# The Hyperaware Protocol [![hackmd-github-sync-badge](https://hackmd.io/Nhj67WrvS4GKPHiqMQFtKw/badge)](https://hackmd.io/Nhj67WrvS4GKPHiqMQFtKw) _A spatial governance protocol for connected devices_ 1. [Abstract](#abstract) 2. [Introduction](#introduction) 3. [Design Principles](#principles) - Trustless - Fully decentralized - Self sovereign - Private - Versatile 4. [Roles](#roles) - Zone administrators - Device owners / operators - Validators 5. [System architecture](#architecture) - Connected devices - Spatial validator network - Device owner wallet contracts - Verifiable spatial data registries (GeoDIDs) 6. [Crytoeconomics](#cryptoeconomics) 7. [Ethics](#ethics) 8. [Future](#advanced-topics) 9. [Fin](#conclusion) <h2 id="abstract"> Abstract </h2> copy <h2 id="introduction"> Introduction </h2> Reality is composed of two parallel domains. The physical, manifest reality occupies three-dimensional space, empirically perceived - matter and energy - mass. Physical reality's complement is the informational domain, a conceptual space where ideas, numbers, equations, morals and other conceptual objects exist. Viewing the world as these two parallel components - not two, but two facets of one, for one cannot exist without the other - we have an useful heuristic for describing and understanding our existence. Blockchains exist primarily in the informational domain. They are physical - hard drives are formed of matter, silicon disks or electrical charge stored in solid data (true?) - but they primarily exist virtually, replicated across a consensus network, each storing the _same_ version of state. (Sameness is conceptual: physically, each hard drive is different.) Blockchains and the smart contracts they enable are maturing to present a viable and reliable informational infrastructure on which humanity can depend. Once bootstrapped into existence, it is reasonable to believe that healthy consensus networks with sound cryptoeconomic design will continue to operate according to its protocol, validating blocks of transactions and successfully maintaining a state machine over time. (does this make sense compueter science wise? ) However, blockchains and smart contracts are not, by nature, anchored in physical reality. They are global first. The concept of "cross border transactions" is obvious on Ethereum, for there is no geographic jurisdiction to overcome, no national payments system to navigate, and certainly no ship to transfer physical stores of value on. While this innovation does offer potential to facilitate immense strides forward in the efficiency and justice of our global economic system, fit for the digital age, we wonder: what might be achieved if we could anchor smart contracts to our physical position? Could we replicate the systems of governance we are familiar with - as in, I cross a border and am subject to new policies - using consensus technologies? What risks would this capability present? What opportunities? We propose the Hyperaware Protocol, a spatial governance protocol for connected devices. With Hyperaware, we have designed a fully decentralized and (nearly) trustless system to apply sophisticated policies to a location-enabled connected sensor based on its position in space. Zones and the policies that apply within them are defined by self-sovereign jurisdiction administrators. (what to say about device operators) Hyperaware is designed to function as a planet-scale spatial governance system. Realistically, not all devices will be subject to the same policies or jurisdictions, and various constraints apply depending on the context - public, commerical, military etc. The protocol is designed primarily for public, privacy-preserving consensus networks like the Secrete Network or Oasis, but can be deployed on private blockchain networks or even using centralized validator services. By defining a protocol, however, devices and policy zones could seamlessly interoperate. Our hope is to inspire the research and development that will lead to the adoption of a global system of governance oriented towards protecting and preserving human life and dignity. - Hooghe and Marks <h2 id="design-principles"> Design Principles </h2> To achieve our vision of a secure, just and antifragile system of location-based governance fit for humanity, we have designed a system based on a set of core design principles. We understand that these principles might be flexed based on the requirements of a specific implementation of the Hyperaware Protocol - as this is an open protocol, we cannot control that. However, we urge system developers to deeply consider the ethical implications of their design decisions. ### Trustless Trust is fragile. We all know this - a single small lie can break it, and it can take years to rebuild. While we want to develop systems that promote and engender trust between participants, we cannot rely on it for the systems that govern us. Instead of relying on law and the threat of violence, we choose to rely on code and rationality. By employing technically (i.e. cryptographically) verifiable mechanisms for detecting the position of a device, and strong economic incentives bending the incentive of the individual in alignment with the well-being of the system, we can create a system in which trust is not required, that is infeasible to attack or subvert. ### Fully decentralized To achieve trustlessness, the Hyperaware Protocol is fully decentralized at every point in the protocol stack. We explicitly call out possible points of centralization. These are most notably the GNSS systems that are used to locate a device's position, or the manufacturing systems required to construct such location-enabled devices. We will suggest solutions to contribute to the healthy decentralization of these potential weaknesses in system design. ### Self sovereign We believe that humans should first have the right to self determination (with certain constraints?). In the digital age, this means that our informational selves - our personal information, messages, money etc - belong to us, and we should choose if we want that to be private. In Web3, this is achieved through technical means: asymmetric cryptographic ciphers and digital signatures algorithms mean individuals are empowered to “resist even state level actors” ([Buterin](https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/a-proof-of-stake-design-philosophy-506585978d51) 2016): an informed person can operate as an equal with nation-states and major corporations in cyberspace. The Hyperaware Protocol adopts this philosophy wholeheartedly: all agents in the system are self sovereign. They control their own data and have the option to keep their information private. One interesting aspect of self sovereignty: these systems are most often fundamentally opt-in. Users choose to engage with the system. While we anticipate that in time governments will adopt smart contracts and incorporate these technologies into their identity management systems, we believe that this opt-in characteristic, and its subversion of the threat of violence as a means of enforcing behavioral compliance, is very interesting. ### Private Closely related to self-sovereignty is the need to have the option to _choose_ privacy. Privacy-preserving information technologies are developing rapidly. We are not cryptographers, and privacy protocols for Hyperaware and other location-based decentralized applications will require much further research, but we designed the system to enable our self sovereign users to choose privacy at all points. We also identify areas of further research - such as zero knowledge location proofs - that could expand the potential of this possibility space. ### Versatile We are Web3 natives, dedicated to promoting a vision of a just world "that better preserves the autonomy of the individual" (Buterin 2016) while balancing collective needs. To this end, we have designed Hyperaware to adhere to the above principles. However, we understand that in some contexts they might be flexed based on the requirements of a specific implementation or user group. This is an open protocol, and we cannot control that. We urge system developers to deeply consider the ethical implications of their design decisions. One benefit of this versatility is that that, so long as the different implementations of Hyperaware adhere to the same core protocol, data is interoperable. We see great potential in this as we transition to a connected, interplanetary species partly governed by smart contracts. <h2 id="roles"> Roles </h2> ### Zones ### Devices ### Validators <h2 id="architecture"> System Architecture </h2> ### Edge devices Oracles ### Zone registry - Decentralized back end for cryptographically-verifiable spatial data - IPFS - Arweave - Privacy? - Self sovereignty: Verifiable spatial data registry ### Spatial validation Network on contract running on scalable general smart contract platform? Spatial data requirements - Spatial Reference System - Trusted location proofs - Zero knowledge location proofs? ### Device owner wallet contracts <h2 id="cryptoeconomics"> Cryptoeconomics </h2> <h2 id="ethics"> Ethics </h2> <h2 id="advanced-topics"> Future </h2> <h2 id="conclusion"> Fin </h2>
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Astral
Researching Web3 x spatial
202

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Notes on local currencies

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4/2/2022
Astral

For the past few years we’ve been investigating what we see as a new galaxy in the Web3 universe, at the intersection of spatial data and consensus technologies. We've explored the boundaries of the design space researching, prototyping and building community. This is culminating in our work to build what we now see as the key primitives to underpin a new category of Web3 applications using spatial and location data. Our work at Astral is focused on promoting the evolution of an open, human-centered and composable location-based decentralized web. The opportunity space is pretty vast. We believe that the vision for the user-controlled internet is incomplete without peer-to-peer alternatives to services like Uber, Google Maps, Airbnb, Tinder, Craigslist, Amazon and others. Even more exciting is the opportunity to replicate the functionality required for systems of local taxation, voting, and physical security. Perhaps the most exciting of all is the notion that our systems of value exchange can be configured to promote the preservation of life and ecological health — the nascent "regenerative finance", or ReFi, movement, leveraging natural capital currencies and other tokenized natural assets. We've been finding that all of this is possible if we can reliably tie information about physical reality — where someone or something is, or measures of environmental conditions — to smart contracts, especially contracts capable of computational geometry. Rather than working at the application layer, at Astral we are designing open source tools, public goods intended to underpin this category to A: make building location-based dapps easier, B: create spatial data storage systems fit for web3 (i.e. verifiable, uncensorable, permissionless, etc). We believe that if the ecosystem can converge on using these tools and design patterns, the location-based decentralized web will exhibit similar emergent composability that we're witnessing in DeFi. So what does this specifically mean? We're developing verifiable spatial data registries, smart-contract based registries of vector or raster spatial data assets. Initially this was to store polygons representing geographic jurisdictions on chain, though we see use cases for points, lines, polyhedra and raster datasets as well. More here →

10/14/2021
Verifiable Spatial Data Registries

At Astral we’ve been exploring the use of spatial and location data technologies on the decentralized web for a few years now - researching, experimenting, prototyping, writing and community building. A number of early pioneers - FOAM, IBISA Network, Geo Web, Grassroots Economics, among several others - further validate our conclusion that a broad range of useful applications exist at the intersection of these two technology domains. Our work experimenting and prototyping[1], [2], [3], [4] has led us to identify a few tools and standards that we think would dramatically lower barriers to entry for application developers hoping to build with location / spatial data. Our intuition is that if we can identify and build versatile tools, devs will be able to build and innovate more quickly. A powerful second order effect of the adoption of shared tools and standards: the location-based decentralized web could develop the same properties of seamless composability that are emerging in DeFi. Specifically, we’ve discovered that many location-based dapps have a need for what we’re calling verifiable spatial data registries. A verifiable spatial data registry is simply a smart contract that contains a registry of spatial data objects, such as vector features (i.e. points, lines, polygons or polyhedrons), or raster spatiotemporal assets (i.e. satellite images, LIDAR scans, etc.) Different applications will require spatial data registries with various different properties and functionality. We’ve been exploring this design space, and intend to develop and publish verifiable spatial data registries that fulfill commonly-seen requirements. We suspect that there may be a strong case to adopt an ERC standard for these verifiable spatial data registries, so that secure contracts can be developed and so interoperable tooling can mature. So what does this really mean? It probably will help to illustrate with examples and use cases, categorized into vector and raster data.

10/11/2021
DRAFT: ESP Astral Application

Project Name The Astral Protocol Project Description What are you working on? What does success look like for your project? (2-3 short paragraphs) At Astral we are building tools to underpin the location-based decentralized web. We’ve been exploring the opportunity space for some time - we’ve prototyped a number of diverse dapps and protocols that use spatial and location data. For example, we designed the Hyperaware Protocol, a spatial governance protocol for connected devices, and built a prototype implementation to create a trust minimized, decentralized system of congestion zones. We also prototyped a spatial finance application that ties a smart contract to measurements of air quality in a particular geographic area. We have experimented building a location-aware wallet that could support local currencies.

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