Trust in times of AI
Open infrastructure for
funding valuable work
Hypercerts is an open protocol to connect projects with those who review them, vouch for them, and back them, creating the trust it takes to fund what matters.
The challenge today
The same questions,
asked over and over
From community land regeneration and local energy to journalism and AI safety research, valuable work depends on the people doing it being able to explain it, and the people funding it being able to judge it.
Today that work is repeated for every funding decision. The friction takes time away from the work itself, and what one round learns rarely reaches the next.
The same problem, two sides
For projects
Every funder asks for the same story in a different form. Applications, updates, and reports are rewritten for systems that do not talk to each other, and the record built for one funder rarely counts with the next.
For funders
Finding promising work and judging it well is expensive. Earlier reviews, local knowledge, certifications, and past funding decisions exist, but they sit with other organizations, so each assessment starts from scratch.
Why now · The emerging challenge
Information is cheap to produce,
and expensive to verify
A strong application is no longer a strong signal
With AI, a polished application takes minutes to write, so it no longer shows whether the project behind it does good work. Funders need evidence from outside the application: what the project has done, and what the people who know its work say about it.
AI is moving into funding decisions
Tools that screen applications, rank projects, and brief decision-makers judge from whatever data they can reach. Whoever holds that data sets the terms: if project records sit in closed databases, the owner of the database decides which work gets seen.
The infrastructure for AI-guided funding is being built today. It must be open, not owned by platforms.
The opportunity
The knowledge is there.
Let’s make it visible and trustworthy
Communities, experts, evaluators, certifiers, and funders already hold useful information about projects, but much of it is scattered or hidden. Hypercerts makes that knowledge visible and shows who contributed it, so others can reuse it in later funding decisions instead of recreating it for every process.
One project, many signals
Trust builds over time
A project starts with little to show. As the work goes on, others add to its public record: the team posts an update, a peer vouches for it, a funder records its support. Each addition lowers the cost of the next decision about the project.
1Project updates
The team reports what it has done and attaches evidence of the work, as often as there is progress.
2Third-party attestations
Others vouch for the work, depending on the impact area:
- Peer endorsement
- Community evaluation
- Impact data / certifications
- Expert assessment
3Funding records
Funders record their support and, if they choose, the reasons behind it.
The Hypercerts protocol
A shared language to make
project information reusable
The Hypercerts protocol gives project information a common format, so it can be reused across applications and agents. Lexicons, usage guidance, and supporting infrastructure work together to make that possible.
Projects and organizations
Publish profiles, progress updates, and evidence about their work.
Networks
Publish memberships, badges, and endorsements.
Evaluators and certifiers
Contribute certifications and assessments with supporting evidence.
Funders
Use others’ assessments alongside their own, and record support for the work.
Case study · Ma Earth
Coordinating regenerative funding
with Ma Earth
Ma Earth combined project-owned data, partner review, crowdfunding, and matching to support 201 regenerative projects with almost $2.2M.
- Projects supported
- 201
- Combined funding
- $2.2M
Ma Earth · Round 3
Over a three-week campaign, crowdfunders backed the projects they believed in, each donation a trust signal from donor to project. Those signals determined how $1M in matching funds was distributed.
Bottom-up signals from a community that knows these projects keep due diligence costs down, making it possible to move funds to many small projects.
Today’s use · Tomorrow’s possibilities
Information economy
done right
Start with crowdfunding with matching funds. Over time, shared information about valuable work supports more ways to allocate resources, from bounties to investing, commerce, and procurement.
Today
In use
- Crowdfunding with matching funds
Crowdfunding signals determine distribution of matching funds.
Possible next
Potential extensions
- Outcome payments
- Prize competitions
- Milestone bounties
Shared evidence from many sources informs payments for results.
Future
Possibilities to explore
- Impact investing
- Commerce
- Procurement
Investment, purchasing, and contracting decisions draw on the same impact and trust signals.
For builders
Build on records
that outlast any single app
Hypercerts records live on AT Protocol, in repositories their authors control. Any compatible application can read a project, its evidence, the assessments attached to it, and the funding it has received, without asking a platform for permission.
The Guide explains the data model and the shared rules behind it, so what your application writes is understood by everyone else on the network. Start with the concepts, then move on to integration examples and the lexicon reference.
What the Guide covers
Start here
What Hypercerts is, why it builds on AT Protocol, and how the protocol and infrastructure fit together.
Core data model
Activities and contributions, projects and collections, actors, evidence and assessments, trust relationships, and funding records.
Common usage
The shared rules that let independent applications interpret the same records in the same way.
What we choose to fund
shapes the future we create
The Hypercerts Collective
Built by a network, for a network
The Hypercerts Foundation stewards the protocol with builders, funders, evaluators, researchers, and domain partners. Their work shapes the shared language and infrastructure.
Hypercerts Foundation
Protocol development, research, and open infrastructure.
Ma Earth
Regenerative land projects and real funding rounds.
GainForest
Conservation evidence, field tools, and project applications.
Protocol Labs
Research into new approaches to public goods funding.
Octant
Community-driven funding for public goods.
Silvi
Tree-planting records, reporting, and geospatial evidence.
Regen Foundation
Ecological regeneration and community governance.
Funding the Commons
Connecting people building and funding public goods.
Get up to date
Articles, podcasts, and talks
The Moment is Ripe for Hypercerts
Hypercert on AT Protocol: Rewriting How We Recognize and Reward Value Creation
Rewiring the Commons: Hypercerts on AT Protocol
Kickstarting impact funding with hypercerts
A new protocol for funding and rewarding positive impact
Get involved
Let’s build this
together
We work with funders, networks, certifiers, communities, and builders. Bring a funding program, a certification process, or a need to follow the work your organization supports.
The Hypercerts Foundation
An independent nonprofit stewarding the protocol, maintaining open infrastructure, and helping organizations participate.