Trust Connections in Your Feed
When you scroll through your feed, you'll see small badges next to the name of the person who posted each request. These are **trust connection badges** — they tell you how this person is connected to
Trust Connections in Your Feed
When you scroll through your feed, you'll see small badges next to the name of the person who posted each request. These are trust connection badges — they tell you how this person is connected to you through your community network.
Why Does This Matter?
Mutual aid works best between people who have some connection — even an indirect one. Knowing that "this person was helped by Alex, who you've worked with" is meaningfully different from responding to a request from a complete stranger.
Karmyq makes these invisible social connections visible so you can make more informed decisions about when and how to help.
Reading the Badges
🔗 Direct connection
Green badge. You and this person have directly completed an exchange together. You already know each other.
🤝 Connected through [Name]
Blue badge. You have a mutual connection — someone who has helped both of you. One step removed.
👥 Connected through [Name] → [Name]
Gray badge. Two steps removed. You share a network connection but haven't had a direct exchange.
🏘 Fellow member of [Community]
Purple badge. You're both active members of the same community. You haven't exchanged yet, but you've both been welcomed into the same space. This badge names the community, never a person — there's no individual route between you to show.
🤝 Joined through [Name]
Yellow badge. This person joined the community through the same invitation tree as you.
No Badge?
If a request has no trust badge, no connection was found within 3 degrees of separation. This can happen with very new members or in large communities where the exchange graph is still growing.
How Connections Are Built
Every time you complete an exchange with someone, a trust connection is created. These connections spread outward: your connections' connections become your 2° network, and so on. The more you participate, the more people will see a trust badge when your name appears in their feed.
What Each Label Really Means
We're careful that a badge never claims more than what actually happened. Each label maps to one specific kind of truth:
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| Direct exchange connection | You completed a help exchange together (1°). |
| Indirect exchange path | You're linked through completed exchanges, 2–3 steps away. |
| Fellow community member | You're both active members of the same community — no exchange implied yet. |
| Invitation connection | You joined through the same accepted-invitation lineage. |
| Shared provider/community context | A provider you both actively share a community with — not a completed exchange. |
Trust paths are platform-wide. A real exchange counts no matter which community it happened in, so the same connection shows up wherever you see that person. The badge's strength (and any Karma shown along the path) reflects your current community context, but the connection itself doesn't disappear when you switch communities. See ADR-077 for the full model.