GEOstatus

Inspiration

We were inspired by Secondlife and Decentraland, but humanity acts on the real world mainly, reason why we decided to focus on Augmenting the planet and transform it into a smart market.

What it does

SUBJECT

Augmented Reality and Blockchain

TARGET PROBLEM

Squat the world, augment it, make it accessible, make it "smart", create communities, communicate and transact via map.

INVOLVED TECH

Ethereum + ENS + Status + Aragon = Unstoppable Augmented Reality!

DESCRIPTION

Step 1: SQUAT THE WORLD

Imagine the world, imagine to split it with a grid into plots. Each plot refers to a standard coordinates set defined by the grid resolution. Example plot coordinates: 44°32'7.6"N 11°32'1.64"E

We all love the ENS and the way you squat domain names (domain names are strings).

Now let's transform a plot coordinates into a string:

44°32'7.6"N11°32'1.64"E ---> 0443207N0113201E

We are now ready to exploit the ENS ledger as official squatting layer for the world!

0443207N0113201E ---> 0443207n0113201e.eth

This will incentivate the use of ENS, and ENS will grant unique ownership (and all the squatting tech needed!)

Step 2: AUGMENTING THE WORLD WITH STATUS

Whenever you click on a plot, by referring to the coordinates you can open the related Status channel.

Example https://get.status.im/chat/public/44°32'7.6"N11°32'1.64"E

This grid/squatting strategy allows to transform Status into a geography based chatting system.

Use cases:

A) You want to contact the owner of a plot, you click on the map, you open the related Status channel and you make a deal chatting in real time.

B) You are a journalist, there is an earthquake on the other side of the world, you reach it via map, and you can interact with the locals via Status.

C) You walk around the world, and you can talk with all people in that plot in real time.

Step 3: MAKE THE WORLD "SMART"

Once you squat a plot you can apply a smart contract to the related ENS record.

This opens infinte possibilities.

Use cases:

A) Ask money to third party for publishing in your plot (text, links, feeds, 3D object, dapps...)

B) Ask money for adding virtual layers

C) Split the plot into subplots and sell/rent-out the parcels

By default the business will be made with DAI, squatters can decide to use custom tokens.

Step 4: CREATE COMMUNITIES

Once you own a plot you can tokenize it!

Use cases:

A) tokenize the plot and make it ruled by a DAO via the newly created token

B) create an utility token to rule activities inside the plot, may they be real activities or virtual

FURTHER TRICKS

Use Status extensions to facilitate deals and interaction between users/travellers and plot owners.

How we built it

We built it from scratch, using html+js+openstreetmap, relying on ENS and Status as referring technology

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was to approach the mapping problem. There has been discussions during the last 24 centuries about how to map the world. The first prototype uses Mercator projection, but we plan to split the world as suggested by Buckminster Fuller (dodecahedron), because Mercator focuses on inhabithed areas, while our idea can be extended to the moon and to mars and beyond.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are happy to "hack" ENS in its semantics, extending its use to world squatting. The second accomplishment is to transform Status into a geography based chatting system. The third one is to tokenize spaces and allow creating various business models and investment strategies.

What we learned

We learnt how many possibilities are in front of us! Scientists use to say: when you measure something you unavoidably change it. We measure the world and we deeply change it with augmented reality!