Location is one of the key building blocks that bring us together. From going to the park with your friends and having dinner to heading to the airport to take a trip to a place you have never been. Locations unlock a box of memories that we will always be carrying around. In this new era of web3, allowing creators and building to connect with their communities in the physical places where they live or that inspire them is part of the motivation behind Mentaport.
We envision a pilot with the Kernel community where we can all connect in our locations as we experience the world. An application in which we can leave our memories in our cities for other members to find and experience as we share them with others.
We need trails laid by courageous and careful people which we can use to inspire ever better questions, more fruitful searching, more responsive consultation.
What an exciting time! The Mentaport stack looks like itâs blossoming. How far along are you with the tech? I know you have a demo day coming up. What are your goals after that?
It seems to me youâre on the lookout for use cases and ideas. How are you deciding who to serve with this, and what have you learned from them so far? Have you looked at prior art? There was a lot of exploration around digital geocaching in the Foursquare era (and some trail-blazing predecessors like Fire Eagle). I wonder what can be learned from them.
These are interesting questions, and hint at a slightly broader exploration weâre hoping to serve in this new shape of Kernel. It wonder if we could reframe this as a single question youâd like to answer in the next ~2 months. That way, we can all suggest areas and communities of investigation, and we can connect other fellows who are interested in joining your query, or with experience to share that can guide you. (Abe Ucello and Yajie Wang come to mind - both have built on-chain location-centric systems before.)
As an example, could that question be, âwho can Mentaport serve well at first, and why will they use it?â
Hi Salim,
Glad to be here and sharing this with the Kernel community!
Our tech stack is pretty far along. We are currently in private beta. We are onboarding clients that have a location need right now and that see the potential location unlocks (we are live in Polygon and Sui). We are also serving enthusiastic developers. We give them our SDK and initial tools and let them craft their own experiences.
We have researched past projects like the ones you mention. Definitely a lot to learn. The main difference is now, with web3, users control the location, not the big companies, and can monetize their interactions in such places. So, for example, if you have claimed 100 points for âchecking inâ in a store, you can now âsell/transferâ that reward to anymore that wants it. That wasnât possible before, opening a huge field of user opportunities. And that is just one of the many learning that we have found from old geo projects and why they didnât âtake offâ.
Great call on the questions. Let me think more about what main question we want, and Iâll come back and post it in the forum! But for now, your proposal is great.
Our main goals after demo day are fundraising and customers. We want to get as many projects and developers exploring and building location in web3!
Each person in the world has a schoolscape, places or locations which hold memories of learning. This, to me, is one of the most interesting form of âinâ-stitution - itâs hyperlocal to you and the places that matter to you.
For me, the following places come to mind:
The Path of Tea: A Japanese inspired tea house in Houston, owned by a man named Chris. He started it with his late wife, whose memory lives on in the space they co-created.
Mala Market: A local market in Houston, curated by Soumya. Sheâs personally helped me (and Iâve watched her help many others) navigate the small but might store with 50 local artists. Iâve learned about natural deodorants, taken yoga classes, and using baking soda with lemongrass on carpets and in cars to freshen them, to name a few random things. Iâve also bought some of the best gifts Iâve ever given for friends and family here.
Transform Fitness: A gymnastics studio in Manhattan teaching olympic strength training. The teachers here taught me more about body mechanics than anyone in the world, and I canât recommend it more highly.
These double as recommendations for places Iâd recommend for anyone visiting Houston or New York. But I wonder what itâd look like as a scavenger hunt, or something slightly more personally curated.
As a fellow, I think itâd be nice to have a hyperlocal map of places which other fellows have gone to learn, to teach, to explore whenever I visit a new place.
The spirit wouldnât be just ârecommendationsâ, but perhaps even further curated such that the experience is âI know someone in Kernel who has spent good time here.â I might be able to give it forward by telling them the story if I ever visit, and perhaps sharing my own recommendations.
Iâd like to see the public list of others in Kernel, with permissioning available for anything on my map. It might feel something like Yelp, but more personal, trans-local as Sal says. Thatâs a really great link to share here.
Questions:
Itâd be nice to know about your schoolscapes. Are there teachers, or places where peer-learning propogates through the environment, which you know and have experienced in your local cities? Please share here.
Does anyone know long-standing physical locations with high quality conversations about web3? Full Node in Berlin, perhaps? Anything else come to mind? Perhaps Santa Monica the last three months, Mariale? These might be a nice balance to mine - which are great learning spaces, but not necessarily technology heavy.
