Astral is a multidisciplinary team of KERNEL Fellows investigating opportunities at the intersection of Web3 and spatial data technologies to improve measures of human dignity and planetary stewardship. We believe that innovations at the convergence of these technologies might enable new, durable tools and mechanisms to re-align human and organizational incentives towards social and environmental objectives.
- Decentralized spatial finance applications could tie financial incentives to pro-environmental results for firms or reward individuals for preserving ecological health.
- Enclave computing could disrupt conventional theories of interstate cooperation, and trusted IoT could play a part in creating robust maritime governance systems, including - sanctions enforcement.
- Smart contracts could enable a global system for the coordination of autonomous vehicles.
Our aim is to understand the intricacies and challenges of this field, and make our learnings available by publishing our research and development efforts. We intend to take both theoretical and applied approaches, researching the technical, social, political and economic factors relating to these technologies, and building functional prototypes to assess the feasibility of identified solutions.