DLTEO (soon to be Orbuculum.xyz)

We are gradually switching our branding from DLTEO.com to Orbuculum.xyz now, both are operated by DLTEO GmbH and its subsidies.
TL;DR: this intro will kill 13 minutes of your life :P

What is Project DLTEO?

DLTEO originally represents Distributed Ledger Technology Earth Observation (yes ser we know it is probably not a very good/web3 name now lol but hey we just can't stop being foolish XD), it has been built by DLTEO GmbH since 2021 (still in progress), which is a start-up currently incubated by ESA (European Space Agency) BIC Austria. Due to its unique tech framework, DLTEO can be explained as three things:

• [A Desci platform and marketplace] to monetize and process satellite (EO/GIS) data in one place (imagine us as Amazon, Airbnb, and Tinder in DeSci)
• [A new paradigm to facilitate innovative scientific research] by helping researchers (especially GIS researchers) to monetize their algorithms/AI models without compromising their IP, while conducting and disseminating scientific research in an open, inclusive, and accessible manner (all GIS algorithms will be uploaded by researchers on Arweave as smart contracts): GIS scientists could receive token payment as incentive once the algorithms/AI models they uploaded are called by other users (they used these smart contracts to process onchain data so they will have to pay for it XD), which means that researchers can monetize their IP perpetually as long as their work are still cutting edge.
• [An (to be fully open-sourced) infrastructure] powered by private & public satellite constellation operators (EO data) and GIS DAO (Orbuculum DAO, stay tuned!), to provide data and insights for dApps such as web3 climate solutions, including but not limited to:
  • [ Monitoring and forecasting weather and climate] : EO data enables the tracking of weather patterns, atmospheric phenomena, and climate trends, allowing for better prediction of natural disasters, extreme weather events, and the overall impacts of climate change.
  • [Carbon cycle and emissions tracking] : EO data can help quantify and monitor greenhouse gas emissions, both anthropogenic and natural, as well as track the carbon cycle, including carbon sinks such as forests and oceans.
  • [Land use and land cover change] : EO data can be used to monitor deforestation, afforestation, reforestation, and urbanization, which can help inform land management policies and promote sustainable land use practices.
  • [Agriculture and food security] : EO data can improve crop yield predictions, optimize irrigation systems, and monitor the impacts of climate change on food production, helping to ensure food security and sustainable agricultural practices.
  • [Water resources management] : EO data can help monitor water availability, quality, and usage, allowing for better water resources management and planning in the face of increasing water scarcity due to climate change.
  • [Biodiversity conservation] : EO data can assist in mapping and monitoring habitats, ecosystems, and species distributions, helping to prioritize conservation efforts and track the impacts of climate change on biodiversity.
  • [Climate adaptation and resilience] : EO data can help identify vulnerable areas and populations, enabling targeted investments in climate adaptation and resilience measures, such as infrastructure improvements, early warning systems, and disaster risk reduction.
  • [Renewable energy] : EO data can be used to identify optimal locations for renewable energy infrastructure, such as solar and wind farms, by analyzing factors like solar irradiance, wind patterns, and land use.
  • [Coastal and ocean management] : EO data can help monitor sea level rise, ocean acidification, and other marine environmental changes, informing coastal zone management and marine conservation efforts.
  • [Climate policy and international agreements] : EO data can provide an unbiased and transparent basis for tracking progress towards emissions reduction targets, ensuring compliance with international climate agreements, and informing climate policy development.

Hold on, it sounds pretty cool but what is the workflow looking like? How do you make all the claims above happen? besides how do you protect data and IPs with this new sharing or dissemination model?

Steady lads! let's break our concept down into 4 sectors, if you read it through you will find it a pretty organic system. So as indicated in the pic above, there are 4 roles in the world (only 3 roles on DLTEO!):

• Constellation Operators (aka Data Provider):

  • Tasks:
    • Collecting data from ground stations and pre-processing them
    • Encrypt data locally (if they want to make money from it, for example Copernicus or CRESDA will never encrypt their data!), using FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption)
    • Upload encrypted data to Arweave
    • Waiting for money...(in a nutshell lol)

• GIS scientists (aka Algorithm Provider):

  • Tasks:
    • Use open-source satellite data to do some hard-core research
    • Implement it to algorithms or even AI models
    • Compiled locally via our Transpiler to the smart contract(s)
    • Upload it to Arweave (there will be some cryptography protection here as well, hush hush)
    • Waiting for money...(in a nutshell)

• Web3 Climate dApps (aka End User):

  • To do list:
    • Combine Algos/Models with certain pieces of encrypted data (NO decryption during the whole process!) to process data on different layers/levels -> get an encrypted and customized data product (we call it business intelligence but you know we are not good with names ^^ )
    • Since the EO data product is minted as an NFT, paying for it is a similar user experience as Opensea/Blur
    • decrypt the data product -> check how to use this info to make the world better!
    • To our best knowledge, Web3 climate solutions should only have to pay for the "gas fee", "computation cost" as well as a bit "IP usage fee" （it is up to the researchers to waive their charge, DLTEO can only waive commission fee for all pubic good activities）

• Computation Provider:
  • Like Bitcoin Miner, they don't know what they are processing really, but they are not DLTEO's concern at the moment, that is the job of A-SYMMETRY

In summary, constellation operators could upload their encrypted data on AR and allow any GIS developers to help them process the data (with the token as a financial incentive) without decryption through the entire process, delivering the final business intelligence to the unprofessional end users directly. It is a significant Web3 paradigm shift

by maint data & Algos as NFTs, simultaneously all participants (3 roles) simply need to focus on doing what they are good at without friction and barrier, DLTEO can naturally facilitate public good activities by feeding data and insights to dApp via smart contract directly (with the help of cross-chain bridges and relayers), meanwhile, GIS researchers will also financially benefit from incoming climate movements and solutions.

With more and more contributions and crowd-sourcing from GIS scientists as well as constellation operators, DLTEO could be also a plugin for ChatGPT (or Bittensor in the future), so the current awkward answer (see pic below) will be in history ^^:

How could you help Web3 Climate solutions exactly?

There are a lot of potential synergies within the 10 areas mentioned above, we simply take one concrete example here:

web3 climate solutions such as carbon markets can use DLTEO as a tool to prove/verify carbon emissions or credits of their client's land. For retail users of these dApps or carbon marketplaces, with more algorithms and data available, they could simply access to ChatGPT/Bittensor plugin to use the Algorithms/AI models on Arweave to generate verifiable carbon credits.

Please note the logos above only indicate potential examples, not the official partnerships established by DLTEO

Is project DLTEO for profit?

For the moment Yes
but
We promise that we will never make any profits on public goods activities such as non-profit Web3 solutions

Otherwise how on earth could we raise a few million grants to finalize this complex system...

Theoretically, the best business model of us is to charge commission fees via smart contract (like Opensea/Blur/Airbnb), or perhaps other variant methods to receive revenue like doing some NFT stuff, we are still discussing and researching for the potential opportunities or the approaches.

Can you do an NFT campaign to raise funding so you can make this project NON-profit?

hmmmm.... We are open to it and considering it TBH since it is quite tough to find an investor. We already had some naive ideas like NFT + BOINC/SETI@home style stuff but still working on it (also not sure how many forks will be really into that lol, if you are also into this, let's discuss it!!). Maybe at some point you will see Orbuculum DAO on Juicebox ^^

Implementation and how will you use the Grant, if you are lucky

DeSci projects most commonly build and test necessary technological infrastructure, we believe that due to the limits of the Gitcoin Grant as well as the scope/complexity of DLTEO, we can not deliver too many components covered by the grant (also not many components of what we are building are useful for other Web3 climate solutions or Desci projects directly and immediately)

Therefore, based on what we have done (some smart contracts, cryptography libs etc) and what we are working on, we believe that the most reasonable work we could do with the grant and also share with the Gitcoin community is two parts:

Leaflet-Vue3/Fluttermap

could only be shared with other GIS/GEO-based DeSci projects which require demonstration and visualization professional geoinformation, for the moment we did not see many of them.

A new WASM runtime on SmartWeave.

the current Wrap SmartContracts are very well implemented but unfortunately, it does not support Desci dApps with on-chain AI algorithms as smart contracts like DLTEO. We would like to build a WASM runtime based on WasmEdge as well as other open-source WASM runtimes to build a general WASM runtime which not only support smart contracts but also AI algorithms (thanks to the lazy evaluation method and SCP mode). In the future if we see it make sense to expand this WASM runtime to other public chains, we will also add compatibility to it.

The concrete roadmap of delivering WASM runtime will be released after we know the (extra) funding we could receive in the next few months.

Can DLTEO be used for other DeSci use cases except Earth Observation?

Yes! Like Computational Biology, research with health data from hospitals etc.

We are happy to share our infra but TBH we are a bit far from that for the moment...let us worry about how to get this MVP done first -_-

Your Team?

All of us are shy and bad at explaining stuff (as you have probably noticed) so we will just use pseudo names to briefly explain what we have done, luckly we have sufficient knowledge and resources to pull this project through and passed the ESA tender board. We also won the third place in the INNOspace master OHB challenge, organized by DLR (German Aerospace Center) sorry this picture is so big...did not mean to -_-

1. D has a background in cryptography and blockchain, he started to design this project (with a lot of stupid mistakes and attempts) while he was doing his master. About 10 months later after the idea, he met I in London, 1 day before Christmas in 2019. Apart from DLTEO, he is also a part-time advisor for a crypto VC (that is where the initial funding of DLTEO from), helping around doing tech due diligence for the incoming portfolio.
2. I is a super energetic lad, obtained a double degree in both math and CS at age 20, and a master degree in space study at age 21, afterwards he has been involved with several space startups, like all space (full stack) engineers, he loves new ventures such as satellite manufacture and living in the Sahara Desert with ÖWF for one month and a half. So far He published 2 papers on International Astronautical Congress (IAC), International Astronautical Federation (IAF). Most importantly, during the breakout of covid-19, he did not give up on DLTEO, together with D they applied for incubation/funding from 5 space agencies of different countries to get a yes in ESA BIC Austria (it caused us almost 1 year).
3. Then we have P joined us in 2021 after his exiting previous startup, helping around as managing director as well as random BD/operation stuff (he is our lifesaver and firefighter!), he is an alumnus of Techstar London
4. Q joined at the same time as P, her background is financial modeling (helped us a lot! super important skillsets) and all financial stuff, she has worked for a few top investment banks in Europe, Hong Kong, and Beijing.
5. last but not least, we have Y, he is currently an assistant professor in the UK, advising a few PhDs students in the area of LLVM compiler(this is also part of the reason why we are confident that we can make this project work) at the moment.
6. One more thing, there is a genius smart contract developer N on our team, he is also studying at the moment (yes he is only 18 like @transmissions11, and he is also one of the few people who got admitted into IVY league directly from south America, I would say it is the same possibility to find a unicorn)

Fairly speaking we are not a super-star team, but we have enough knowledge, connections, and resources now to make this project happen, most importantly, we are a persistent team, we never gave up on this project even when there were temptations in the bull market and frustration in the bear market. When everyone was busy in DeFi summer, we were busy with getting rejected over and over by space agencies (LOL), it took us a year to make this project solid enough for ESA experts. We believe that Desci could not only be a greater good but also the next foundation of Web3 and humankind.

Oh, we can't help but brag about our advisor with sincere respect: Prof. Thomas Blaschke is not only a member of the ESA advisor board but also one of the most influential GIS researchers in the world, with an h-index of 78.

Contact us

We are extremely keen to seek community ambassadors to help us with marketing, PR, and community building as well as organizing Orbuculum DAO. if you have some spare time to kill and are interested in what we are building, please please say hi to nohrplease@dlteo.com or nohrplease@orbuculum.xyz , both works! for other inquiries, please kindly send an email to info@dlteo.com or info@orbuculum.xyz, we are more than happy to answer your question (as long as we can).

For the record, due to a limited budget, we have allocated all of funding we have to devs therefore unfortunately can not afford to pay you any salary (for now). However, we probably should be able to provide some compensation like food/flight/hotel at the moment I guess -_- . Also it is awkward to admit it but we are too poor to sponsor anyone working permit at the moment, but hey, we are trying our best to get some funding! hopefully, we could work in the same office one day! ^^

Worth mentioning, we have an (empty) discord server now!