Hello World

Today, we are proud to announce the launch of Superlunar, a web3 research and design studio. Superlunar brings together creative technologists with varied backgrounds to focus on secure, sustainable, and usable applications of decentralized technology.

The last few years have seen a rapid mainstreaming of decentralized technology, providing the initial building blocks with which to rethink many existing technical architectures and business models. The underlying goal of providing users with direct ownership and control of their data is a recurring theme in web3, and with it comes major potential benefits.

Of course, with that potential comes pitfalls. Pessimism about crypto is rampant, and not entirely unfounded. Scams are too plentiful, the tools are complex and confusing, and the long-term impact of these growing systems is too often ignored.

At Superlunar, we believe honest dialogue — and treating crypto as a technology and not a religion — is the best way to build a solid foundation to help advance the space and identify and solve real problems. Unlocking the next generation of connected experiences for builders, creators, and practitioners alike demands extensive research and exploration. We are firm in our belief that the time to make that investment is now.

‍

Our Focus

As a standalone team of creative technologists we bridge theory and practice across multiple disciplines to focus on three core areas:

Security‍

Many members of Superlunar have extensive backgrounds in security research and it forms a central focus of our program. If our ultimate goal is to increase trust and understanding of decentralized technology, then security, identity, and privacy are obvious places to invest in.

Decentralized computing and strong cryptographic guarantees help form the core of web3, presenting fundamentally different paradigms to secure and develop upon.

We are just as interested in applying decentralized technology to security problems as we are in finding security problems with decentralized technology. And like all good hackers, we believe that breaking while we build will result in better prototypes and a better ecosystem.

Sustainability

The immutability and permanence of blockchain tech requires a level of maintainability and dependability from the core technology. Superlunar provides grants and sponsorships to individual contributors, projects, and programs around the world to empower the next generation of maintainers and builders, as well as provide wages directly to open source developers to continue their work.

At the same time, we aim to illuminate areas where progress can be made in mitigating the environmental impact of decentralized platforms. The long term viability of blockchain technology is inextricably linked to its environmental sustainability; more urgent action is critical to support web3 innovation at a lower impact to the planet.

Usability

Making web3 as usable as it is useful will help unlock major advancement for the new web. Applying design thinking to craft repeatable usage and development patterns — alongside empathetic storytelling to distill complex topics — will reach broader audiences and provide transparent approaches to complex use cases.

Alongside that, applying a design thinking approach to all of our research transforms the way we develop products, processes, and strategies by combining what is technologically feasible with what is actually desirable from a human perspective.

Our People

As with any successful research group, the most important factor is the people involved. To that end we have gathered prominent practitioners from the cyber security, environmental science, design, development, and finance communities to bring a diversity of thought to these efforts. We aim to look beyond speculative investment and hype cycles to bring healthy skepticism and genuinely transformative solutions to real, practical issues, and share our findings in ways we can all learn from.

We see this as an incredible opportunity to apply this cross-disciplinary approach to one of the most dynamic and quickly-evolving technologies to come along in the last twenty years. Many thanks to those who are making it possible; our teammates, our past/present/future collaborators, our families and friends, and the broader Gemini community and leadership. We are honored and look forward to championing this unique way of building in this dynamic environment.

<The Superlunar Team>

‍