More About Us
Why Asterisk?
We’re reclaiming the attitude that women are an asterisk in medical journals and research files. Women make up 51% of the world’s population. Women’s medical care is far from niche, yet that is how women are classified. Asterisk is here to change that.
What is your mission?
We are working to backfill 500 years of missing women’s non-reproductive health data.
1/ Fertility is a well-funded market with $1,685M dollars provided for research in the USA alone in 2022, compared to the the dismal $1M dollars given to vulvodynia (a non-reproductive pain disorder). Women’s reproductive health is also already well-supported by fellow Web3 org AthenaDAO.
2/ Women’s fertility and body autonomy is often politicized. We don’t want to add to that. Instead, we see women’s health as a holistic approach to providing women the opportunity for wellness in everyday life. We want to see a world where women can access life-changing modalities without a doctor framing her choice with her body’s ability to conceive. We hope you’ll join us.
Truly worldwide?
Yes. One of our core governance directives is that we must fund research and startups equally across all continents, just as women are equally distributed across the globe. Women’s issues in Nigeria look very different from women’s issues in Denmark, yet most of the world’s medical research is done in the Global North. We refuse to perpetuate that paradigm. As such, AsteriskDAO must have an active chapter in each continent — preferably more, according to population density.
How can one get involved?
We have deployed our alpha app and need early users to explore its function and report feedback. Learn more about the app and its use here.
We are also looking for founding members to steer the ship and accelerate the growth of the DAO. You can check out our Notion Page to learn about our pressing needs. If you don’t see something that you’re interested in, use the form to make a suggestion!
Why do you need my ID?
You’ll notice that when you sign up for Astra, the first step is to verify your ID. We do this for a few reasons:
- We promise researchers that the data Astra collects is 100% female. When we say we’re the first all-female longitudinal database for women’s non-reproductive health, we mean it (recognizing that sex in research is very different from gender identity).
- Every one of your entries results in a tokenized reward that gives you voting power within the DAO. That is very attractive to bots who want to farm tokens. If we didn’t verify ID, we would have thousands of bots entering phony data in order to ‘get paid’ (see more below.)
That being said, we do not store your ID. We use a service called Self that replies “yes” or “no” when asked if the sex marker on your ID is female. That is the only information we ever receive about your ID. Everything else is in your control in your profile, fully GDPR compliant to ensure your profile cannot be used to identify you.
Right to be forgotten?
We host our data with Akave, a specialized storage system that makes it easy for users to opt out at any time. Think of a data lake as an ocean of bubbles. Each user is a bubble — your data is shared with researchers in the ocean, but your bubble is always autonomous. If ever you wish to delete your profile, your bubble is pulled out of the ocean and your right to be forgtten preserved.
What do you mean by "women"?
Asterisk wants to acknowledge the use of the term “women” as a term that has been both inclusive and exclusive of trans, assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB), intersex and others who have been discriminated by traditional Western medicine. We are currently using the term over other intersectional terminology (womxn, FLINTA*, etc.) to ensure the continuity of data collection from a biological sex perspective.
Are you paying us?
Each of our participants receive points for using our app and tracking their experience with their disorders. Those points eventually convert to tokens on the blockchain which track your voting rights within the organization (DAO). Your vote will control how we spend our funds and which diseases we explore.
Our goal is for women to be able to vote on their own healthcare for the first time in history.
What is a DAO?
A DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organization operates in a similar fashion to a board of directors — except the board can comprise of thousands of members around the world thanks to tokenized ownership. Imagine being able to vote on the health initiatives that you believe in.
We are building a group of experts and advocates working together to advance women’s health initiatives worldwide (and beyond) and hope you will join us. You can learn more about DAO organizational structure here.
What does DeSci mean?
DeSci or Decentralized Science works to build public access to funding, research, and knowledge. We believe that this is the best way to expand and accelerate women’s health research in order to improve care and lower barriers in the long term.
