In this post, I will be explaining, in short, the Lunyr Project plan and my own personal view why I am interested in this project.

The Lunyr (pronounced “lunar”) project is an Ethereum-based decentralized crowdsourced encyclopedia. This project aims to be a reliable, accurate source of information which can be used by any user for research on the internet. Users can contribute to the knowledge-base which is rewarded with app tokens by contributing information and peer-reviewing. This long term vision of Lunyr is:

“to develop a knowledge base API that developers can use to create next generation decentralized applications in Artificial intelligence, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and more”.

Lunyr Tokens used in the network:

Lunyr tokens (LUN): This is the token used for advertising on the network. Contributors to the network are rewarded LUN in spans of two weeks.

Contribution Tokens (CBN): These tokens are used to calculate how many LUN an individual will be rewarded for the current period.

Honor Tokens (HNR): This token is used to propose and vote on issues in the Dispute and Resolution system. It is consumed once used.

Roadmap and current Progress:

The Lunyr team has announced that they are ahead of the original roadmap from the Stardust release to the Celestial release. This will be a Invitation-only Alpha release on the Ethereum Mainnet. The take part of this and contribute if chosen sign up with the following link

Why we need Lunyr

Access to essential Research:

Information about academic research is limited and it is essential for students/researchers. As a former student from University, it is no secret that gaining access to academic research, for research, academic reports and understanding of a concept in both the fine and big picture are hard. With the limited access, we face barriers in our research, using out dated research or using any source possible to find. Although the internet is a big source of information, skills are needed to evaluate the content. This is different than using academic libraries or access to thesis papers through academic research portals, where resources have already been evaluated. Access to these research papers is not open and requires registration, signing up or being a student to that specific Educational Institute.

Why is the access limited?

Access is limited due to the price of the subscription to academic journals, over the last few decades. It has increased to the point where they are out of reach for students in most of the renown funded institutions. This can be seen where journals cost in excess of $10000 per year with few peaking at over $25000 per year [1]. Many institutes around the world don’t have the financial resources to keep up with the increasing prices and students looses access to accredited research papers. Universities are canceling it subscriptions and are starting to become a trend among the universities and collages [2]. The problem is much worst in developing countries.

Evaluation of Information:

There are a few factors to consider about evaluating information found on the internet. These factors are as follows:

Authorship

Publishing body

Point of view or bias

Referral to other sources

etc.

Authorship

Authorship is one of the major criteria to use when evaluating the information by asking: “Who wrote this?”. This is important since we can give credibility to the information by having background on the person contribution in the academic relevant field.

Publishing Body

By knowing who the publishing body of the information will indicate if the author’s work has undergone review in order to satisfy standards of that organization.

Point of view or bias

In many academic fields, information given is rarely neutral. Every writer/publisher will want to prove his view, by using the research in a biased way to get his point through. Using popular search engines also gives bias information relating to what is being searched. An example of this is searching for reports on: “people IQ is increasing” and “people IQ is decreasing” giving two different papers with bias views on the subject matter.

Referral to other resources

References are crucial as this reveals that the author has researched the subject. This also allows you to validate the sources and citations.

Lunyr Project Plan in Summary View Point

From an investor perspective, I believe that their project could definitely become successful. I like the idea of a decentralized knowledge base, as this is a needed project with great potential. The alpha release invitation is out and the announcement of the acceptance will be made next month in August. This will be the first public access to the ethereum community. As for the Lunyr community putting investors aside there is a lot of contribution and believe it will attract relevant academic organization in nearby future.

Disclaimer:

The information in this post is provided as is with no warranties and confers no rights.

References:

[1] “Expensive Journals List: Current MIT subscriptions costing more than $5,000/year,” MIT Libraries, 07/16/09 (accessed 18/07/17)

[2] UCLA Library, “Comparable University Libraries,” 01/28/10 (accessed 18/07/17)