The problem

Today, interest in science is at an all-time high, however due to a myriad of factors (paywalled journal articles and a global disinformation campaign, for example), it's hard to get accurate information about the latest scientific endeavours and discoveries if you aren't working in those fields. It's even harder to get free AND accurate information for a regular user. The internet was created to allow information to travel freely and without restriction, yet the very disciplines that created the protocols of the present-day internet are locked behind paywalls by greedy journals and corporations. It's also become incredibly hard for small research teams to conduct studies due to the cost of acquiring information & resources, and then processing the data gathered by the project.

If a person today wants to find out about the possibility of life on another planet, say, Mars, they have to wade through multiple pages of search results online that contain out of date information, conspiracy theories, incorrect information, ads, disinformation, and the final challenge - technical jargon. People today are more easily distracted than ever, and the simple truth is that the correct information about topics users may be interested in is just not presented in a fashionable way, and is too hard to find, for the average person to search for. This ferments a distrust in scientific institutions and pushes users further into the web of conspiracy theories, harming scientific pursuits, public interest in science and by extension, public funding into research projects by government organisations.

What is Star Sailors?

Star Sailors, developed by Signal Kinetics is the world's first decentralised gaming platform built specifically for citizen science. Large data sets from projects such as the Kepler Space Telescope, and resources from companies like Ambasat & CSIRO allow us to build a platform that allows anyone to contribute to scientific research, regardless of education or financial status. Interest and engagement in the scientific fields are lacking in our community, especially in Australia and a large reason for this lack of interest is due to the perceived high barrier of entry to learn and research. There is a common misconception that to understand anything, to be able to contribute anything you need to be a university graduate. Our platform aims to remove this misconception by showing scientific theories, models and methodologies in a fun and free-form environment, allowing players to learn and contribute almost automatically.

The game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foXC2557nQw

At its core, the Star Sailors game engine is a fork of the Zooniverse panoptes project, which is a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) that support user defined citizen science projects.

Citizen science projects, for example Exoplanet Hunters, have large sets of data. Our game engine creates content in our various games and applications from these datasets, making classifying objects part of the game mechanics.

Users are then rewarded with in-game currency for their contributions, which can be used to buy items and assets on our blockchain marketplace. More information can be found at Star Sailors

FULL WHITEPAPER: Whitepaper

PITCHDECK:

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