an open atlas
curated by the world
and stored on-chain

Each Place represents a named geographic location with associated metadata. The metadata includes neighborhood, street address, locality, a 3D geographic coordinate with altitude, and categorical attributes such as Pizza, Live Music, or Historical Landmark. All attributes are stored on-chain where they can be referenced and remixed by creators.

Most of the world’s mapping and place data is controlled by large corporations. It is costly to license and is often laden with restrictions.

Places provides an open and decentralized record of a given place and empowers creators to make art, games, maps, tools, systems, and visualizations.

Places and their attributes are stored directly on the Ethereum blockchain and do not point to IPFS or other networks.

Places is released in focused drops inspired by specific neighborhoods, communities, or themes. By seeding each drop around a specific locale or community, Places is able to provide an interesting mix of representative locations in a geographically dense arrangement. This provides a unique and compelling canvas for artists and developers.

The first Places drop was Brooklyn. Of course, you can imagine locales such as Austin, Paris, Miami, Los Angeles, Manhattan, London, Sydney, Tokyo, and more are on the Places radar. The ends of the earth are literally the limit.

In addition to gas, there is a nominal fee to mint a place (more on that below 👇). Mint fees are set from drop to drop. Upon each successful mint the next available Places ERC-721 token will be transferred to the minter. Only one place may be minted at a time, and you never know what place you’ll receive. Certain drops may also limit the total number of Places a wallet address is able to mint. The Places contract is NOT audited so mint at your own risk.

Check out the latest drop above ☝️ to mint a Place of your own!

Places Contract: 0xC9CA129DC3a299aF68A215d85771630aec4C3C2b

Storing geographic information on-chain will require a meaningful investment of resources over time.

To that end, the Places DAO treasury receives 75% of ETH proceeds from each drop. The treasury will be used to fund contract fees for future drops. In this way a virtuous cycle can fuel expansion of Places to new neighborhoods and cities. Places DAO also aims to fund projects that benefit the Places ecosystem as a whole.

The remaining 25% ETH is transferred via contract to a unique Neighborhood treasury (defined per each drop) where it will be disbursed to one or more local projects at the decision of Places DAO. Here's how neighborhood grants will work.

Each Place token is an irrevocable member of Places DAO. As the project grows and membership diversifies, DAO members (Placehodlers?) will become the primary governing body of the Places project.

The “Grounders”* are the team at Gowalla, a gaming company exploring the space where our digital and physical worlds meet. Grounders believe in the power of communities working together and are responsible for creating and seeding the Places project. Gowalla’s own products plan to build on top of Places as a data source where applicable.

Because 100% of the ETH proceeds from Places are divided between the Places DAO and neighborhood treasuries, Gowalla has chosen to receive Place tokens as compensation. Every 20th Place (beginning with a random ID for each drop) will be automatically minted and sent to the Grounders multisig.

* = tip o’ the hat to Nouns project for the naming inspiration.

Unequivocally, yes! Places are public domain (cc0) and you’re invited to use them however you want.

Here is a running list of ideas gathered by our community.

This website and a handful of other project resources are open source.