Revolutionizing Flight Tracking: How Wingbits is Using Blockchain to Reward Volunteers

The Rise of Flight Tracking

One of the most popular pastimes you may or may not have heard about is flight tracking. For instance, in September 2022, the Royal Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster III carrying Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin from Edinburgh to an RAF base outside of London was followed by close to 5 million people.

Flight tracking is not just a hobby; it is also a goldmine for data. Popular flight tracking websites display the trajectories of tens of thousands of flights per day across their digitized maps. However, this is only possible due to a network of dedicated volunteers who collect and feed the data from the aircraft to tracking sites.

Introducing Wingbits

A new startup called Wingbits now wants to pay this network of enthusiasts for their services by sharing its revenues using blockchain technology. The idea is to foster rapid coverage growth and improve data reliability. The rewards are based on performance, coverage, and uptime, with leaderboards comparing the best performing antennas around the world.

“Based on your performance as a data provider, you get rewarded proportionally,” co-founder Robin Wingårdh stated.

Incentivizing Quality Data

Flight tracking occurs through Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), a satellite-based tracking method that requires both an airborne component and ground infrastructure. About 70% of the world’s commercial aircraft now have an ADS-B transponder. The ground component consists of volunteers who agree to host receivers in the form of antennas. Wingbits ensures the data’s authenticity with cryptographically signed transmissions and proof-of-location.

The commercial idea behind Wingbits is to incentivize these volunteers to enhance their commitment and data quality by paying them for their data and then selling it to the startup’s B2B customers in the aviation industry. “Our uptime is really high, and we can release area bounties. If we need to grow in a specific area, we can incentivize higher there,” said Wingårdh.

Community Engagement and Growth

At the end of 2023, the Wingbits platform included 40 antennas. Today, there are 1,600, thanks to word of mouth and community support. The startup’s Discord server, equipped with two community managers, further aids users in optimizing their antenna coverage.

Despite still being in beta, Wingbits’ platform boasts very low latency; “It’s under two seconds for 95% of all the data,” Wingårdh noted.

Funding Success

Lungu and Wingårdh, both former senior leaders at Klarna, conceptualized the idea during a residency by Antler in Stockholm last year. Antler is among the investors backing Wingbits in its $3.5 million seed round, announced recently. This seed round was led by two US VC firms — Borderless Capital and Tribe Capital. The funds will be allocated to tech development, hiring more data scientists and developers, and focusing on sales and marketing.

Wingbits is also set to release custom hardware for its growing community of flight trackers to prevent spoofing or fake data, ensuring the authenticity of their operations with a cryptographic chip and GPS module.