Episode 235 - Karma - Funding Impact Without the Chaos: Onchain Attestations, Reputation, & Sustainable Web3 Funding

For episode 235, we’re excited to welcome Mahesh Murthy, Founder of Karma, a platform helping ecosystems fund projects in the open, and helping builders turn real work into reputation that sticks. We explore what’s broken in crypto funding, why reputation portability is essential for builders, how their Grantee Accountability Protocol (GAP) and onchain attestations shift trust dynamics, and what it looks like when funding becomes more than capital, and starts becoming real coordination infrastructure for long-term growth.

You’ll learn:

• 🧩 Why impact funding is so confusing and messy, and what it takes to build funding rails that are transparent, scalable, and actually accountable
• 🧾 How “portable, onchain résumés” and reputation portability could change the game for builders moving across ecosystems
• ✅ What it looks like when progress, trust, and credibility are earned through real work that is backed by onchain attestations
• 🤖 And how AI can help speed things up behind the scenes, without losing the human judgment needed to fund responsibly

‍--Key Takeaways--

🌀 Grant funding is broken by friction, not intention: For builders, grant programs often mean endless applications, reporting overhead, and context-switching, time that could be spent actually building. For funders, it’s slow and opaque. And for communities, it’s nearly impossible to follow along. The result is a system where everyone is overwhelmed, impact is delayed, and efficiency suffers across the board.

🔗 Onchain attestations unlock a shared layer of trust for Web3: By anchoring milestones, progress updates, and endorsements onchain, attestations create a verifiable, composable trust layer for the Ethereum ecosystem.

🎒 Portable reputation is foundational to sustainable ecosystem growth: Builders shouldn’t have to start from zero every time they move between ecosystems. A unified, onchain reputation layer allows teams to own their impact history, prove their work, and carry credibility with them.

--Full shownotes with links available at--
https://www.cryptoaltruists.com/blog/crypto-altruists-episode-235-karma-funding-impact-without-the-chaos-onchain-attestations-reputation-sustainable-web3-funding

Thank you to PIPE gDAO for sponsoring the Crypto Altruism podcast!

PIPE gDAO is leveraging blockchain for their University Real World Asset IP Launchpad that helps bring groundbreaking ideas from lab to market.

--Support us with a Fiat or Crypto contribution--
Learn more at https://www.cryptoaltruists.com/about/support

--DISCLAIMER--
While we may discuss specific web3 projects or cryptocurrencies on this podcast, do not take any of this as investment advice and make sure to do your own research on potential investment opportunities, or any opportunity, before making an investment. We host a variety of guests on this podcast with the sole purpose of highlighting the social impact use cases of this technology. That being said, Crypto Altruism does not endorse any of these projects, and we recognize that, since this is an emerging sector, some may be operating in regulatory grey areas, and as such, we cannot confirm their legality in the jurisdictions in which they operate, especially as it pertains to decentralized finance protocols. So, before getting involved with any project, it’s important that you do your own research and confirm the legality of the project. More info at cryptoaltruists.com/disclaimer