Impact Certificates (Hypercerts)

TL;DR:

Impact Certificates and Hypercerts are tools for retroactively rewarding public goods. They serve as proof of contribution, enabling funders to support impactful work after it happens—and giving builders a way to get paid without up-front grants.

These mechanisms flip the funding model: instead of paying for promises, they let contributors create verifiable claims about what they’ve already done. These claims can then be evaluated, bought, funded, or held as impact-bearing assets.

• Impact Certificates: A general term for tokens that represent completed impactful work. Often tradable or used in funding rounds.
• Hypercerts: A standardized, open-source format developed by Protocol Labs and the Hypercerts Foundation. Hypercerts include details like who did what, for whom, when, and how much impact was created. They are non-fungible and can be fractionalized, forming a backbone for impact attribution markets.

Both models enable:

• Retroactive funding rounds (e.g. RetroPGF)
• Impact investors to speculate on valuable public goods work
• Communities to fund verified work that aligns with shared goals
• Contributors to receive recognition and value after the work is done

When plugged into ecosystems like Allo Protocol, Impact Certificates can power trust-based, signal-driven, and composable funding flows.

Best For

• Public goods ecosystems
• Retroactive grantmaking
• Attribution markets
• Tracking and rewarding long-term contributors

Good At

1. Enabling funding after impact is created
2. Creating transparent records of who did what
3. Aligning funding with verified outcomes
4. Allowing for trade, speculation, or curation of impactful work

Dependencies / Requirements

• A standard or schema for creating impact claims (e.g. Hypercerts)
• Trusted evaluators or marketplaces (or funders using certificates as input)
• Smart contracts for issuance, trading, and metadata storage
• Optional synergies with quadratic funding, retro PGF, or commitment systems

Not Good At

• Upfront funding needs
• Situations where impact is hard to define or verify
• Low-trust environments without evaluation norms
• Simple one-off grants (may be overkill)

Who Should Use It?

• DAOs or foundations running retro funding programs
• Contributors who want recognition beyond token payments
• Public goods funders looking for attribution and transparency
• Builders experimenting with impact marketplaces or long-term funding flows

Example Use Cases

• A contributor mints a Hypercert for a successful community coordination campaign; it’s later funded in a RetroPGF round
• An impact fund buys certificates from multiple contributors to reward open-source projects
• A public goods coalition uses Impact Certificates to track and reward work done across different ecosystems, forming a reputation ledger