Virtual reality developer Nanome has launched Matryx, an open-source platform that they hope will change how people collaborate to advance problem solving in STEM.
The three primary components of Matryx are the bounty system for rewarding users for solving problems posed on the platform by researchers, a library of digital assets for use in developing models and solutions and a marketplace for exchanging these ideas and assets.
In a company white paper, the developers outlined their inspiration in the Henri Clay Institute of Mathematics’ “Millennium Problems” and the ways they’re avoiding the problems with that challenge with collaborative, iterative rewards.
“Rather than simply establishing a goal and rewarding the first past the post, Matryx tracks the provenance of assets, enables low friction collaboration, and divides rewards amongst all participants,” reads the white paper.
Problem-solving on Matryx is incentivized with a blockchain-based bounty system that uses their custom MTX token, which is deployed as a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. The company will be putting the first of these tokens up for sale early next month.
“Our goal is to make Matryx the de facto standard for decentralized collaboration, proving that a global community of collaborators will yield innovation faster than work attempted in siloed teams,” said Steve McCloskey, CEO of Nanome. “Matryx aims to create an environment that encourages healthy competition and the open exchange of ideas for critical fields like math, science, technology and engineering. By leveraging blockchain-based bounties, we’re also able to reward contributors openly, encourage future collaboration, and evolve the platform as user needs demand.”
The platform works together with Nanome’s suite of VR STEM tools, which includes Calcflow, a mathematics problem-solving and modeling application, and nano-one, a VR interface for designing and simulating at nanoscale. The open-source license means anyone can make software to interface with the platform, and while their focus is currently only on STEM, Nanome says they can see Matryx evolving into other fields.
