AsteriskDAO FAQ
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.
Each of our participants receive points for using our app and tracking their experience with female-biased disorders. Those points eventually convert to tokens on the blockchain which track your voting rights within the organization. Your vote will control how we spend our funds and which diseases we explore. 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.
Our goal is for women to be able to vote on their healthcare for the first time in history.
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.
How can one get involved?
We have deployed our beta app for women with OCD 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 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?
AsteriskDAO was formed to support non-reproductive women’s health for two reasons:
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.
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.