Please describe your proposed solution.
Summary:
- Cardano gets a killer app that is good for the environment.
- Support significant development on OpenLitterMap web + mobile platforms which will transform environmental monitoring and help unlock societies data collection capacity.
- Catalyst demonstrates its ability to disrupt & pioneer neglected science funding by supporting the development of open source environmental monitoring and action.
- Littercoin will be the first token that many people earn, onboarding many people into Cardano.
- Littercoin incentive will become a carbon sink for Cardano by getting stakepools interested in offsetting their emissions by accumulating staking rewards in a smart contract which will give each Littercoin value. This consumer/economic reward can only be spent in participating pre-approved green-listed stakeholders in the climate economy (eg. zero waste stores).
- Good memes.
- Vegan + dog friendly.
Abstract:
At OpenLitterMap, we are turning cleaning the planet into a game with real climate rewards. This means we want to get our global community discounted access to locally produced zero-waste organic fruits, nuts, seeds, and vegetables for using our app. Stakepools and other users interested in offsetting their carbon emissions will be attracted to accumulate ada in the Littercoin Smart Contract, which gives every Littercoin value. However, only pre-approved green-listed stakeholders in the climate economy can exchange Littercoin for ada. This careful combination of a fun data collection experience combined with a climate-friendly incentive will help unlock societies data collection capacity, stimulate “climatokeveganomics”, and transform our knowledge about global pollution which has been restricted and controlled by centralised science funding agencies who have failed to protect the environment and are due be disrupted.
About:
Our growing global community is actively collecting data about the problems they are finding and improvements they are making in their communities (e.g. picking up & documenting litter, dumping, overflowing bins, etc) every day. We are empowering people who care about the environment with tools to crowdsource important open source data about the litter and plastic pollution epidemic globally. About 1 billion people already have access to a powerful hand-sized geolocated supercomputing data collection instrument (a smartphone), however societies data collection capacity remains significantly underdeveloped. We have learned how to use these devices to share and consume information (via text, links, memes) which has resulted in a huge awakening of global pollution. This change from a one-way top-down authoritative narrative to an ongoing bottom up social dialogue was so profound, it changed mainstream political and corporate dialogue globally, almost overnight. Once people had access to the technology that easily allowed them to share and consume information, society developed an online consciousness that has led to a social awakening. Social media 1.0 empowered people to share information. Now we need to explore social media 2.0 that is getting people to actively use their data collection instrument to collect real factual data about the world around them. Our ability at harnessing the data collection capacity of this unprecedented human potential (what we call “citizen science”) remains significantly underdeveloped simply because the funding does not exist to develop the technology. If Catalyst supports this proposal, the tools will become available for society to use which will grow and develop humanities social consciousness. Unlocking this global data collection capacity will transform our knowledge about how badly polluted the world is and what can be done about it. At OpenLitterMap, our interactive tools visualise the problem which will educate society about the scale of this globally ubiquitous problem, and the code and data is open for students, universities and governments to adopt and collaborate on. This data can be used to enforce producer pays responsibilities and improve the location and implementation of public services, eg. bins, ashtrays, community budget allocations, evaluate changes in policy, and more.
OpenLitterMap got its first funding from Project Catalyst in Fund 4 which has been a huge help to debug and improve the platform. Fund 4 is still ongoing but will end soon with the launch of the Littercoin token. However, much more work needs to be done to develop citizen science, give littercoin value and utility, and unlock societies data collection capacity. There is a huge opportunity for Catalyst to disrupt science funding and pioneer the development of open source citizen science tools and then lead the way by introducing innovative standards for the tokenization of environmental activity. Our open source code is being designed to be a good starting point for anyone interested in starting their own citizen science project and has been referenced in several Nature and other academic papers dozens of times by people working at the United Nations Environment Programme and more (see openlittermap.com/references). As Littercoin is the first token rewarded for producing geographic information, we are doing our best to set high standards and differentiate it from the rest of crypto. For example, Littercoin will not be listed on any exchange. You cannot buy Littercoin as it can only be earned. Sending it anywhere other than our smart contract will automatically make the Littercoin void and the smart contract will no longer accept it. Our smart contract will look at the transaction history of each token and only accept tokens which meet our non-tradable standards which means no swapping for another token and no exchanges. Unlike fiat and increasingly Bitcoin which has literally incentivised the destruction of natural resources, the only trading you can do with Littercoin is for fruit and vegetables. The point of Littercoin is not to make anyone monetarily rich. We want to make EVERYONE rich by creating a climate friendly economic incentive that can onboard huge numbers of people into citizen science and the climate economy to raise social consciousness and climate + dog friendly economic activity. We want to link our environmentally-active users with stakeholders in the climate economy (eg. zero waste shops, local organic gardens) to tackle waste and climate change at source. Littercoin is not some kind of number go up technology that you should hold. Littercoin is number go down technology that is designed to help society improve its scientific, environmental and geospatial literacy while bypassing the economic system to link human data collectors with organic farms to fix problems associated with capitalism, plastic and climate problems simultaneously.
Littercoin is an important token for the mass adoption of crypto, as users do not need to sign up to an exchange and risk losing money to get started. Simply walk around the corner and start collecting information about your local environmental surroundings to participate in the network. Most of our users know nothing about crypto, but are passively onboarded by being interested in collecting data about the environment. Due to its low barrier to entry, Littercoin has potential to become the first token that many people earn. Our app works, but a lot more work is needed across gamification, UI/UX, machine learning and marketing to make mining Littercoin as fun, impactful, and environmentally rewarding as possible.
We want stakepools to offset their carbon footprint by accumulating ada in the Littercoin Smart Contract which will give every Littercoin value. However, only green-listed zero waste stores and other approved stakeholders in the climate economy will be able to trade Littercoin for ada. You can think of Littercoin as climate currency that cannot be spent in the fossil fuel economy or in the 10 companies who own 90% of the products in your local supermarket.
As we begin to unlock societies data collection capacity, our knowledge about global pollution is ripe for distribution. Traditionally, science was facilitated by a small number of experts, who worked for institutions that had a monopoly on what kinds of knowledge could be produced. This sampling-paradigm is still ongoing today, despite imposing considerably narrow limitations on the scientific method which has failed to protect the environment. We want to change this paradigm by empowering society with powerful open source data collection technology to radically change what who is allowed to participate and what kinds of knowledge can be created. This will open significant implications for producer responsibility, taxes, enforcement, educational content, laws, political dialogue, and other questions like why are some areas better resourced than others. The hardest part of citizen science was getting about 1 billion data collection instruments (smartphones) into the hands of our global population but this step is already done. We have learned how to use these devices to share information, but we have not yet scratched the surface of what is capable by exploiting the fundamental purpose of our device which is to collect and process data. Just as the Geographers in the 1960s rose from their qualitative armchairs and started collecting quantitative data about the world, it is time that we turn our devices from our faces to the realverse and use our instruments to explore the quality of the world around us in which all humans are destined to live.
By supporting this proposal, we will be able to continue showcasing Catalyst as the most disruptive and innovative funding tool at various events and conferences around the world that we attend including high level plenaries across UN, UNEP, Universities, Intergovernmental organisations, NGOs and others. There is a huge opportunity for Catalyst to become an important impact-seed funding instrument and I hope the community will consider supporting my 15 year commitment to citizen science. When this project is successful, I have more projects that I am ready to start working on right away.
Every student and university in the world has shared access to OpenLitterMap code and data which is rightly placed to become a universal tool that society can adopt. I hope catalyst voters will see the potential impact of these initiatives and support the development of Littercoin which I would love to see become a flagship product on Cardano that separates us from the rest of crypto.
"If you don't like your money… create new money" - CH @ Virtual Summit 2021
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
KPI 1. Increasing the number of dapps and products available for the community to use that help to enrich the ecosystem with new use cases
- OpenLitterMap is increasingly becoming an established open source citizen science platform that is designed to be fun and easy to use. Because of its low barrier to entry and important environmental use case, Littercoin has significant potential to introduce many people to crypto for the first time and create a carbon sink for Cardano to help us become climate positive. Instead of swapping tokens around on exchanges, worrying about the price, or shopping in starbucks, we restrict access to the currency to retail and consumer adoption in the climate economy.
- All of our code is open source, allowing anyone to have a great starting point to get started with citizen science. We encourage experimentation and innovation, and several related projects have been forked from OLM already (druglitter.info, minefree.info, engagekilkenny.com and more).
- As Littercoin is the first token rewarded for doing citizen science, we want to create high standards that other projects can take inspiration from.
- We are creating new clima-toke-veganomic models that redefine what is money and under what circumstances can new forms of climate currency be created and spent.
- As well as the Littercoin token, we will create the Littercoin Smart Contract, and get it audited to become an approved dApp the community can use with confidence.
- We will create important documentation and write open source PHP + JavaScript code that will help our users get onboarded into the Cardano ecosystem, which other projects can use.
KPI 2. Increase the number of integrations that bring existing solutions together for a more seamless and connected experience between different products.
- OpenLitterMap is open source and already has many sibling applications. We want Littercoin to become a protocol that others can adopt and take inspiration from.
- With this funding we will be able to open up the OpenLitterAPI so that anyone can connect their frontend interface with their own branding and designs to our backend to submit data.
- We are in touch with other litter mapping apps, who would like to share the Littercoin token. If others can meet our high standards for open source citizen science data, we would love to share the Littercoin protocol with them, whether they submit data to our backend or not, as long as the data meets our open source requirements.
- There are other citizen science projects (eg. water quality testing) that we would love to work with to develop shared resources that we can connect and collaborate on.
- Various funding instruments are emerging (eg. LittleFish) and climate friendly networks (eg. Cardano4Climate). We want to empower these networks with new people and tools to engage people in environmental action.
- We will also leverage existing products in the Cardano ecosystem such as the new Lace wallet to make transacting with Littercoin as easy as possible.
KPI 3. Increased quality of existing products & integrations through suggested improvements that is supported by customer feedback or increased usage by the community.
- OpenLitterMap is an already funded project on Cardano ($50,000 since August 2021), that is demonstrating Cardanos real-world impact potential. We have showcased our catalyst funding at dozens of events and conferences.
- This funding will transform OpenLitterMap helping us to clear dozens of large jobs that the community has been requesting and anticipating for years.
- This funding will turn Littercoin into a flagship project on Cardano that huge numbers of people can use to get started with crypto.
- Anyone interested in the environment can start pre-mining Littercoin on Cardano. Our community will continue to decide on the difficulty metrics and tokenomics.
- Our community members are new to crypto and many of them love that they are earning Littercoin as the first reward they have ever received for their work. They do not want access to corporations who are producing plastic products but they want access to zero waste products and services that match their values. Many non-crypto people in our community see Littercoin as the only token that speaks to their values.
- We have networked with many people and groups across Cardano, such as Cardano4Climate who are using our app for team building, adoption, and real-world use case that all members can participate on.
- We are also working with LittleFish to get the cardano community interested in microfinancing some of our environmental warriors such as Pike in Malawi who is teaching locals about how to use our app and earn Littercoin (twitter.com/wecleanwegreen)
- This funding will enable us to get up the Littercoin smart contract and begin to onboard and green-list stakeholders in the climate economy into the Cardano ecosystem that all projects and users will be able to benefit from.
Litter mapping is an important catalyst to unlock societies data collection capacity, as litter is globally ubiquitous, easily identifiable and notoriously bad for the environment. These characteristics give litter mapping a remarkably low barrier to entry that can enable huge numbers of people to get started in the scientific and public process, while passively onboarding them into the cardano ecosystem.
Governments have purposefully neglected the development of citizen science and pollution monitoring tools. There is a unique opportunity for Project Catalyst to fill this gap and create high standards for citizen science and its tokenisation. With this funding we will continue to build on OpenLitterMap, start working on the OpenLitterAI using our 300,000+ images to train a real-time litter detector, which is an important part of our plans for making this fun and interactive experience.
Our fund 4 funding is still ongoing, which has helped us debug and improve our app, work on the Littercoin concept, and will finish with the launch of the Littercoin token, but the smart contract needs to be developed to distribute Littercoin and to give Littercoin value and utility. Our smart contact will automate distribution of Littercoin token holders to those who have submitted a cardano wallet and who have pre-mined Littercoin in the database. The smart contract will also accumulate ada via staking rewards, which will give every Littercoin value. We will then invite zero-waste stakeholders and others in the climate economy to apply to attract new customers, who will be able to bring our users into their economy and use their Littercoin to receive a discount. Stakepools should be incentivised to participate as giving people discounted access to zero-waste fruits + vegetables will help offset the carbon used by maintaining the network, making cardano the most impactful, delicious and healthy climate-friendly web3 platform in the world.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
The biggest challenge we currently face is educating people about why collecting this data is important. This is followed by why the code and data on pollution needs to be open. Collecting this data is important because it can create powerful story-telling educational tools and powerful immersive visualisations. By harnessing the power of the crowd, we will begin to explore the potential of societies global data collection capacity. Although ~99% of documented litter is picked up and recorded by known superusers who want to record their positive environmental impact, collecting data about litter problems you don't have the time and ability to clean up at certain times is also a welcome step as it can help visualise and educate against the problem. We encourage participation at cleanup events and encourage people to make the effort when possible, but if you are rushing to work and see loads of broken glass, you might not have time to pick it up, but you can collect an important data point that can help society react and improve our understanding of the problem. Some people think that doing all of this work, cleaning up, documenting, is too much, and this is true. Very few people want to do everything (incl. take photos, pick up, tag, review, code) but at OpenLitterMap, there is something for everyone and no matter how small. Everyone has an important role to play. Some people don't like taking photos or picking up litter, but they play an important role helping us manually review and tag the data of others, draw bounding boxes on images to help train the AI, code, be a part of the community, inspire others, make videos, write papers, and there are more opportunities emerging.
Some people think that if you can cheat and earn Littercoin, we should not innovate and explore the tokenomics of citizen science to improve our ability at unlocking societies data collection capacity to mitigate the estimated 900 tonnes of plastic entering the oceans every hour. This has been a non-issue so far as Littercoin is not intended to make anyone rich. We encourage people to break, test, experiment and copy our ideas to make them better. If people try to cheat at earning Littercoin by dumping litter, not only is this more difficult than discovering the litter that already exists, but that would help us get access to exactly the kind of person we want to educate. Presumably, a small number of people will try to cheat gamified citizen science systems but this will pale in significance to the much larger resource of excellent quality data provided by known superusers and other trustworthy players. It is our duty as scientists to try and explore how humans interact with public data collection tools, which our open data allows. Littercoin is not intended to be bulletproof. Rather, it is intended to be a simple introduction to crypto, easy enough that anyone can do it, but long and boring enough that anyone trying to cheat the network will get bored, as they will be unable to get 100 images past verification in a row to earn a single Littercoin. If someone did cheat our system and earn some littercoin, the worst that would happen is they would get discounted access to the climate economy.
After educating people about why collecting data on the global pollution problem is important, and then on why open science is important for pollution monitoring, the next challenge is getting people to use the app. Other apps exist that have been well funded years ago however most of them are not open, and not many people question the implications of using closed-source tools to create restricted access to data on pollution. Closed pollution monitoring tools make it fun to protect polluters, which are actively supported by polluters, as they control and restrict access to data, education tools, enforcement tools, and make volunteer effort largely redundant. Guided by open science principles and inspired by OpenStreetMap, we apply open source values to polluting monitoring. We are building our community by hosting weekly community calls where we release weekly updates live on production. This helps keep the most active community members engaged (you can read about them at <https://medium.com/weeklyOLM>) and helps onboard more people into a visibly active network. Will you join us?