The startup Space Exploration & Research Agency (SERA) has partnered with Coinbase for an NFT drop that gives buyers a chance to secure a seat on an upcoming Blue Origin flight to low Earth orbit on a New Shepard rocket.
As part of the crypto exchange’s “onchain summer,” the citizen science SERA organization will mint three space-themed tokens on the Base Layer 2 network. By buying an NFT, holders gain access to SERA’s astronaut selection program, which will come online in the coming weeks.
NFT holders are eligible to earn one of six seats SERA has reserved on an upcoming mission on the Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. The token will automatically fast-track holders to phase 1 of the astronaut selection process to go straight into phase 2.
“This is about trying to open up access to space to everyone,” SERA co-founder and former rocket engineer Sam Hutchinson told The Block in an interview.
The remaining five seats will be reserved for astronauts from nations that have either never had an astronaut in space or have had very few, including India, Nigeria and the Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Token holders will also be able to participate in that selection process.
The voting process will also take place onchain. “Because this is a historic moment, we need to make sure that the voting process is fair and transparent through a combination of KYC and blockchain-based voting,” Hutchinson said.
In particular, when onboarded in the SERA program, users will be given a mission badge in the form of an NFT, which helps track how they vote in various phases of the astronaut selection process. “The voting information will be transparently available to the community so that they know that there's no fingers on the scale,” Hutchinson said.
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“Utilizing the blockchain wherever we think that there's a very strong use case can help broaden access to space exploration and research or to create the kind of transparency that has perhaps historically been lacking from space exploration,” he added.
Of the approximate 660 people who have been to space, the vast majority have hailed from just three countries: the U.S., Russia and China. SERA already helped tip the scales by securing Victor Hespanha, a 28-year-old civil engineer from Minas Gerais, Brazil, a seat on a Blue Origin rocket in 2022 — also through a token voting process.
“Space naturally is a decentralized concept,” SERA co-founder Joshua Skurla told The Block. “We looked at the equation and said, if there's a way to aggregate a large number of space enthusiasts, whether that is from the deep tech side all the way down to just the Sci-Fi fanboys, you could, with the Web3 ethos here, align everyone through stakeholdership.”
Beyond being connected to crypto companies like Coinbase, which is seemingly littered with space enthusiasts, Skurla noted the company is in active conversation with a number of Web3 founders interested in exploring the cosmos, including Stellar founder Jed McCaleb, who is building a private space station through a new startup called Vera.
“SERA was founded to make the future of space exploration more inclusive by giving anyone the opportunity to participate,” Jesse Pollak, Coinbase engineer and creator of Base, said in a statement. “What we’re doing in making the onchain global economy accessible for everyone, SERA is doing for space.
“I think there are quite deep cultural synergies between the web3 and space communities. Particularly on the tech side, the space industry is motivated by this idea of greater socioeconomic freedom,” Hutchinson said. “That is something we certainly feel in web3 — they've got a very common set of long-term goals.”
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