At FOAM, our mission is to build a consensus-driven map of the world that can be trusted for all applications.

To do this, we are developing a protocol for proof-of-location, an API for geospatial interactions on the blockchain, and the Spatial Index (a visual explorer). Last week we released the purescript-web3 library for Ethereum, on which the Spatial Index is built. In the coming weeks, we will be releasing more information about FOAM: our vision, our white-paper and our first beta version of the Spatial Index.

In this post, we introduce a new fundamental part of our work: the Crypto-Spatial Coordinate (CSC), which is an open and interoperable standard for location in Ethereum smart contracts.

Blockchains are eventually going to change the world we interact in — from the internet of things, supply chains, real estate and land registries to augmented reality and location-based gaming. Currently, there are no standards for embedded locations, physical addresses, or coordinates in smart contracts. In order for smart contracts to remain interoperable, they will need a shared language for them to reference and index the physical world.

The FOAM CSC is a starting point for this shared location standard, allowing any smart contract to make an immutable claim to an address on the blockchain and a corresponding location on the map.

Location standards today

Throughout history, there have been many ways of encoding physical location into addresses — from longitude and latitude all the way to the more recent geohash. While autonomous car companies are racing for more accurate location data, the fact remains that most of the Earth’s surface lacks addresses. According to the United Nations, 70% of the world is unaddressed, including more than half of the worldʼs sprawling urban developments.

Alternative addressing systems have attempted to increase human memorability, verifiability and machine readability. Notable examples are What3words and Open Location Code. As these systems are either proprietary and/or lacking economic incentives (edit: OLC is Apache 2.0 licensed), attempts to create a standard around them have been crippled. See ‘An Evaluation of Location Encoding Systemsʼ for an overview of different location standards.