Today we announced our $4.5M seed round to build OpenRank - a decentralized reputation protocol. Using OpenRank, developers and web3 protocols can power consumer apps, communities and marketplaces with an open ranking and recommendation layer.

Creating safe and engaging consumer experiences in web3 is hard. And it's not just because of 'UX problems'. Developers have to navigate through the motivations of users, the utility users want and their revealed preferences — when data is open and on-chain, yet very noisy.

Reputation serves as a key form of trust and coordination signal across various communities.

Social media platforms are our modern town squares -- they are where ideas are debated, relationships formed, and communities cultivated. But right now, these digital civic spaces are owned entirely by corporations, with all of the predictable consequences: from recommendations algorithms that reward clickbait to moderation practices that benefit advertisers.

NFT Collection rankings based on social consensus, using on-chain data and verifiable compute

Research suggests that the average adult makes upward of 35,000 decisions each day, and 226.7 alone on just food. Think about how you pick which restaurant you want to eat at, what stock to invest in, which of the thousands of options on Amazon you’ll compare before purchasing. The problem we face today is not the lack of options, but the abundance of them and along with it, an overwhelming amount of information that causes decision fatigue when we try to make the right decisions, regardless of how big or small they are.

Karma3 Labs is building an open reputation protocol that uses the EigenTrust algorithm. The protocol enables a ranking and reputation infrastructure for web3 apps and marketplaces, leveraging on-chain data and social attestations.

Almost daily, we rely on people we trust to help us navigate our life choices. When faced with important decisions, the opinion of a trustworthy person or friend is often more credible and valuable than any other source of information.