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The Floating Island Project (http://www.seasteading.org/floating-islands-project-in-french-polynesia/) consists of constructing ecological floating platforms in a lagoon of French Polynesia that could offer a response to the challenges of rising sea levels and sustainable development.

These platforms would also provide a basis for homes, offices and infrastructure to encourage the formation of vibrant communities and explore new ways of living together.

At the same time, it will promote innovation in digital and marine technologies by creating an attractive destination benefiting from its unique framework.


Blue Frontiers was founded in 2017 by members of The Seasteading Institute and a former minister of French Polynesia, Blue Frontiers has a diverse team from around the world, working on developing floating islands in French Polynesia.

Blue Frontiers is making it possible to decentralize governance by launching a seasteading industry that will provide humanity with new options for organizing societies and governments. Seasteads will provide environmental resilience to the millions of people threatened by rising sea levels.

https://www.blue-frontiers.com

Reserved for FAQ:

Wow, this looks like a awesome project. The only thing that are not mentioned on the site is the handling of the sewerage waste? Any normal
household use a lot of water and they also generate a lot of sewerage and household waste. How will they get rid of the waste? I was thinking some septic tank that will need to be emptied on a regular basis?

This might be one of the greatest challenges for this project. <because this will increase the cost to live there> Do you have some concept drawings of this proposed project? <I want to see how they "float" these islands in a shallow lagoon?>

Well, the site won't mention most of the engineering that is being worked on. There have been many solutions worked on for waste and the goal is full recycling of the waste integrated with hydroponics and food growth. The tricky part will be desalination and not dumping excess salt back into the lagoon which would change the salinity of the water. We may be able to export salt if we can get a process for preparing it for consumption or even use for other things. Much of the water will be gathered from the rain but depending upon storage and different times of the year that may not work all of the time. The waste and food systems guys we have are brilliant and do this stuff for a living.


Here is an initial model of what they would like to have for the pilot project in a French Polynesian lagoon:
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/14/business/dealbook/14DB-SEASCAPE/merlin_129549077_10b81a0e-c1d6-4c3c-845b-1267fb54cdaf-master768.jpg


https://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.46739.1507111093!/image/seasteading-final_web.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/seasteading-final_web.jpg

This video gives some sea level views of the model:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPIKR8UDDgo

Are there any plans to replicate this project to third world countries with much riverine communities should the project become successful?

The hope is to have this in as many countries around the world as will allow it. The key being that the government has to grant a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in one of its protected waterways.

Blue Frontiers has opened discussions with other nations that are just as concerned about sea level rise, the fate of their people, their culture, and their homeland.

Yes we are in contact with countries who are in refugee crises and are planning to work with the hundreds of communities already experiencing sea level rise. Recent numbers estimate that between $10 and $200 trillion will be spent on sea level rise infrastructure. Seasteading is one of the lowest cost, least invasive and most sustainable solutions.

This is a really cool project, if you manage to achieve everything you've mentioned in your post.
You're planning to fund it entirely through an ICO? I've seen something about Varyon token on your website...

What kind of timeline are you looking at to secure enough funding and start building?

I hate to be a negative nelly, but I don't believe building in the ocean will save you from the upcoming climate change.  All mankind will be suffocating and choking with 20-30 years, regardless of where you live.  :(

I guess you mean sewage. I expect this to be handled the same way that it's being done on land. What do you think happens to the contents of your septic tank? It's being filtered and large particles are separated from the water, then the water undergoes additional treatment and filtering until it's clean enough to be dumped into a nearby river or lake, and ultimately ends up in your tap again.
Until a plant is built and there's enough people living there to make it worth building, there will probably be a ship coming in to pump everything out and move it to a land-based facility.

It's an interesting project.

Here is the current timeline Blue Frontiers has laid out to get things going.

• 2017: Signed MOU with French Polynesia; launched Blue Frontiers; held researchers
Floating Island Research: Science & Technology meeting at the
UC Berkeley Gump Station on the Island of Moorea. Co-hosted first international
seasteading gathering in Tahiti. Conducted significant economic,
legal, and environmental research; developed new seastead designs; built
a global team
• 2018 Q1: launched Blue Frontiers Global & Blue Frontiers Communities
• 2018 Q2: launch Varyon
• 2018 Q3-Q4: acquire a SeaZone from a host nation; continue negotiations
for additional SeaZones; engineer and blueprint seastead designs
• 2019 Q1/Q2: prototype seasteads; wave-model testing; manufacturer and
supply chain assessments
• 2019 Q3/Q4: manufacturer and construction team selection. Construction/manufacturing
begins
• 2021: first seastead is deployed

Early on that might be the case, but I think the team plans on composting so even if the waste needs to be exported it will be exported as soil (initially). With innovative food systems on the anchor zone on land all of the waste can be utilized within the community.

Is this going to be funded tru ICO?
If yes, will the tokens allocate the shares among the investors or will be the base currency when dealing with properties?

I hate to be negative but, something like this (a self-sufficient/sustainable system) will constantly require external expenses and manpower for maintenance, considering that the owners (token holders) aren't capable of the hard-labor and "scientific" operations.
What would be the "financial responsibilities" of someone who owns a property and a token holder?

Varyon will be the base currency when dealing with anything related to Blue Frontiers, including property, etc.

Depending upon the amount raised during the ICO the full project could be funded just through the ICO or at the lower end the initial platforms can be built and sold in order to fund the rest of the builds. The hope is that there is enough raised through tokens that Blue Frontiers will be able to build all of the pilot platforms and rent them out or sell them in a controlled manner. Money from timeshares would bring in a lot of money for the company to move forward building new platforms and improving production to bring costs down. If the ICO is on the low end they will be able to build a few initial platforms and with the sale of one platform they can build more, following more of a manufacturing model where they get paid for manufacturing and selling platforms.

It is not yet known what the fees will be for property owners, the idea behind seasteading is having a variation in governance models so one platform might set up a property tax or marina/condo or timeshare type fees while another might have some other structure for maintenance. The hope is that maintenance is kept to a minimum for these platforms.

Interesting. Sounds like future indeed. Though not sure if people are ready to live on something floating. Is it comfortable, is it safe??

This woman lives on something floating: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/88-year-old-retires-and-lives-on-cruise-ship/

People live on floating things all the time.

Yes, It is not strange at all, because some of the Dutch people are living in floating houses on the canals. {Houseboats} You also have a total of 100.000 legally placed houseboats in The Netherlands, of which 2400 is in Amsterdam.  ;D

Just look what is happening in the UK for instance :  https://www.ft.com/content/9f3a3b7e-6aa6-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f ... I have to say, this was one of the reasons why I was pulled towards this thread. It looks very romantic and it would even be better, if it was done in this way. <Giving you total Independence from specific countries>  ;)

Interestingly enough the architecture firm doing the design of the Blue Frontiers seasteads is a Dutch firm who built a floating pavilion in Rotterdam. Blue21

They have some great expertise on these types of things and will be a valuable asset going forward.

The only thing I would be worried about is the amount of freedom the settlers will be given. You could be buying a floating platform with the ability arranging it however you like, or you could be buying a premade structure and signing up papers that limit your choices of everything starting from materials you bring into the platform and ending with the machinery that you're allowed to bring in, the amount of noise you can generate and power you can draw. I know it might be too early to ask but maybe you know how this part is going to look like?

have your ico been put on known websites?
if yes
What are the sites ?

This is the third project of similar theme I've encountered in my short time at this forum. Are any of you related or have you looked at each other's plans? Surprised I didn't see this as I check this section almost daily.

Refer to this thread from theymos that also references the same institute: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2418909.0

And this one, earlier but abandoned: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1964768.msg19532430#msg19532430

What I'm saying is that there seems enough people talking about this on this forum alone. Perhaps time to "synergise" and all that. I'd love to be part of something like this, tbh. Not 100% for any reasons brought up already.

not again elwar...

its been a year and same lessons not learned.
do i need to rehash the basics missed out on that are revealing many red herrings

The initial pilot project will likely be more like the legality of a business or combination of businesses (I guess like a market or shopping area? no idea for sure but we don't want the pilot project to fail due to a meth lab being made on the first seastead).

The pilot project is just that...a pilot. A way of testing new things in a semi controlled manner.

https://www.varyon.io

The Seasteading Institute is responsible for promoting the idea of seasteading and trying to push forward activity in this sphere.

French Polynesia reached out to the Seasteading Institute to come up with a way to use one of their protected lagoons for a pilot project in the hopes of bringing seasteading technologies to their islands that are under threat of sea level rise.

The Seasteading Institute is a non-profit with a set objective of spreading awareness, so the Executive Director and one other top director of TSI along with 3 others related to this deal formed their own for-profit company called Blue Frontiers. Blue Frontiers will be put in charge of the Special Economic Zone being developed in French Polynesia. They have already submitted an environmental impact study and an economic impact report to the government of French Polynesia. Now that the elections are over, FP will likely begin getting to work on that legislation.

Meanwhile, Blue Frontiers is raising funds via an ICO at https://www.varyon.io to get the initial funds for engineering research to build prototypes and set up a construction site on a piece of land next to the lagoon at one of several locations under negotiation. They are asking for a comparatively small raise of between around $5 million and $15 million. The higher raise would get them to their initial platform in the water while the lower raise would require some pre-sales and other forms of raising funds for the pilot project.

Same project a year later, much has occurred since then.

I understand your worries about water and waste. I have every confidence in the very intelligent team that has been working on that for the past year. There are over 70 volunteers and at least a dozen staff that have been tackling every little bit of this from food to water/waste to energy to communications, blockchain, governance, etc.

I know you think this must be some scam because "you haven't thought about...<fill in your preconceived notion>" but no...it likely has been thought of. I've been in the meetings with some of the most intelligent people in their fields discussing things I've never even considered even after being involved with seasteading for 10 years. I've sat through a several hours long presentation on poo and toilets that I would have rather not watched (some people are very passionate about such things).

I have followed the seasteading space since watching Patri Friedman give a speech in 2008 about it. I have seen many projects come and go. I have not gotten involved with any of them because I could see they were only dreaming and had their heads in the clouds.

This project is the first one that is actually taking an incremental approach, not trying to create something in the high seas 200 miles from anywhere. Or just buying a boat and calling it a seastead.

If you don't believe that a simple platform can float in a calm lagoon and produce electricity and deal with water and waste...then no seasteading project will ever be viable in your eyes. This project even has a step before the platform where we will be on land doing much the same thing in the years leading up to production. The only difference when that finally happens is that the land under the houses will now be floating on water. Every step incremental. No huge leaps. Using technology that exists instead of pie in the sky ideas.

I have every confidence in this project and have even retired and moved to Tahiti to help ensure that the project moves forward as advertised, being perfectly willing to call out anything that looks to be a scam.

The reason it has taken a year is that they wanted to get it right. I've been frustrated at times wishing they would just throw together a quick ICO and take advantage of the hype last year but they have been meticulous with their lawyers and following every SEC move on this thing. And they wanted to move forward with something they felt was legit. They're an international team working on an international project that will be physically built all over the world with investors from all over the world. This has been no simple task. Even their comparatively low hard limit for the ICO was conservative in my opinion.

Damn, I had high hopes for this project. Sign me out! ;D


It seems that you have to invest in Varyon.
I think the project is very much doable. The main difficulty is keeping it relatively cheap. We all know that given enough time and money you can make anything, even launch a car towards Mars, but if it costs 1 million USD to make a single floating platform the size of a Japanese micro apartment, the whole thing is never going to become huge. It will start as a "because we can" project, and end up being "we showed the world that it can be done".

Interesting project. Better to prepare now...  ;)

I'm hoping that if we can do it "because we can" once, then implement mass production or an open 3D printing method, that we can bring the costs down to the point that it will be cheaper to live on the sea than on land. In most cases, the first seastead will be cheaper than oceanfront property on land.

An even bigger hope would be that we move to the 70% of the world covered in water and some future generation talks about how a long time ago humans used to live in those eco-tourism places where the plants and animals live in abundance...in other words...land. The kids would laugh and say "how would you float your home to your next city on land? What about the earthquakes/volcanoes/tornadoes/flooding?" as they laugh and laugh about the silly primitive people.

Thanks for that explanation... so it is related to TSI itself, at least through the shared relationship of Blue Frontier founders with the TSI management. I just checked out the pre-sale though and it is a pretty high commitment, pricing out even an upper middle class range, but I understand that a project like this has a huge commitment requirement (even at prototype level).

Side note: any chance we'd be able to view these EIS documents? If anything else, this is probably the most important part of ethical considerations yet the easiest to pass (I'm from an island as well, with a long history of EIS-approved dam projects that clearly lacked a lot of on-the-ground realities).

Yes, the pre-sale minimum is set fairly high. The public sale will be 1 ETH minimum I believe. I believe they're hoping the bulk of the sales come during the public sale, the pre-sale is a manual process while the smart contract is vetted for security.

Yes, they released the EIS documents to the French Polynesian government and then made it available on their website. https://www.blue-frontiers.com/en/docs

Thanks for the link. The EIS was actually a lot better than some I've seen, although does not seem to include the piloting period to test any of the eventual environmental impact, at least for one-two years short-term evidence that would have made it stronger. The assessment does concede that it cannot predict the outcome of impact on new and unique marine life, which tells me TSI still hasn't had enough data from other or past projects?

I also see that only 1 of the reviewers was external to TSI itself, was there none from the FP govt itself? The legislation does seem to be thin (typical of course), nothing beyond the need for an assessment, with the checklist seemingly fulfilled by the report.

P.S. Not criticisms at all, just really keen to find out how far and how much is really known about environmental impacts of these seasteads, especially with pristine island shore environments

Best of luck with this!

I myself am on the same wavelength and keep an eye on new manufacturing methods and new emerging materials in this community OrbitalTrain (which aim is exactly this or very close to this - "Our aim is to bring finally prices on homes in spaceships within the price range of an average customer by using advanced materials and technologies and mass producing spaceships for Orbital Train for mass user"):

https://plus.google.com/communities/101326960303384052301



I'm pretty sure this is very likely to be the case. I myself intend to set up an independent state on the high seas. Hope all those in favor of seasteading will enjoy:


https://religy.com/blog/view/66/building-launch-loop-at-the-equator-and-creation-of-an-independent-state-on-high-seas

There are no past seasteads, this will be the first so they could not reference any past projects.

TSI commissioned the study from an independent company, that was part of the deal with French Polynesia...to get an economic and environmental impact study before they would grant the legislation. TSI and Blue Frontiers delivered both. Now that the FP election is over we're hoping for some legislation soon.

We will most definitely be doing physical environmental impact studies throughout the term of the project. I know it is not marine science but I will be personally going to the location before anything is put in the water and take "before" pictures of as much of the area as I can to ensure that the coral is not damaged in the lagoon. Other studies will be the various PH, chemical, salt levels, etc.
They will ensure to have a "control" area where there are no seasteads to compare to.

Being part of the blockchain group I am not involved in that group but we did discuss the desire to have all data stored on a blockchain, hopefully some monitoring devices that can feed the blockchain over time. We want to be as transparent as possible and believe a blockchain based setup would help ensure that there's no suspicion of manipulated data on company servers.

Being a pilot project we know many eyes will be on us and detrimental impact with the environment would stifle any future projects so there has been a huge focus on this. We are not hoping to just not harm the lagoon but help it to thrive and benefit from our presence. That not only benefits the environment but our project as well.

We want nations banging on our door to build seasteads in their protected waters...that won't happen if we're dumping toxic waste turning our pilot lagoon into a radioactive cesspool.

Before this project would scattered in most countries then it would really need to open or do grant permission which supposed wont really be that easy for each government would took consideration just because of the project implementation.I do like the idea but i cant imagine how much funds would be allocated into this one. This would really be huge.

Suppose to say the same thing.We might able to be save on high level rise of water but if resources would be mainly affected where we do able to get to sustain life then it would still be hard.

Blue Frontiers, in collaboration with Startup Societies, has created a global contest. Whoever can facilitate getting their government to create a Special Economic Zone in their nation will win $100k. Read more at http://blue-frontiers.global

Looks like this truly will be a pilot of a pilot, then! There are seasteads already throughout the world - nothing like the modern contraptions we're talking about of course and I'm sure a lot of lessons can already be drawn from them (look at northern Borneo, Brunei, for living examples) and of course as mentioned earlier, the canal boathouses in Netherlands are more samples.

If you're looking for some expertise, for someone to work together with your team on monitoring... offering myself for the smallest of roles. I was a monitoring and evaluation expert in a recently concluded career, focus on community-led projects in developing countries. The closest related experience was looking at post-tsunami homes in Maldives and Sri Lanka. Biggest lesson learnt from these experiences: nothing prepares you for the impacts and outcomes of manmade structures in pristine environments =)

True, there are floating structures all over the world. What makes a floating hotel different from a seastead is the idea of sovereign governments on the seasteads.

We won't be building anything in any nation without the Special Economic Zone to allow for our own experimentation in governance. Otherwise we would just be a floating resort company. There is a floating hotel in Dubai so there is certainly something to point to and show that it can be done from an engineering point of view. But hopefully we are taking things a bit further than anything out there right now.

Help with monitoring would be great. That will be one of the first things we require when we have the site picked out.