November??

It’s been a wild year to say the least. We can’t believe it’s already November. Time seems to fly when your routine mostly consists of staying and working at home. While we’d trade it for the normalcy/safety of non-pandemic in a heartbeat, the last ~eight months have been quite creative and productive for the Geo Web project. 

The project didn’t exist eight months ago. Before this pandemic is done, we’ll have the infrastructure and network live. That’s our personal silver lining, but we hope the Geo Web can be more than that. 

We want the Geo Web to enable magical experiences that get people out enjoying the world together. Whether it’s a beautiful AR art installation in a public park or a new digital experience at a local restaurant, the Geo Web is designed to be shared, out in the physical world. On the other side of this pandemic, we’re all going to want to get out, be social, and enjoy ourselves. The Geo Web can be part of that return to a new normal.

On to the updates...

Technical Updates

• We completed a test integration of our land parcel subgraph on The Graph. The subgraph indexes parcels minted in the GeoWebParcel smart contract and produces GeoJSON-like entities in The Graph. Check out the GraphQL schema on Github.
• We started a design refresh of our Cadastre UI. The plan includes some UX improvements & styling updates, but most importantly we’re integrating new functionality from our updated smart contracts.

Community Updates

• We’re beginning to run user sessions feedback sessions to hone our beta product design. If you’re interested in participating in a session, get in contact with us @thegeoweb on Twitter. The DMs are open!
• We joined @TheWIPMeetup for their meetup in Cryptovoxels last Thursday. It gave us the chills being a part of the event. Yes, we’re biased, but it felt like a glimpse of the future. There is so much creative energy going into NFTs, cryptoart, and VR metaverses like Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, and Somnium Space. We love it all. We know there are going to be multiple game-changing ideas, products, and companies to come out of the space. We’re excited about unleashing that same creative energy into AR and the physical world!
• Radical Markets by Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl & Vitalik Buterin's related writing were our initial inspiration for using the SALSA system to administer our digital land market. The RadicalxChange Foundation is the awesome organization looking to make the principles and ideas proposed in this writing a reality. We enjoyed their livestream “How Can We Do a Better Job Finding Common Ground in Politics?” last Thursday. If you’re into this kind of thing (and you should be), we recommend you check out their newsletter, resources, or YouTube channel.

On Deck

• Begin implementation of the Cadastre UI updates including integration of the land parcel subgraph.
• Begin work on parcel licenses. A license allows users to link content to land and is represented as an NFT. See the spec here.