> Since the beginning of mankind, humans have always been fascinated by what lies beyond the Earth's atmosphere. There may be nothing more beautiful than finding a dark place to look up and marvel at all the stars in the universe. As artificial lights of cities and towns have taken over the night sky, people have less and less of an opportunity to view the cosmos.

Part of our mission here at Galactic Star Token (GST) is to reignite the passions of that little kid inside every one of us and to get more people emotionally and physically invested in exploring the galaxy. We think looking to the stars is essential for humankind to continue to progress technologically and as a species.

For everyone out there who still finds themselves staring in wide wonder at what is above us, we are excited to introduce the Galactic Star Token.

The Star Token is a Non-fungible Token (NFT) that provides the owner the opportunity to own their very own piece of the digital heavens. As an NFT, every Star Token is unique and can only be owned by one person. Each purchase and transfer of a token is verified by multiple users to a safe and secure blockchain. Each star in the GST database corresponds to a real star in the universe. Attributes including size, color, distance from Earth, and celestial coordinates can all be verified and backed up with #SCIENCE. _

> It depends on how you're looking of course. There are about 1.5 billion that we have fuzzy measurements on, and undoubtedly billions more out there beyond the reach of our gaze. There are far fewer that humanity has discrete measurements of distance, size, luminosity and color for. Of those, we can only see a tiny fraction without any technological help. With the naked eye, there are approximately 10,000 stars in the night sky. That's so few!

But if you have a set of standard binoculars, you can see around 200,000! And with a 3-inch telescope you can buy in a store, the number quickly balloons to 5 million or so. So there are literally millions we can see from right out our bedroom windows with a little help.

If you're looking for your star out there in the actual sky, each GST token has an information card in the 3D view that will help point you in the right direction. The right ascension and declination values are the celestial grid coordinates— kind of like an X and Y on a grid from geometry class. But in #SPACE.

But in the meantime, the virtual universe on our website will zoom you into whichever digital stars you own for your convenience. And if that's not your cup of tea, we're developing an app that will allow you to point your phone in every direction and pinpoint the stars you own the NFTs for at any time of day or night. _

> Certain star naming registries promise EVERY single person the ability to name a VISIBLE star in the night sky. That sounds amazing, right? The problem: there are only about 10,000 visible stars. 🤔

This can only mean one thing—these registries are selling the EXACT same stars over and over again to unsuspecting customers, just with different registration numbers. We will not do this. How can we prove it?

The answer is simple: Non-fungible Tokens.

Every star in our database is tied to a single token. Any user can verify where that star is in the universe and which crypto wallet owns that token. We aren't going to try to convince thousands of people to buy the Alpha Centauri token. There can only be one. This sets us apart.

When we run out of stars with all the attributes needed to create verifiable datapoints from what science knows, that's it. We aren't going to manufacture stars out of thin air or fill in data that science hasn't yet proven. Every star in our database corresponds to a real known star out there in the universe with those exact coordinates, radius, and luminosity.

For the record, if you want to rename your digital stars after your significant other or grandkid or whomever, go right ahead. We reserve the right to override any such names we find egregiously offensive. So don't be a dick.

And if you want a cool-looking certificate with your star or stars' names and coordinates, we've got you covered there too. When viewing your stars in the galaxy explorer, you can generate a blockchain-wallet-signature protected certificate with QR code that is shareable with others, and proves your wallet's ownership of the token. Anything they can do, we can do better. #SCIENCE _

> Look them up. Each star can be cross-referenced to the Gaia GDR2 data from the European Space Agency, or the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, 5th Edition (BSC5). Every star in our database has the following minimum attributes:

• Right Ascension, Declination, and Parallax (celestial grid coordinates, like X, Y, and Z)
• Distance from the Sun in Light Years / Parsecs (Parsec = 3.26 Light Years)
• The Observation Epoch (the year it was observed)
• Temperature (our Sun is 5,778 Kelvin)
• Radius or Stellar Radius (its size compared to our Sun- ours is 696K Km, or 432K miles)
• Star Color (in varying degrees of Red, Green, and Blue, or RGB values, not to be confused with the Notorious RBG)
• Absolute and Relative Luminosity (how bright a star is up close vs how well we can see it from Earth)

If the star has an International Astronomical Union (IAU) name that we could locate, we included it. Otherwise, we went with the name from the GAIA / BSC5 database for uniformity across the data. If you find a star that has an official name that is missing, please e-mail us. If we can verify it, we will update your star! Finding stars that might be missing their official designation is a great way to find a potential diamond in the rough. _

> Whichever you prefer! The Star Tokens can be anything to anyone. If you want to name a star after that special someone, by all means.

If you want to draw your own constellation in the sky by purchasing a few stars in a unique shape, go for it. We even have some people who have started writing peoples' names in the stars. If your significant other isn't impressed by that, it might be time to look for a new partner. (I'm sure he/she is fine and all… but you can do better)

If you subsequently want to re-sell any stars you bought, that's your prerogative. You are welcome to buy and sell however many as you feel so inclined. OpenSea makes it extremely easy to re-list your stars for any price you choose or you can gift or sell them privately through the ETH blockchain to another wallet. _

> How safe and secure is this? Can other people know I own the stars in my wallet? How does Metamask work?

All of this is far more secure than traditional e-commerce. Your Metamask wallet cannot be tied back to you just by looking at the blockchain. While the ETH blockchain knows which wallets own which star, no one will know that is YOUR wallet unless you tell them your public address. You can rest assured knowing that the blockchain is entirely anonymous.

No one is going to come after you because you own Alpha Centauri. But someone might contact you through the OpenSea marketplace if they are interested in buying a star that you own. And hey, if the price is right, why not?

Just how secure is the blockchain? Very. The decentralized nodes ensure that the system won't fail short of a catastrophe that wipes out the entire internet. And if that happens, well I guess we'll have to wait until civilization re-emerges from the cosmos to build a new internet. _

> We know that providing an enjoyable experience often drives people to learn. If you enjoy learning about something, you are much more likely to try to expand your knowledge and continue to seek new information. We want to build this sort of fun and creative environment through Star Token. Because every Star Token corresponds to a real star in the universe, you can purchase multiple stars in a specific pattern to create your own constellation. Your constellations can be in any shape, size, or include any number of stars. We at GST want to provide our community the opportunity to be as creative and imaginative as they want. _

> We are an agile tech startup trying to bring together cryptocurrency, astronomy, and gaming. The ultimate cold-fusion of nerd-dom. We are releasing our NFT star tokens as soon as possible (minimum viable product or MVP), so that early adopters can get in on the ground floor. We have several target phases for our business, ranging from improved web tooling to view the stars that you own to integration with abitious spacefaring games. We want to serve as the distributed repository for the cyber-adventurers of the universe, and also enable the scientific community to coalesce around a common web-application API for interacting with cosmic data. _

> There are plenty of stars, right? Why should I buy one? Two words: early adoption. The first people to buy Bitcoin were trading thousands of BTC for pennies just 12 years ago. We aren't saying each of these stars are going to be worth a Bitcoin, but who knows where things will go? Each star's value is distinct, meaning a well known star could be worth more than thousands of small or distant stars someday. Buying just the right one can make all the difference.

We are minting the stars on the blockchain in order of proximity to the Sun. We are numbering them outward starting with Alpha Centauri at 1, followed by Proxima Centauri and Sirius at 2 and 3, all the way out into the known universe for every star with all the observable attributes we needed to make a realistic interpretation of its size, 3-dimensional position, temperature, and color.

There is an added advantage to being an early GST owner vs fungible cryptocurrencies—the Star Tokens are non-fungible. There is only ONE Alpha Centauri, one North Star, and three stars across Orion's Belt.

We anticipate the visible stars being the most highly sought after and therefore being an early adopter gives our first purchasers the opportunity to hold valuable digital real estate that will be desired by later investors. If Star Token catches on, the sky is not even the start of the limit. 🚀 _

> Once we have sold the first million stars, we have partnerships planned with several video game studios to use the ownership of Star Tokens to provide game players with special attributes in various games' digital universes. This may come in the form of having special rights when the user is in their star system or having real estate ownership of the planets orbiting these stars as well as the energy the stars produce. This is still in nascent development and we are looking forward to hearing about how to leverage our data in game worlds from YOU. Let us know what kinds of things you would like to see in this phase and we will take all comments and feedback very seriously.

We have several game concepts templated on top of our tokens, and intend to develop some of them in-house as soon as we generate enough revenue through the Star Token ecosystem, and star ownership is distributed enough that the game models will balance appropriately. _

> We hope to be part of the solution to the ultimate question: are we alone in the universe?

Using the funding our company will generate through Star Token sales and gaming revenue, we want to continue to scale, improve, and optimize our REST APIs to serve the scientific community.

There is a common problem in the astronomy community: data silos, csv files, and a lack of public APIs. Astronomy in isolation isn't profitable, and as a result major organizations don't fund universally accessible space-exploration web-services for micro-service, app, and GUI consumers. We intend to expose our JSON-API backend containing all of our well-measured stars for anyone to consume. Free-lancers, big-business, universities, everyone. We hope that this will finally allow average programmers to build the fun stuff: user interfaces, game engines, utility applications, etc; without worrying so much about the hard part: traversing the terabytes of star data out there to construct a database that makes sense.

By making space profitable, we intend to use revenue to indefinitely host APIs everyone can use to start building cyberspace towards interstellar space. _

> The GST project aims to certifiably tokenize all observable stars in our neighborhood of the milky way galaxy. Every star in our database corresponds to a real known star out there in the universe with those exact coordinates, radius, luminosity, etc. When we run out of stars with all the attributes needed to create verifiable datapoints from what science knows, that's it. _

> GST aims to be the premier and authentic star registry database on the internet. Before the blockchain, there was no way to verifiably assign a star to a certain person, entity, or organization. With NFTs, every star in our database is tied to a single token. Any user can verify where that star is in the universe. _

> The most straightforward way to purchase a GST is to install MetaMask Ethereum wallet for your browser. Then its as simple as loading up your wallet with a little bit of ETH, heading over to our marketplace and buying or bidding on the stars that have been minted. Purchases will be assigned to your wallet once an ETH miner verifies your transaction on the blockchain. _

> Purchasing a star through the GST database allows you to uniquely name your star for all to see – in addition to preserving existing scientific data and labels. Our goal is to provide the most comprehensive, navigable star system on the internet that can be integrated by different apps, games or other interactive interfaces. With GST, you can certifiably make your mark on a star, turning star “HD 115873” into “Noobmaster69.” In our licensable database, you own the naming rights to the star, and once named – nobody else can name the same star!

In addition, multiple stars may be linked together to form constellations. _

> The GST star visualizer includes several different layers that allow you to navigate our galactic neighborhood. You are free to claim important stars within famous or desirable constellations (e.g. Orion's belt, Big or Little dipper) and add your GST naming mark to any of them!

In addition, you will be able to link all stars owned in your wallet together to form and create your own constellations in 3D space. The possibilities are endless with the constellations you may create. _

> You may check our rarity guide here. The closest 3,000 to the Sun are currently minted and on the market. Proximity to our Sun is a quintessential rarity trait, along with luminosity, radius, color and temperature. Every star minted beyond the first 3,000 will be further and further away. _