Talk · 2025
Astral: a spatial extension for the decentralized web
This FOSS4G North America 2025 talk introduces Astral: the Location Protocol for signed spatial records, a modular library of location-proof strategies, and Spatial.sol utilities for smart contracts.
Purpose
The open geospatial community and the decentralized-web world rarely talk to each other. This talk introduced verifiable location tooling to the FOSS4G audience.
Approach
A conference talk, presented with Taylor Oshan, walking through the Astral toolkit -- the Location Protocol for signed spatial records, a modular library of location-proof strategies, and Spatial.sol utilities for smart contracts.
Status
Delivered November 2025 at FOSS4G North America; recording on YouTube.
Connections
Related Notes
Astral API
PreviewThe Astral API indexes location attestations from the Ethereum Attestation Service across chains and serves them through OGC-compliant REST and GraphQL interfaces backed by PostGIS.
Astral Compute
PreviewAstral Compute evaluates spatial predicates -- distance, containment, intersection -- inside a trusted execution environment and returns cryptographically signed results that a third party can verify.
Astral Docs: Location Proofs
ActiveThe Astral documentation describes location proofs as verifiable artifacts pairing a claim about the timing and position of an event with corroborating evidence, graded along a certainty spectrum rather than treated as absolute.
Astral Docs: Location Records
ActiveThe Astral documentation describes location records -- signed, verifiable location data artifacts that add cryptographic attribution and integrity checking to raw geospatial data.
Astral SDK
ActiveThe Astral SDK is a TypeScript library for creating and verifying location attestations -- signed records that bind location data to a signer and a time, off-chain or on-chain via the Ethereum Attestation Service.