World Solve

Older buildings often waste huge amounts of energy through poor insulation and outdated systems, but retrofitting them is usually expensive and disruptive. Cheaper retrofit solutions could unlock major emissions reductions from existing infrastructure.

Poor farming practices and deforestation are wearing away fertile topsoil faster than nature can rebuild it, threatening long-term food production. A scalable solution to reverse this trend remains unresolved globally.

As electric vehicles become more common, so will the used batteries, most of which still lack an efficient, complete recycling process. Solving this prevents a looming new wave of battery waste.

Bees and other pollinators face combined pressure from pesticides, habitat loss, and disease, and addressing just one threat rarely solves the overall decline. A comprehensive solution addressing all major threats together remains unbuilt.

Many products marketed as biodegradable still break down into tiny plastic particles that persist in the environment for years. A truly safe, fully compostable packaging material remains elusive at scale.

Chemicals and fertilizers seep into groundwater supplies over years, often going unnoticed until wells become unsafe to drink from. Preventing this contamination before it happens remains far harder than detecting it afterward.

Manufacturing solar panels currently involves energy-intensive processes and some toxic materials, undercutting part of their environmental benefit. A cleaner production process would make solar energy's benefits more complete.

Raising cattle and other livestock produces a significant share of global methane emissions, yet meat remains a major part of diets worldwide. A lower-emission farming method that doesn't require giving up meat entirely remains unsolved.

Plastic waste in the ocean is well documented, but pinpointing exact sources at a granular level remains difficult, making targeted prevention harder. Better tracking could focus cleanup and policy efforts where they matter most.

Some island nations face the real possibility of becoming uninhabitable within decades due to sea level rise. Cheap, effective coastal protection or relocation planning remains urgently unsolved for these communities.

Coding education often depends on expensive devices, reliable internet, and trained teachers, none of which are guaranteed in poorer school systems. Closing this gap could open technology careers to far more young people.

Faster memory tends to be far more expensive, forcing constant trade-offs in computer design between speed and cost. Solving this trade-off could make faster computing broadly accessible.

Satellite internet can reach remote areas traditional cables can't, but current pricing puts it out of reach for many of the people who need it most. Bringing the cost down could close a major digital divide.

Personal information is scattered across emails, cloud drives, apps, and devices, with no single reliable way to search across all of it. A unified, private personal search tool remains unbuilt.

Hiring tools, loan approval systems, and other automated decisions can unintentionally replicate historical biases present in their training data. Fully eliminating this bias while keeping systems useful remains unresolved.

Data breaches exposing millions of passwords happen with striking regularity, despite widespread awareness of the problem. A more fundamentally secure approach to authentication is still needed.

Many people experience nausea, eye strain, or discomfort after even short VR sessions, limiting its use for work or long entertainment sessions. A truly comfortable headset remains an unsolved hardware and software challenge.

3D printing has transformed prototyping, but printing functional circuits and electronics remains unreliable and limited. Solving this could make custom electronics production dramatically faster and cheaper.

Early brain-computer interfaces show promise for people with paralysis, but they remain expensive, invasive, or unreliable outside controlled lab settings. Making them practical for everyday use is still unsolved.

Search results are ranked mostly by popularity and relevance signals, not by actual accuracy, letting false but engaging content rise to the top. A better system needs to weigh truthfulness, not just engagement.