what are we going to do right now you're not ready around their grants program so it's a match You're Building public goods so optimism wants public good Builder so let's go go Build Together uh I think this is very very important to match great Builders and great grands program and that that's why I Envision for the future uh it is very nice to see this new perspective of reputation for Grants program also totally yeah you know when I think about um the challenges to adoption of something like this you know I think that they are some Grant programs out there some of the larger ones that have um their ethos is very much trans transparency on chain

first right um but there are other Grant programs out there that um are intentionally opaque right and and I think that a lot of that is because there's a scarcity of the type of you know really qualified talent and these different programs and ultimately the ecosystems that they support are all looking to differentiate themselves right in a world where we see this proliferation of you know L2 networks and chains and you know overlap and all of these different projects kind of building what might seem like similar or very close to the same things how are you going to differentiate yourself and so when you look at um Grant programs um I think that there could be some fear right or hesitation maybe is a better

word at opting in you know to these systems of reputation and making ourselves accountable to them um because maybe some of that data that could be provided um could be used by other competitive Grant programs right I also think that um there's more and more of a push or an interest by larger ecosystem players around this concept of convertible grants or you know Equity Stakes right in in projects that they fund and so in that there's also probably some hesitation to share you know certain um information on certain grantees um because there could be bigger picture plans around how that ecosystem might work with those grantees and they may have Equity Stakes you know

at some point later on right so in that when I look at kind of like the adoption barriers you know I think it's changing some of the perceptions around those things and really being able to sh to outweigh the value right in terms of like what can be provided to these programs through opting in and participating in these different types of of systems um versus not right so when we we look at kind of those challenges and implementation I mean those are really what I see as like the adoption barriers and I know that I've talked with both of you at length about that um maybe walk me through the technical hurdles a little bit right right so maybe you know Danny starting with you as you've started to build out kind of this program reputation you know system with trustful and start to layer

that onto the grants registry what are you know if any some of the technical hurdles that the team and you ran into with that um and maybe some of the opportunities that you see to continue to build and kind of enhance that platform nice um propos of data like I think it that was the the the main problem like we have a bunch of data here and trustful has a bunch of data here how to connect those data how to make it powerful uh what kind of outcomes do we want um I think this is the main problem uh nowadays regarding this kind of stuff because for example if you think a has all the data regarding BR program um balancer has all the data regarding BR program how to how to connect all of them how trustful can

GA all of them how Karma G can get all of them and we can collect those data and make like uh create powerful outcomes um I think this is the main main problem that we face speaking about adoption um I can see also um mainly mainly granty viewers um people working on on DS in this part of Grant I I can't I can see they okay this is a new stuff that I have to deal with maybe I can see a huge work being done in this field of explained to them that it will make their work easier okay craphy Syndicate Kagel choice will make your work easier you need to put your brch program here

analyze those data and it make it easier because you can see like if you don't have a good reputation if your gr program doesn't have a good reputation on Fair rounds so let's analyze why not why not you know why this is not being fair so the same problem we have to connect data we need to figure out how to do it deliver those kind of data in a nice way in an easy way for those GR T Vier for Grants applicants so they would see that their job would be easier so we're doing basically their hard job here getting those data connecting all of them to delivery to the community to say okay now your work uh is easier so I think that's that's the the main stuff

we should do keep going basically what does that look what does that look like for you mahes in terms of like the technical hurdles you've ran into along the way and really you know what are the opportunities you see that way with Karma I agree with a lot of what danim was saying um data is like one of the biggest challenges it's a relatively younger EOS system grants Wise It's not been there for like decades right so there's no like clear structured data around it so every time I like go look at something or like okay everyone is using different formats like end of the day it's all the same data but like just getting all of them in the right place but that is with like any even in web web world that would be the same thing right like everyone have disparate systems like getting all the data and

standardizing it that's one challenge but the other things which we have run into is like we have this goal of putting it all on chain and um as much as there are like infrastructure companies like for like building onchain applications we still have some ways to go for us like initially when we started Gap we were like oh let's just put all of this data on chain and then we're like the gas costs even on l2s were like very high I was like oh man like what do we do now so like write to ipfs store the ipfs hash on the Chain um so we did this whole dance around this and then thanks to um once ethereum had the um 4844 The Blob which helped all the l2s

so the costs are now like so much more reasonable so we're like you know what let's just put forget ipfs forget everything we'll just put everything on chain now so we started putting everything on chain I was like this is great it's working and then um I was talking to one of the trustful engineers and he's like oh I want to access this data on the smart contract directly I was like oh man like uh you need to do all this parsing and that's going to cost like lot of gas I'm like okay so now we need to we were like brainstorming and trying to figure out like what's an efficient way to store it and so it's easy to access I'm like okay we're building all this why doesn't this exist like like as blockchain applications like like evolving and

moving beyond just defy applications and like there's a lot of other things I'm like this is like a piece of infrastructure like someone should build or like we'll do something and then we'll probably open source it and others can adopt it um so data on chain and uh there are other lot of data data related Solutions but if you want to put it on a regular like L2 like optimism arbitrum and things and like kind of access it and be efficient around it I think there's a lot of challenges still there um we're working through those but um so that's I think that's like the I would say is the biggest technical challenge at least like we are dealing with right now you want to chime in on that Danny yeah just a quick comment is it's it's

funny because not funny it's tragic like first problem uh gas costs okay so let's move to a layer two yeah but I want this in another layer two oh another problem cross chain um so we are dealing with many many problems uh we are dealing with new EOS system so and I think we have a lot of work to do also in um on having a portable um reputation so I can have my reputation on aritro and take this reputation to optimism or to another chain to main add so yeah we're going to face a lot of a lot of problems that is really a really good point because um today like uh for example Gap is deployed on multiple chains because

like all the chains they want to use their they want want to use gap on their chain so we like yeah we'll make it multiprotocol right but then as a you as a grantee you want your reputation in one place now like how do you how do you do that like you can't pick a chain um for a type of application like you are building then you are like we are building like it has to be like multi-chain right so now like how can you do like cross messaging that system hasn't it hasn't matured so now we are doing this like keeping replicas of the data across different chains like doing it optimistically uh we're putting all

these Band-Aid Solutions um because we don't have the resources to go solve that problem like hopefully at some point like if no one does like we have to but that is an excellent point like there are a lot of applications which has to like which have to be cross chain like how do you make it happen even for example like Alo protocol right Alo protocol is deployed on like so many chains and um you can aggregate all of the data of chain but I don't think like one there is like cross-chain communication even in Alo um well maybe it's not required I don't know but um yeah it's a same for many applications thinking of like a perspective of a builder for example think that I'm a

builder imagine that I'm a builder own optimism and now I want to build on a but I'm really really very new on a so I would need to Builder reputation from zero on arit but I'm already a builder on optimism how can I say hey arit look that this kind of onchain data here this is my own chain reputation I'm a good Builder you can trust my address so here goes everything I did on optimism this is my address you need to trust my address you can fund my address and I will build on arit so U this is will also this Cross organization um cross chain uh stuff will also mitigate political uh stuff like when you Joy a new D when you join a new ecosystem and think oh my god let's go I need to make

friends here I need to create contacts here I need to BU again and again and again here to prove that I'm good enough um but I I I I can just bring my reputation if possible it could be good yeah what I'm hearing from you both is the challenge is building on chain and the opportunity is building on chain right like to your comment earlier you know mesh around uh even in web 2 systems right I mean the big difference is now that all of this can be on chain you have you know the ability for these systems to build on top of each other and it all to be done in kind of like an open you know open source way right which isn't always the approach in web 2 but that creates a lot of challenges around compatibility you know maybe it's the best way to put it and you know how

these these different uh chains and the data on them and you know all those types of things can ultimately reconcile you know one question I have for both of you is and and I'm assuming the answer is like an emphatic yes here but do you worry about the design decisions you're making today and those creating technical debt for you tomorrow right in terms of like how these systems are being built you know mahes you mentioned you know you kind of like hinted at some tradeoffs that you have to make some Band-Aids that you have to put in place today how are you thinking about that problem right because ultimately you want to get to a place that you don't have technical debt that you're working down I think a lot of that exists and web 3 but certainly web two right but

how do you think through those things in terms of like am I making the right decision today that won't make my my life tomorrow much harder right that's a really good question and that is the one of the highest priority like top of our mind when we are designing these systems I'm fairly confident these problems will be solved so the way we are architecting our system is like um how do we build these abstractions in a way that we can like swap out these things when the right solution comes WR right the problem like with having all this data on chain is if you have to like re architect like if it was a database like a regular web to like a postest database or something like okay like change the schemas change

the models and Port like just copy all the data and like you're good but in onchain you're like well are going to like rewrite the whole thing to the chain again like what's how much cost is it going to be right so there are some of those challenges so we we are trying to like make it as generic the if you think of like layers of like a software architecture like if you're building it in layers this you to build these simple components and then they you put together and then build complex systems so we are making sure that these simple building blocks which we're building is like it's very very generic and simple and easily swapped out um but at the same time it does make me nervous sometimes like if a really

amazing solution comes along um at at this point it's we are only a year into the system we can bite the bullet and like rip out the whole system and do it again but in a year or two um if we are in the same Band-Aid situation that will be like worrisome I would say before I kind of ask Danny the same question um maybe when you look at the road map you know for evm and just what would need to be enabled to um kind of like allow you to take the next step and and remove some of those Band-Aids and architect and you know kind of like the a preferred way is there specific examples you can give in terms of you know if certain features or functionality could

be unlocked within the next 6 to 12 months like what would your wish list look like that way and you know what would that enable for you yeah so two things come to mind one is let's say just if we just break it up into like a a front-end user experience and a back in like like a Builders who are building all this and managing this data wrangling and doing this um on the back end if there is a very nice cross-chain communication right like optimism speaks to arbitrum talks to zync right like if such system exists then we don't have to um have these multiple replica copies across These Chains like that'll just clean up our system like so much like just as an engineer I would be like so

thrilled like if we can make that happen I know there are solutions being worked on I don't know if it is production ready yet so that's one on the back end and on the front end I think it's mostly a solved problem with the um account abstraction and things we want to get to a place where today if you go into Gap you to connect your wallet and you're like for every transaction you're paying gas you're switching to the right Network we want to abstract away all of those and make it a web2 experience that I think we are we are there like privy and capsule there are all these wallets which can provide you this um like like the coinbase has this um uh solution I think that is almost solved but if if once the um like for me like

what I'm really looking forward to is on the back end like cross chain communication that'll solve so many of our interesting who are the players in the space that are working on that today right like um that you know of so socket um socket protocol I think that's one I keep seeing on Twitter I haven't sat down and like actually um looked at their solution or if it'll solve our problem that's one which comes to mind um there are a few other I'm blanking on the names there are like couple of cross-chain messaging systems I just don't know how production ready they are so Danny over to you the the same question right Tech dead how

much does it scare you how are you designing around that you know to make sure that the decisions you make today don't bite you tomorrow right and then from a roadmap perspective of you know evm and all the systems that kind of support the work that you're doing what your wish list look like that way in terms of if only this type of functionality could be unlocked it would really um you know help the types of things that you're building that's a really great great question my biggest worry right now um is to build a product what what do I mean like I don't want to build a product that says um I'm working on resarch allocation I'm working on social graph I want to build a protocol I'm worried about the protocol what this

protocol does this protocol has Badges scarter and an is so that's the reputation in this aggregator so all I want right now is to build dis agregator oh but how this community is going to use that I don't know they can choose let the community build the product let the community builds that I I don't want to to choose the best goal of this this this protocol right now now because I don't want to close and make it Ned because as as far as I know like most of the reputation protocols and uh reputation products that we have today are very niched so social graphs or I don't know only focus on Identity or engagement so I want to build an aggregator in the D and the communities

can use um whatever they they they want to do with that I try to build baby steps you know okay now badges to aggregate reputation to Grants program now I score one to5 because one to5 is is the review mode now iser um what should be the next step here so now I think the next step should be connect the reputation of a member um to the reputation of a grand program um okay next step how can we do like across a chain across organization stuff so one step a Time listen to the community listen to the what what what do they want so and then I'm I'm building at a baby steps basically that totally

totally so um philosophically there are like we have gone the other way uh from what Danny was saying um I'm sure there's like there are different ways to approach these problems right philosophically our approach is um we didn't want to just build the protocol for example Gap right like we we didn't want to just build the protocol and like hey guys like just use it the way you want it we we took a another approach where we not only want to build the protocol but we want to build the application on top of it like let's dog food our own protocol and then build this application for a specific problem which is what like when you go on Gap website like that's the application

underlying is the protocol and then now we're seeing this ecosystem of like other people integrating trying to do other things with the protocol so it's it's interesting like we started with a very opinionated way of like yes this protocol like does this like and this is how we are using it and we want to really solve our own protocol and then we'll evolve the protocol to other one it's just just a a philosophical difference I know like both types have worked um people take different approaches it's just like our approach interesting yeah it's cool to see the the difference there for sure that's a good segue actually into the next question um walk us through Gap right like if if I'm a builder and I'm being asked by a grant program we're seeing

more and more of that at gitcoin we want you to create a gap profile we want you to track your Milestones you know U maybe walk us through exactly what what that functionality looks like today what that Builder Journey you know looks like and you know what you see that road map um hopefully looking like over sa the next six months yeah it's it's so nice to see a lot of grant program starting to use Gap and asking granes to like like use Gap like to create their profile the way I think about Gap from a grantee point of view is it's their um onchain resume like there's a project on on chain resume right so what is the resume used for like for a person like the resume is to you can go get a job you can like get funding those things for project it's it's uh two things one

is you get you can apply for funding like you build up your reputation you have your resume which can be used uh which the grand program operators can see see all your work and then you are accepted into a round or like you get funding and um the second thing is distribution so all of this data is on chain we have lot of other integrators like pulling all these project information showing on their websites all these projects on our website you can see all these projects so any project to succeed you need funding and you need distribution so we want to like provide both of those we want to enable those those two uh two things funding and distribution and the way we think of

like we do that is today the just to go into the weeds a little bit of how Gap works is you set up your project profile and then if you are like participated in a gitcoin round we would automatically sync that gitcoin data into our system um you don't even have to do anything so it automatically gets ported over so you simply log in and you see like okay I was part of gg20 round or gg21 round and then you can just go uh create Milestones of what you plan to accomplish with the funding you have received d i' turn it over to you for the same question right um walk us through trustful you know like what what it is today you know what the current

working model looks like maybe um the example with the the cartographers and what we built for the registry um and then just kind of your vision and the road map for that here in the next six months trustful is a aggregation uh aggregator um I like to call trustful attestation ler we work using uh e attestation service e very very nice so um we work um issuing badges uh reputation badges to now grant program to cartographers we have a live version working on the village of Georgia also so if you had a good conversation at the Village Georgia I can is a badge for you saying oh I had a good conversation with s or um mahash changed my mind so you you can aggregate those kind of badges

interactive badges um that proves that we interacted um with quality at an event and very nice to aggregate reputation to grant program so U me uh as a a grant a grantee for for example arbital grants I cannot state that arbitral grants um is a nice grant program so I can select uh a smooth application badge or Fair rounds or great viewer and uh choose from one to five so and then we get average average score for each wom's program so um each grantee can go there and aestate a reputation and create a reputation for any grants program so if

you are grantee of the optimism for example grant program you can go there and say okay I like uh the application was smooth and then the the score is five um that's the the point I'm giving to optimism grants because they're nice and then you can compare uh Grant's program so why we can bring questions now we can bring up questions why for example optimism grants has a higher score or is withth application why AIT grants has a higher score on great heat viewers and then BR program can enhance that and all those data all this kind of data is is completely on chain next to six month incentives because if I am a

grantee why um why why do I want to Avail create reputation for this Grand program I'm not going to do that you know so work on incentives of course we're going to have members that want to do that want to help to improve this ecosystem but for sure we need to work on incentives to make grantees to create toate to to give a reputation to grant program ZK or all the Privacy to I think would be very very important because me you know as a guantee I want toate a reputation for a grant program but I don't want them to see that I give them like one a score of one on a smooth application because I want to apply again in the future so next to six months completely focused on uh

incentives and privacy too awesome no it's awesome so the next kind of topic I want to move on to is kind of like future Trends and predictions right maybe just talk a little bit about you know we've been very much keeping this conversation around kind of like reputation and grants um but I think it would also be good to dive into um kind of like both of your thoughts on the the concept of reputation and like what other you know aspects of kind of like the greater crypto ecosystem is this applicable to right I mean the first one that comes to mind for me is a governance right and so maybe mesh like I'll start with you like if you had to give me like a top one or two you know places where you think reputation could have a huge impact outside of Grants

like what would those be in why because I've worked on the the governance tooling and the governance product for a for a couple years now um I think that is ripe for um this kind of change now I think it was still kind of immature now it's maturing the governance ecosystem is um that that is right off the bat like yes like um you can do um token based token holder like voting power based on like the tokens you hold or based on like the reputation right so I think at least people are like starting to think about it to actually um use it in in like in the real world so um governance right off the bat is one and um we haven't touched too much into the

the Civil uh there's a lot of use cases right like what for quadratic funding or like for other places where like you kind of need a proof of personhood the way people have solved today like everyone is taking different approaches but like purely based on the reputation where you're like actually looking at the real things you have done like someone actually received a grant and actually buil something like you have AC reputation can you like use that data in like something else like when you're are like airdropping tokens to someone for your new project like can you use that instead of like things which you can easily game like some GitHub commits or like onchain transactions right so

that's how I see this evolving as you get like real high quality data that acts as a reputation for like doing a lot of other things the vitalic quote right the scarcest uh thing is legitimacy you know something like that you know being able to prove that right um what are your thoughts there Danny you know top if you had to give me kind of a top one or two places that this could be useful in other spots yeah same I love this air drop use case I love the governance use case uh voting power so for example you can have like BYO Dow so one treasure um people can vote by using reputation and then another treasure people can vote using token tokens it also can mitigate photogra I love this us case as well so I don't have much

voting power but I have a nice reputation in that now so I can have a multiplier on my voting power oh I have 2,000 tokens but I have 15 reputation score so it can be a multiplier and my voting power can increase in that doubt uh to heward good members to heward good contributors also quadratic funding using reputation uh a matching po uh I would love to see this use case yeah many many many of them um particularly very very happy I'll be very very happy to see one using voting power reputation based M day yeah I can Envision that in the future I can see also gr programs U with reputation so

okay this gr program never replied me before so I would never apply to that again so or this Grand program is really cool it's really nice and you cannot state that we this Grand programs really generate impact in the the ecosystem because this Grand program is rewarding to builders and we can have like favorite change to builders favorite chain to embrace developers because they have a high reputation so yeah when when you talk about repetition really broad because a concept that can Embrace many many use cases many many protocols and dabs yeah I think that's it reputation means consider again in Latin is hypothetic rethink consider again so I'd

love to see we considering new members even though they don't have like a high U voting power or a high politician skills in this ecosystem interesting um one question I want to ask both of you is AI lolms and um how you see that being something to design around what are the opportunities that those present as well as the challenges right when I think about kind of like systems being built around reputation many of these are very much based on um you know having individuals that would pass a touring test that can attest their experiences that they've had right um or

the work that they've done and as we get to a place now that machines are passing that daily I was playing around this morning with you know the newest model of chat GPT I've been a big Claude fan um for a long time now but as I played around with I think it's called 4i it's incredible you know just the progress that's been made in the last you know nine months around these systems and you think about what the next nine months are going to look like I mean it's wild right and so you know I'm sure that's something both of you are thinking about maybe starting with you mahes like um ailm like how do you see that impacting the work you're doing at Karma and just kind of like you know broader in the space just around reputation and what are the

opportunities and like the risks that we have around that this is like on top of my mind and yeah I was looking I was looking yesterday on the four 401 uh the new models and the things they can do and I cannot even imagine in the next year how good these models are going to be we are already starting to see some of these um I see the both the opportunity and the challenge right so when I talk to program operators they are receiving lot of AI generated applications oh yeah so how do you determine like who is actually like legit and who is like what is going on there right so that's one thing which we're really trying Sol with like these Gap profile like if someone is actually verified and they got funding and they

actually executed that record is on chain so you automatically kind of have some credibility right so you can use that or and in our system like when people create these milestones and like post updates on those Milestones sometimes like you can see that it's been like like are they using llm just so they're to make it more concise and more it more elaborate or are they like just randomly generating it right we are going to like we're starting to see it here and there but it's going to only going to get worse so we are already like putting other things around it like shows the output what is the impact like how can we track your impact right like some

things cannot be faked so we are doing some of those so um yeah both from our point of view like both grant program managers and the granes um it can be used for both and the thing I'm really excited about is for example there's like a gitcoin round let's say they bring in they have 100 projects they funded 100 projects had on average three Milestones there's 300 Milestones program managers don't have the time to like evaluate these 300 Milestones so now we just started integrating some of these llm tools to like Auto evaluate this like can you go look at the proof and then figure this out so that is like

really an exciting part of the some of these things um so there's like some challenges but lot of these opportunities which to take this Democratic funding allocation there's so many things you need to solve llms will play such a big role like the thing which we are really starting with I'm excited about this is automatic Milestone evaluation like go figure go look at the proof figure it out and like come back and tell me if they actually did it like applies for digital but yeah there's so many other ideas I have but like yeah like this is something I'm excited about what about you Danny what what do you see that way that that's nice mahes um mentioned this Milestone on completion form of form of

uh check with with AI we can do even like a pre Ju Just a comment I never thought about Ai and reputation before I have a lot of things things to think so this is a new a new uh Topic in my head but I was thinking of um pre-application you know so you can apply to gr and AI can check your your application say oh this application doesn't have nothing common with the the that you're applying so this application is about gaming we are not accepting um gaming applications right now so um and you can give the the grants uh viewers less context so they would only evaluate they only accept

applications that are available to that Community or that down so I think this is very very nice um this idea brought from AI delegate block face building AI delegate also you give an AI um a bias you give an AI the Dow Constitution and Des going is going to vote on to proposals and save the D so if an attack is happening this this AI will will read the down cons Constitution say no this this is a malal malicious so it also can happen with uh grants program so uh II can read all the applications and select the best ones or the ones that has something in common

with that Community with that down with that gr program so it's a way to to give gr your last context and make viers apply to the right right grads program as well totally yeah this is something we we started you know working on in gitcoin with Checker and um we built just a basic kind of MVP of that tool and it's been really cool to see especially for you know programs that are operating at scale it makes it U much easier for them to do at least a first pass and kind of have like a partner you know that is a reviewer and when we built that we were using one of the earlier chat GPT you know open AI kind of AI models right and so we had even talked about the ability to build these tools in such a way that you could

plug in multiple apis right or multiple different llms where you could have Claude as a reviewer open AI as a reviewer you know a llama as a reviewer because each of those are going to have their own perspectives and way of kind of thinking through things and you know ultimately you know to the point we've kind of like intimated about here around almost like agents right where these agents are just interfacing with you know each other I think that there's ways that you know in the not too distant future you would be able to build almost a an totally AI llm Grant Council and so for many Grant programs in the space today um they have a single Grant manager or they have you know a fairly small team that's handling kind

of operations of Grants and so if there was some way that you know that one Grant manager Grant reviewer could be empowered by a grant Council you know of three or four members that are all agents with their own perspectives and kind of like data um you know Associated to them I think that that could be you know interesting so that's definitely you know a place that I'm kind of seeing things go so we're we're coming up on time this has been like a really interesting space it's apparent from the conversation here that we are just getting started on the reputation side of things you know as we look to build things on chain there's a lot of opportunity around that but obviously some pretty you know big design considerations to make sure that the decisions that you're making today and how you're implementing these systems

you know don't come back toid us um tomorrow you know and there's lots of opportunities in you know how these systems can be interoperable play with one another learn from one another and then maybe be you know fueled right by Ai llm and some of these other innovations that are happening you know just across technology in general so I thank you both for the time you know it's been great to talk with you both and uh looking forward to seeing the the reception from this episode yeah excited thanks for having me thanks for having me very glad to be here talking speaking about reputation my favorite topic so far yeah thanks let's good we still need to to know FL reputation means so thank you both oh