Veronica Kirin on How Asterisk Is Fixing the Data Crisis in Women’s Health

🎙️ Guest: Veronica Kirin, Founder of Asterisk Women's Health 

🕒 Duration: ~46 minutes

Episode Overview
In this episode of Token for Your Thoughts, host Lindsey McConaghy speaks with Veronica Kirin, anthropologist, author, and founder of Asterisk Women's Health, about rewriting the rules of women’s health and what it means to build a data-first DAO that gives women ownership and a voice.

They cover how Asterisk is:

• Building the first female-specific data lake

• Giving women the power to vote on what health research gets funded

• Tackling the non-reproductive health data gap (spoiler: it’s massive)

• Creating tools that make it easier for clinicians to access real-world data

• Challenging outdated systems that have excluded women from medical research for centuries

Whether you’re into digital health, data equity, or just want to hear what it’s like launching a Web3 project powered by lived experience, this episode’s for you.

Where to Listen

🔹 Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/veronica-kirin-on-how-asterisk-is-fixing-the-data/id1799063494?i=1000705582144

🔹 Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/episode/0qsmuYHfYsOeGTwcAAx8IU?si=42e8da56ec4b4a59

🔹 YouTube → https://youtu.be/AFklQ9Dhq6o


Connect with Veronica & Asterisk

🌐 Website: https://asteriskdao.xyz

🐦 X (Twitter): @vmkirin | @AsteriskDAO

Stay Connected

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to leave a review and follow Token for Your Thoughts for more conversations with the people shaping crypto, Web3, and AI.

🔔 Follow us on X: @TokenThoughts_

🌐 Visit our website: tokenforyourthoughts.com

Transcript

Lindsey (00:01)
What if women could vote on the future of their own healthcare, not just through policy, but by contributing their data, owning their stake, and actually steering research decisions? That's what today's guest is building. For today's episode of Token for Your Thoughts, we're joined by Veronica Kieran, a serial entrepreneur, anthropologist, author, and founder of asterisk Women's Health.

a project working to rewrite the playbook on women's health by building the first ever female specific data lake using Web3 tools to put power back in the hands of patients. Veronica, welcome to the show.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (00:44)
Hi, love that intro, it's great.

Lindsey (00:46)
Oh, good,

good. Yeah, it's great to have you here. We have a lot of really interesting things to talk about. I'm excited to hear what you're doing with asterisk. But first, it would be great to start by hearing a bit more about you and your journey of how you got here. You've launched nonprofits, tech companies, you've written an award-winning book, you've been very busy. So let's hear about it.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (01:12)
Stop.

Lindsey (01:15)
all these amazing things you've been doing prior to this and how you got here for this next adventure.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (01:23)
Yeah, so I actually am an anthropologist and I love to throw that down because first of all, there's a lot of people who go to university and then they get pushed into that question of like, well, how are you gonna make money of this? It's just like, do it, just do what you wanna do, learn what you're gonna learn because they're drawn to it for a reason and you will figure out how to use it. So I am an anthropologist and I study paradigm shifts. That's what my book is about, actually about the high tech revolution. And I use that every day, I use anthropology to

Lindsey (01:38)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (01:52)
support my team to translate web 2 to web 3 and to hopefully implement a paradigm shift here in women's health because

we need it. But you know, before that, in between the studying of the anthropology and the women's health org, yeah, I had a I had an NGO for a little while. That was my first venture, which is like venture on hard mode. I don't recommend making that your first foray into entrepreneurship. And then I had a Web2 tech company, which I exited in 2018, a few other startups in between and then spent basically from 2018 to

Lindsey (02:03)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (02:32)
like, not really retired, but like consulting retired. just like.

I didn't know what else I wanted to do and I had a lot of knowledge from my exit for how to scale and I was really adamant about protecting people from burnout because part of the reason that I exited my company was because I was burnt out. And so like already in the health mindset of like how do I make sure that I'm translating entrepreneurship in a way that is supportive to other people and how do I make sure that I stay in a healthy space? I moved to Berlin during that time and so I had

Lindsey (02:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (03:09)
I experienced two different health systems. I have three female specific disorders, which is really like winning the lottery. And it means that my healthcare is kind of not the greatest. And I noticed that. like, you know, it's easy to be in the United States and be like,

Lindsey (03:24)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (03:29)
It's American health care. you can just kind of discount it. But being in Germany, I have way more access to health care, like an insane amount. I actually have to say no to doctors, access to health care. And yet I have the same problems. And so it revealed to me this isn't a problem of this system. This is a global problem. And then, of course, digging deeper and deeper, discovering that there's just this complete trough where women's health

Lindsey (03:33)
Mm-hmm.

Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (03:58)
data

should be and not just that the data is missing but also what little data we have is very much biased towards reproductive health which yes are those are female body parts but it's not the whole woman so that's that's how I fell into starting another venture and launching asterisk and trying to change the world

Lindsey (04:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I love it. Why not? Have you always had an entrepreneurial streak? Would you say growing up? I mean, how did you decide to go and start an NGO? Did you even like a day job before or did you just go straight into it out of school?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (04:28)
Why not?

Yeah.

No, well, so I when I was 10, I had a sewing machine and I sewed beanie baby beds. So just to like date myself so hard. I went door to door selling beanie baby beds for five bucks a piece. So I had like something in me. But no, so out of uni, I joined what's not very well known, the National Civilian Community Corps. So this is it's kind of like

Lindsey (04:52)
my gosh!

Amazing, love it.

Yes.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (05:14)
the Civilian National Guard, it's disaster relief work where you deploy in the United States for natural disasters. anyone who was on the ground after Katrina saw us, they saw the gray and green shirts with the emblem on the side. were there and we were responsible for, I think about 70 % of the cleanup because it was just young people being thrown into harm's way and they were like, just go do it, you'll be fine. don't know. Yeah, it wasn't like, know, but so I really, that was like my first

Lindsey (05:34)
Wow!

Gosh.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (05:44)
experience with burnout because I was on the ground for Katrina. I did fire reconnaissance in California. And then I also was one of the first responders, like literally the earliest, one of the earliest groups to be on the ground for the tsunami after American Samoa. And so I saw a lot and I was like, OK, I want to continue doing this type of work, but I can't do it in this way anymore because it's really

Lindsey (05:48)
Mm-hmm.

well.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (06:11)
It's bordering on trauma. Like I just, can't do it. So that's where the NGO came from. This like idea that I want to continue to do good. I want to continue to put my energy towards this direction, but I need it to be different. And I don't, I don't trust this organization. I was working for the government. yeah, anyway.

Lindsey (06:14)
Yeah. Okay.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (06:33)
It didn't, so the NGO worked for two years and then it didn't. And at that point, that's when I started my Web2Venture and kind of just like took like a detour of just trying to figure things out in life. And now I'm back into more impact driven work, which feels a lot better again.

Lindsey (06:37)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right, yeah, bet. Wow, that's an incredible story. And then I was also going to ask about your background in anthropology, because I find this so interesting. I saw you speak at the EVE Wealth Conference, and you had a really interesting story about paradigm shifts and your experience during COVID. Can you tell us or share a little bit more about that? Because...

I just found it so fascinating. It sounds like such an interesting thing to study and then to just to have that outlook, you know, in everyday life. And like you said, to kind of witness a huge paradigm shift during, during COVID must've really been something because they don't, they don't actually happen, you know, on that scale that often you were saying.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (07:33)
Yeah.

No.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like to have it's it wasn't just like scale because we have had global paradigm shifts that happens all the time. You could say the high tech revolution was one of them. But to have it happen in such an acute like within a year, everything was different period. End of story. And so, yeah, I I joked as you heard me say, like maybe it was my own coping mechanism to study it. Well, it happens. But like externalizing the trauma.

Lindsey (07:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Uh-huh.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (08:06)
But yeah, I just knew I had to document it ethnographically because I knew that this was a once in a millennial situation. And it helped to galvanize my understanding of how paradigm shifts work. Because again, a lot of times, we're looking at paradigm shifts that happen slowly over time. So they can be very intangible. You'll have a revelation technologically, but it still takes time to roll out.

Lindsey (08:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (08:37)
One of the examples I like to use is Google Glass. We had that technology, but then the culture was like, eh, you know, I can just, I don't know. So that's why I said we need crisis and we need opportunity in order for a paradigm shift to happen. It's like osmosis. You have to have the two pieces in order to move the energy. And for Google Glass, the opportunity was there. The tech was there. That was cool. But the crisis, which is,

Lindsey (08:46)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (09:07)
is a scientific term for just that energetic need in culture wasn't there. just we were not interested in it. Whereas in the pandemic, yeah, we were we had a crisis literally and scientifically in culture. Culture was excited. If you imagine atoms be excited and

Lindsey (09:12)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (09:25)
The technology then was developed out of that. the example I use is the vaccines that bam, we were all ready for it, even though was radically new technology. was ready within a year. And here we are. So yeah, to think about that from the standpoint of somebody implementing a paradigm shift, I think like so within our culture, like

Lindsey (09:37)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (09:51)
between you and me and every other woman, it feels pretty clear. Yeah, of course. I want my health care to be better. And it is weird that sometimes they go to the doctor and they're just like, ew, no. And then you start to look at the statistics and you're like, this isn't right. But power holders have to still also feel the crisis. And unfortunately,

Lindsey (10:05)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (10:14)
A lot of men aren't quite there yet. So that's why I was saying, I'm trying to excite culture by founding a magazine to inspire empathy through storytelling. And then the opportunity is asterisk. I'm creating the technology so that the shift can happen and be seamless. And nobody's the wiser. Muahahaha.

Lindsey (10:36)
Yes, get all the pieces

together. Because, that makes sense. And I think there have been other examples of that, right, where there's been technology, but then people just haven't been ready for it, or there hasn't been a huge need or a huge crisis. And that's as well something that's, can't, mean, like you said, you're starting a magazine and storytelling, you can raise awareness, but I guess that's the harder part to engineer, right? Okay, so that.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (10:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Lindsey (11:05)
That's really interesting. So you have experienced US healthcare, you moved to Berlin. So you had experiences with two different systems. And I think that's really interesting that that really helped you understand what the issues are because I have experienced this as well. I grew up in London, so I've experienced UK healthcare and US healthcare. But a lot of the conversations I find are around

access, like he said, that's always a big one. How long does it take to get seen in the emergency department or to get a primary care doctor, not hair, and then funding and the money side of it, which obviously is huge, insurance versus universal. But something that I don't think I've ever heard or very rarely heard is actually, like you were saying, the data or the research that go that

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (11:47)
Yeah.

Lindsey (12:00)
you know, supports the treatments, et cetera. I feel like it's the conversation I've heard a lot is about the other two things. So that's really interesting. yeah, having looked into some of the research that you have shared, the stats on this are pretty shocking and pretty mind blowing. Most people have no idea how big the gap is in non-reproductive health data. What are some of the wow,

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (12:08)
Mm.

Yeah.

Lindsey (12:29)
stats that you can share with us because I mean I was reading through a few and it was kind of shocking. mean yeah, what are some of the ones that stand out?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (12:33)
Ha ha ha!

Yeah, yeah. mean, I think

the one that is my favorite is like, OK, we're in 2025. And yet, so when you're studying female conditions, so the female specific conditions, you're bringing them through animal trials. And it's for female conditions, like only female.

Well, like, what did it make sense to have female animals? No. Still in 2025, only 12 % of female specific animal trials are using female animals. And I'm like, what? That's like, it's animals. It's not even like, OK, we had like a hard time on recruitment. It's animals. like, I don't.

Lindsey (13:14)
Wow, for female

specific drugs. Is there a reason? Has anyone explained this?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (13:20)
Yeah, I'm just like.

So the reasoning and OK, so you know, like I have all of my feistiness behind this, so a proper clinician will explain it probably a little bit more level headed than I will. But the female body is on a cycle 28 to 32 day cycle, right? What we know is that during different parts of your cycle, different.

Lindsey (13:36)
Hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (13:45)
chemicals, drugs work better than others. We know in sports that women are more susceptible to twisting their ankles during various times of their cycle. So you have to work out differently, right? Same with ADHD medication, for example. So we know that ADHD medication does not work as well when a woman is in her luteal phase. So can you imagine being a pharma developer and trying to bring a drug to market that doesn't work that great halfway?

the time. You would never. So so yeah, but I still you know, again, I'm feisty. So I'm like, okay, we use sun man to the moon, we can totally like manage the complications of women women's bodies. And I just I posted this to our blue sky. Earlier this week, I was just like, what if in research, we we instead of approaching women's bodies is too complicated, we decided that men's bodies were too boring.

Lindsey (14:28)
Mm-hmm.

my god, love it. Perspective change. Yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (14:46)
Like just what if? Like, right, because it's not, it's actually,

yeah, and that's the paradigm shifting coming in again. I love twisty twisty things. But the reason I push on that is because there are studies going through right now that you can look up on clinical trial databases that say that they are excluding women because their bodies are too complicated. And I'm just like, what year is it?

Lindsey (14:54)
Mm-hmm.

What?

That's

crazy, especially if it's for a drug specifically for women. That is so bizarre. So they basically just want to use the male animals so they can just say, yep, it works great and not have to say like, well it does, but yeah, during this phase there's issues and I mean.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (15:33)
I mean, it's a whole nother layer of tracking, right? So our women on, it's absolutely more expensive. So I either need all of the women to be on birth control, which is an entirely different, can you imagine living in a world where we understand how other drugs affect the female body when on birth control versus not on birth control?

Lindsey (15:35)
Yeah, yeah, it's just more work, more expensive. Yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (15:59)
Versus like, we have no insight into that. So you either need all the women to be on contraception. So like all of their cycles are flatlined and thus the same. And then, you know, like that's a control. But then at the same time, you're missing out on really how does the drug or modality or whatever you're researching affect the female body. And so then you would at least need women to be reliably tracking, which we have the technology to do, you know. But that's why.

Lindsey (15:59)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay. That is really interesting and yes, kind of shocking stats. Thanks for sharing. So yeah, lot of room for improvement there. You have said that funding women's health doesn't automatically put it on the road. It just puts it on the map. Can you expand on that for us?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (16:49)
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, like my my shock value statistic is like, you know, we've had Western health for about 500 years and for 450 years, women were left out of the equation because it wasn't acceptable for women to be involved or they were banned like they were in the 1900s. And by the 1900s, I mean the 70s through the 90s, not like, you know, this is recent. This is in my lifetime. Again, wow. Aging myself. So it's like, do you remember the 1900s? my God.

Lindsey (17:10)
Yeah. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, I know,

don't. My head always goes to like 1912 as well, like when you say that. Not like, yeah, the late 1990s, like the 80s, 90s.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (17:29)
Yikes. Yep. So we all know like women like Marie Curie had to fight to get her Nobel Prize, right? So even like the cream of the crop top women researchers were not.

involved and then of course just going straight down the line like women as far as like participating in trials it just like it wasn't it was much more rare so women have been left out left out left out left out and so i say 500 years it's probably not quite that extreme but that's what i say ⁓ and then yeah so like that's that's just where the the gap is coming from is just having been left out

Lindsey (17:53)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (18:10)
so much. And now we have to figure out like, my favorite example is what I call the ambient fiasco where, you know, we had this medication come out in the 90s. It was tested on only men's bodies. And so the dosage was incorrect for the female body. So much so that women were going to psychotic on it. There are

Lindsey (18:33)
Gosh.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (18:33)
TV

shows like law and order episodes that show like I I was like sleepwalking I did some crazy shit in my sleep or I drove the car like this was real and Finally 30 years later. It took 30 years for the FDA to say it's half the dose for the female body

Lindsey (18:43)
my gosh.

30 years.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (18:52)
Which is not

a little amount. That's like a lot. And so these are the consequences that the drugs are not indicated for the female body. The symptomology isn't indicated for the female body. Do you know what a woman's heart attack looks like?

Lindsey (19:11)
Yeah, you know, I've read that it's very different and now I'm like, yeah, it's escaping me. But yeah, you're right, I've read about this.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (19:17)
But you know what a men's,

what's a men's heart attack look like?

Lindsey (19:21)
I mean, I'm picturing someone grabbing their heart, freezing up.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (19:28)
Right? Like, the pain, sweating,

my arm hurts, ⁓ right? Yeah, a woman's gonna feel fatigue, nausea, back pain, maybe a headache. You go to the ER saying that as a woman, they're gonna be like, okay, let's go take some Tylenol and go home and go to bed.

Lindsey (19:34)
Yeah.

Wow.

Well,

so yeah, that.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (19:48)
And that's why we're

twice as likely to die for a heart attack. So it's just like the, it's just systemic. And at this point it's a whole lot. So that's why we're going for data just to try to like, ugh, like just get something in the car as it starts to go down the road.

Lindsey (19:50)
my gosh.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And you do hear so many instances of that, of women getting diagnosed a lot later, their symptoms being dismissed to something like you said, ⁓ you've just got a headache, go take some Tylenol, and then it turns out to be something really serious. And that is crazy. 30 years and half the dose. ⁓ my gosh, that's a long time. Yeah, and it's just crazy too, because everyone knows that

men and women's bodies are very different. like the, what comes to mind, obviously, like the alcohol effects, you know, like on the, they're different, right, for like, for men and women, like the driving limits and so many things are like, if you're a man, it's this, if you're a woman, it's this. So it's not like that's new information. So yeah, it's bizarre that this thought, I don't know, that just wasn't automatic.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (21:04)
Yeah.

And it's not to be doom and gloom. It's just that you can't advocate for yourself if you don't know. So I just made a TikTok that I'll go out next week for. Yeah, so we're on TikTok, asterisk. We went viral last year because we made some men angry. Just throwing down facts. you can't advocate for yourself. So like I said in the video, if you go to the doctor and they offer you a medication, ask them.

Lindsey (21:07)
No. Yeah.

Love it.

Yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (21:35)
them,

is this the female dose? Because there might not be a difference, but there might be. And a lot of doctors just don't know because it's so systemic that doctors don't realize to look for it because they only get three to five credit hours in women's health in the first place on average. Sorry. I know. I know. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to. I'm just saying no to advocate for yourself at the very least while we in the background, we're going to do the work.

Lindsey (21:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Okay, yeah, no, that's really good advice. I have never thought to ask that, but that is good to know. That's a good question. So you have experienced these two different healthcare systems. It spotlighted the problem with data. What led you to start Asterisk?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (22:22)
Yeah, well, so one of my conditions is premenstrual dysphoric disorder, which again, is not related to whether or not I can fall pregnant. It's just that something, one of the receptors in my brain is broken and way oversensitive to the hormonal changes I have every single month. And so I have a lot of deep depression experiences. And it gets worse.

as you approach menopause, which is so exciting. Great news. And so I was having, you know, was something I had coped with before and all of a sudden it was getting worse and worse and worse. And I was like hitting crisis too many times. And so I was actively seeking for support and just digging for it, digging for it, digging for it. And that started to really open the doors. I'm really thankful that I have a fantastic support network here in Berlin. I have found a great medical team and

Lindsey (23:00)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (23:16)
again, the access has been there, who will hold space for the fact that we just don't know these things. Or if I bring a stack of studies and I say, we need to consider this as part of my treatment plan, they'll say, OK, I don't know anything about this, but I see you have studies and I guess will pay attention and go through it. So that has been my saving grace, but also my driving force that like,

Lindsey (23:40)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (23:44)
I am looking down the barrel of a lifetime dealing with a few conditions that will just never be solved, not for me. And that's sucky. And I can either be very, very angry about it and further injure myself, or I can start something that might help the world. And so I chose the second door.

Lindsey (23:55)
Hmm, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Amazing. I love that. Like, yeah, you're taking this issue and turning it into a positive to build something. And not an easy problem as well, hearing these stats. So yeah, I mean, that's incredible. And how do you explain asterisk to you about what you're doing? Yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (24:26)
Yeah.

Yeah. How do we explain it? Yeah.

It's like it takes even just so much to explain the problem. So yeah, the solution is actually fairly simple. We need to get data to researchers ASAP, period, end of sentence, and make it cheaper, faster, just like all of the things, like better, easier, cheaper, faster. For women,

Lindsey (24:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (24:56)
We need to be involved. For too long, we haven't been, right? And so there's a lot of assumptions that have been made. And 90 % of research happens in the global north. So what little women's health we do have is white women's health. So again, these are not.

Lindsey (25:11)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (25:12)
paradigms I'm willing to reinforce. So we have created a daily check-in app. It feels like a menstrual app, except for we're not asking you about your period symptomology. We're asking you about whatever disorders and medications that you have indicated you are.

in care of at this time. So you have a profile, it's basically static. And then every day we ask about that and you get to share as much or as little as you want to. But that data then goes into the data lake. So it's longitudinal data. Every single day we have more and more data from women around the world in their own words, explaining what it's really like to be a woman with these disorders, taking these medications, if we do fall pregnant, if we are caretaking. we're looking at stress levels as well. One of our

Lindsey (25:35)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (26:03)
clinicians indicated that we really need to be paying attention to stress as well as just general symptoms because often they go hand in hand. All that goes into the data lake and then that can be accessed in real time every day by clinicians and researchers around the world and sorted by age, ethnicity, location, and then disorder. Are you pregnant? Have you ever been pregnant? What medications are you on? Are you self diagnosed or professionally diagnosed and on and on and on. So as you can

Lindsey (26:12)
Absolutely, yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (26:33)
Like I could see your eyes lighting up. Like it's super powerful and

Lindsey (26:38)
Yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (26:39)
are participants who, become part of the DAO because we are tokenizing their responses. But they also, in their app, can indicate if they are open to further participation in trials and focus groups. So now clinicians can find women faster, easier. we're just trying to lower barriers on all levels. Women get to participate. They get to vote because we're a DAO. Clinicians immediately get access to real women, not data parsed through like,

Lindsey (26:52)
our

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (27:08)
all these different layers of assumptions. And then hopefully we've just saved the world, and I can go to bed.

Lindsey (27:11)
Yup.

Amazing. All in a day's work. That's incredible. Wow. So solving that issue of collecting data, like you said, women around the world, not just in the North. Yeah. And then providing access to women for trials as well. yeah, numerous solutions there. And you mentioned about voting.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (27:30)
Yeah, not just the global north, not just white women. No, we're not doing that.

Yeah, yeah.

Lindsey (27:46)
What kind of things do we vote on?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (27:49)
Yeah. Yeah. So initially we are looking at like what specific types of studies, initiatives, partnerships happen within the DAO. We have a couple different phases of world domination that we are going for.

Lindsey (28:07)
Love

it.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (28:10)
So yeah, so we're starting with the data gap, but then we're going to be looking then at the IP gap and eventually the funding gap. So like we'll eventually get there. And so my hope is that in five years time, we have over a million users around the world and they can vote on like where are...

our initiatives and our efforts going, because we want to actually become a really active organization within the women's health space. So yes, we're starting small, which I put in quotes because this is not small, but we're starting specifically with data. And then we have plans to expand, because I really don't see this as, I'm not just here to like,

Lindsey (28:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (28:53)
start a startup and then make some money and then exit. I'm here to actually solve some problems, and it's going to take a long time. And I think that women deserve a say at all these different levels of health. So not just what the research shows, but then also

how data is used and what initiatives are happening on the backside. we do, the veil has not been pulled back to us like ever.

Lindsey (29:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, that's really powerful. I think that's a really incredible part of this is not only having, you know, contributing to creating data and opportunities, but having ownership as well and an essay and a seat at the table is, as we know, not something that's always available. So I love that that is baked into this. And you mentioned tokenization. Can you explain to us a bit more how that works?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (29:50)
Yeah, so we're a bit early on this. So right now, we are rolling out our MVP this month. We're actually just like, we're literally crossing the T's and dotting the I's, buttoning everything up right now. So an announcement is coming soon. Probably by the time this episode comes out, there will be something public out. And we'll be going to alpha testing. So what our alpha and beta testing look like is more like a point system.

Lindsey (30:04)
fighting.

amazing.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (30:20)
And so as you engage with the check-in every day, you'll receive a point that then we are working with a tokenomist in order to create a proper conversion into tokens. So like the earlier you're involved, obviously then the like more it benefits you. So that's.

Lindsey (30:20)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (30:38)
That's our call to action. Anyone to get on the wait list now? Because if you join us at this early stage and you trust us at this early stage, we're brand new. So it does take a bigger leap of faith to engage with us. And I really recognize and honor that. And then the result is, the payoff for your risk of joining somebody that you don't know where it's going to go next is that you will have a greater investment in the organization.

greater voting power in the organization, I believe.

Lindsey (31:11)
Awesome. All right, that's exciting. So yeah, we'll have to make sure to get on that wait list and get involved. So your focus specifically on non-reproductive health, non-fertility, which is rare in this space. This was another one of the stats that I was wowed by about how the majority of funding goes to studies or projects, FEMTECH, that are in the reproductive space. Is that right?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (31:40)
Yeah, yeah, they really do. About 80 % of the funding is going towards reproductive health. And that just comes from that old paradigm of thinking that women are just small men except for wear bikini covers. like, like really when I discovered that term bikini medicine, I was like, what the like I was like at my keyboard, I'm like, I have to write an op-ed about this is absolutely ridiculous. And then just finding out like, that's the term I know.

Lindsey (31:46)
Mm-hmm.

Wait, that's a term.

No.

No. Oh my gosh.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (32:08)
It's awful. Yeah.

And it also like, okay, it's like, well, it's like bikini medicine. It's like where bikini covers, but it also indicates this, like, this like lack of respect, like, like, oh, it's bikini medicine is like women's health. It's like, I'm like, women just want to sit on the beach and drink my ties. And like, that's the health level they need. Like it somehow communicates that in addition to

Lindsey (32:22)
Yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (32:36)
It's just where the sun don't shine. yeah, so it's part of this old paradigm. That's why so much funding goes towards reproductive health for women. It's why when you see women's health centers, there are ob-gens, there are sex therapists, there are fertility clinics. That's what we see over and over. And so that's why we have non-reproductive health.

Lindsey (32:39)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (33:05)
on the very front of our homepage on all of our documents, our pitch deck, our One Sheet, our vision paper, because it's really important to draw attention to this old paradigm and say, we're here to completely go to the other side of it. There are reproductive health databases. There aren't non-reproductive health databases. Nobody's in this space.

Lindsey (33:18)
Yeah.

That is also something else that completely blows my mind, because there's a lot else going on outside of reproductive health. We have a lot of other, yeah, a lot of other body parts, a of other organs, all of it. That's really shocking. 80%. Wow. So I think that really does just spotlight how important this initiative is and just how much catching up we have to do in order to, yeah, get to

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (33:38)
Yeah!

Surprise.

Lindsey (34:03)
the other areas of healthcare that we need. So what's it been like building this, you know, like, this is very sort of mission driven, like you said, it's not just about making money, exiting, it's really solving this huge problem that could be super impactful for women all around the world. What has it been like building a project like that in the Web3 space? Has there anything that's been surprisingly

easy or unexpectedly hard.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (34:36)
Hmm.

So just from a general standpoint, it's been really inspirational. And I say that because I have a team of 10. Nine of them are women. So I think we're one of the most female teams in Web3. Half of our team wasn't even Web3 native. I had to teach my co-founder what Web3 meant and how it all worked.

Lindsey (34:56)
Actually, I bet.

Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (35:07)
So that I think, yeah, as you said, it speaks to the mission and like nobody's paid.

I lied. Our developer is the only one that's being paid. But yeah, like so I have these incredible women from all areas of expertise and walks of life who are all saying yes, even though we don't even have funding yet. We're on the cusp. like we're finally the seesaw is finally balanced and we're like it's going to tip. It's going to tip. It's going to tip like we're right there. But but I mean, we've been doing this for a year and a half.

Lindsey (35:15)
Ugh.

Yes. Yeah, come on.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (35:44)
And they've been along for the ride and some duck in some duck out like we all have a whole lot of other things going on and and I've I worked really hard to keep that part of the ethos of the organization that like even though we're in web 3 we're not gonna hustle hard we're gonna do what makes sense and what's right and so I've even had to step away for like a couple weeks to just say like look like like you know my cousin passed away I need to I need to be gone and I need to

Lindsey (35:59)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (36:13)
go take care of my family. then they say, OK, we've got this. And people come in and they fill the gap. And I've loved that. I loved the Dao ethos that brings that. I'm not the most excited about always being on a panel called Women in Web 3. We joked about that at EVE Wealth. And I loved that.

Lindsey (36:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, we did. We were like, when's

the men in Web3 panel? I love that.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (36:42)
Yes, and I've actually said

that to a few organizers. I'm about to hit the... EVE Wealth was like the first in the full conference circuit. So I'm about to be... Over the next month and a half, I'll be in five countries.

Lindsey (36:47)
Mm-mm.

Well.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (36:59)
So

this is the life of the founder, so prepare yourself if you're thinking about it. And I've said it to a few of the organizers who are inevitably male, and they're like, oh, I really see your point. Yeah, let's do something different. was like, yes, yes, yes, yes. So there's also been the inevitable like dude bro comments and or.

Lindsey (37:15)
Nice, well done.

Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (37:28)
Even an investor has said, I've heard of FemTech, but what about Mentech? And I was like, that's the past 500 years. You already have Mentech. So there's been inevitably, when you're swimming in such a space, Web3 is only 27 % female. And then Web3 founders are only 12 % female.

Lindsey (37:41)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (37:56)
And so when you're in this space, inevitably, there's just gonna be somebody. Somebody's gonna say something. So I guess I'm just feisty enough to be like, yep, no surprise, moving on, I'm gonna write that down, I'm gonna make a really funny TikTok about this later. know, just kind of, if I internalize absolutely everything that happens anymore, I won't go anywhere, so.

Lindsey (38:12)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a good approach. One of the things that we were laughing about at EWOLF, someone said that there was actually an instance at one of these conferences where they did have, they had a in Web3 panel, but all men were on the panel. They had no women on the panel somehow.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (38:36)
God.

Lindsey (38:41)
What's going on here? what?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (38:43)
But I have, I've

seen like, I've seen like women in web three panels where then like the moderator is a man. And it's like the same thing is like, what, what? And I'm actually going to be on I was laughing so hard when they were talking about that, because I'm going to be on a women and web three panel next month at one of the conferences. Yeah.

Lindsey (38:49)
Okay.

⁓ okay. All right.

Well, showing up, yeah, getting out there. You got to do what you got to do. But that's nice that the organizer you did speak to was receptive about doing something new. All right, and you mentioned talking about global travel, traveling the world. You're scaling globally, planning local DAO chapters. What's the vision for how this community grows? I love that you are thinking very inclusive in order to get

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (39:10)
Yep.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Lindsey (39:34)
data and involvement from women worldwide.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (39:39)
Yeah, think like my time running an NGO.

and being an anthropologist and having those two worlds cross, being in disaster relief. I I was deployed to American Samoa, which is a very different culture than what I grew up in. And we had to do culture training. We had to learn. You do not point your feet at somebody because it's rude. You always sit lower than your elder because that shows respect. And you always sit down when you eat because that shows respect to the food, that something died for you, whether or not it was a plant or an animal. And you had to internalize these. And so being an anthropologist,

Lindsey (40:05)
Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (40:16)
and a disaster relief worker and an NGO worker, like really buried into me very deeply that there is a problem in the NGO space of white saviors. And I can only speak to my own culture and my own experience. I should not.

ever be speaking for people who have different experiences than myself. I can only center them and give them a platform. And so that's why we have an ambassadorship program. That's why we want to have chapters because I am certain there are things that I am not thinking of in the development of this app in this first wave. We're going to discover and we're going to discover it because we have people around the world who will test it and tell me, hey, you silly European woman,

Lindsey (41:04)
Mm-hmm.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (41:07)
You forgot blank. You didn't think about this. People aren't going to use it this way because of X, Y, or Z. That's critical. If 90 % of health research is in the global north, that means we're talking about it from a very specific angle, which means I've learned to talk about health in a very specific way. And so I expect there to be blind spots. And I hope to find them as fast as possible.

Lindsey (41:07)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. No, it's a really good point. And I feel like there've been so many interesting anecdotes of examples like that where something gets built and then, you know, the sort of non-typical person comes across it and then gives feedback and, know, otherwise it would have gone completely, you know, been completely overlooked. And I think that's a really great perspective to have is like, you know, there will be blind spots. We don't know what they are, but we'll find them. it's, yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (42:02)
Even-

Even the term blind spot, like look at the words, the verbiage we're using because like my ideal is that we do have people who are hard of sight or even blind using the app eventually. And so like, how do we build for disability so that we are truly inclusive because that's a huge part of the female demographic, right? We have to have the involvement and like, yeah, even the terminology we're using, right? Like, so yeah, this is why like I'm trying to pull in as much diversity as

Lindsey (42:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (42:33)
as many voices as possible from the get-go. If you're listening to this and you think like you have a unique perspective, please approach.

Lindsey (42:43)
Amazing. Yes,

and on that note, if someone listening wants to get involved, you know, whether it's a researcher, community member, where should they, where should they start? Where should they go?

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (42:56)
The easiest place is our website, asteriskdow.xyz. So if you are just interested in starting to test the app, be one of the first participants, get in on that point system, it's right on the homepage. It's like so obvious, it's a big.

pink square. And then in the menu, if you want to go deeper in the menu, our one page is there. And that's where I would recommend you go next. Look at what our chapter needs are, what our current initiatives are, and then use our contact form to reach out and go right into my inbox. And I will then begin communicating with you and we'll see what we do. We currently meet weekly. So we're just always sprinting.

Lindsey (43:17)
Bye.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (43:44)
and working towards the next thing. And yeah, hopefully, not hopefully, I mean, the MVP is coming out this month. I just, don't understand it yet because it's been so long coming. My brain's like, what? It's real. Yeah.

Lindsey (43:56)
Yes, it's actually happening. What's going on?

That's so exciting. Is there anything else that we should cover or that you want to talk about? Or did we get to it all? I mean, not all, obviously, but there's a lot. There could be a part two, but...

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (44:08)
Hmm I feel like we've done. Oh, I know like we could go for a long time but I'm

always down for a part two. Like you could do like a six month like what if we discovered where was Veronica so wrong? Like let's go for it. But yeah, I mean that's that's

Lindsey (44:21)
Yeah!

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (44:27)
That's what I'm really interested in. Like, I want more voices involved. We have this core team of 10. They're incredible, but we do have to expand. And it's just never too late to bring on somebody new. I just, with a great amount of humility and deep amounts of passion, invite anyone listening who feels excited about this, like come in on any level. But even if you feel like, well, I don't have time, join the wait list.

just join the waitlist because you'll be able to give feedback that way and that will be our treasure from you.

Lindsey (44:55)
the weightless.

Amazing. Well, this has been such an incredible conversation, Veronica. You're taking on such a huge problem here. You've got this incredible solution that has the potential to impact women everywhere worldwide and just be truly kind of revolutionary for women's health. So bravo for taking this on. It doesn't sound like it's an easy road, but this sounds like a fantastic way.

to tackle this issue. And yeah, I can't wait to see everything that happens in this for you and Asterisk. So we will be leaving the links to your website, your socials, all the way people can find out more and connect in the show notes. Thank you for coming on the show.

Veronica Kirin (AsteriskDAO) (45:50)
Thank you. Thanks so much for having us.

Lindsey (45:53)
All right, that's it for today's episode of Token for Your Thoughts. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the podcast and stay tuned for more interviews with people shaping crypto and web three. We'll see you on the next episode.