What is Karma?
What is Karma?
Karma is Karmyq's unit of reciprocity. It's not money, not points — it's a record of your contribution to the community.
The Core Idea
When you help someone in your community, you earn karma. When someone helps you, you spend it. Over time, your karma balance reflects how much you've given versus how much you've received.
This isn't accounting for its own sake. It's a way to make reciprocity visible — to ensure that the people who show up for others are recognized and that the community stays balanced.
How Karma Flows
Karma is not a transfer — it's minted fresh when a match completes. Both the helper and the requester earn karma. Neither loses it.
Earning karma as a helper:
- Accept and complete someone's request
- Show up, fulfill your commitment
Earning karma as a requester:
- Post a request and have it fulfilled
- Asking for and receiving help is itself valued — it sustains the community's exchange economy
The split: Karma earned per match is split between the two parties (typically ~60% to the helper, ~40% to the requester). The exact split is configurable per community.
The balance: Your karma balance reflects how active you've been — giving and receiving. Communities can set karma thresholds for high-effort requests, but a low balance isn't a penalty for asking — it just reflects lower recent participation.
Karma Multipliers
Not all requests are equal. Community founders can set karma multipliers per request type:
- A ride request (requires a car, time, fuel) might have a 1.5x multiplier
- A borrow request (lending an item) might stay at 1.0x — equal exchange
- A specialized service (professional skill) might be 2.0x — higher value, higher reward
This lets communities reflect their own values about what kinds of help they want to encourage.
What Karma Is Not
Not money. You can't cash out karma. You can't buy it. It has no monetary value outside Karmyq.
Not a credit score. A low karma balance doesn't mean you're a bad person — it might just mean you've needed more help than you've given lately.
Not permanent. Karma decays over time if you're inactive. This keeps the system honest — past contributions matter, but recent participation matters more.
Karma Across Communities
Karma is community-scoped. Your karma in your neighborhood community doesn't transfer to a professional circle you also belong to. Each community has its own economy.
This is intentional: different communities value different things.
Why Not Just Use Money?
Money works well for many things. But in mutual aid contexts, it creates problems:
- It prices out people who need help the most
- It creates awkwardness in small communities
- It reduces relationships to transactions
Karma preserves the reciprocal nature of mutual aid without the friction of cash.
What About Professional Services?
Karma is for the mutual aid layer — neighbors helping neighbors. Karmyq also has a neighborhood service layer where local professionals (drivers, handypeople, tutors) list themselves for hire. That layer uses its own trust signal — a provider trust score based on star ratings and completion rate — rather than karma.
The two layers are intentionally separate. Karma is not currency for professional services, and a provider trust score is not a substitute for community karma. Each measures something different.