Taking off: Rewarding Flight Trackers in the Age of Web3

When I was in college, social networks were all the rage. Up until that point, the internet was read-only; you visited a web page and read someone else’s opinion on a topic. We wanted more: we wanted to post our own photos, express our own opinions, and share them with our friends. Those were amazing times; everyone loved the internet, and it was all for free! However, we slowly learned that if something is free, you’re the product. Or, better said, your data is the product.

This op-ed is part of CoinDesk's new DePIN Vertical, covering the emerging industry of decentralized physical infrastructure.

It was kind of fair, though. You got access to a platform that costs money to run; in return, you provide some data about yourself. They use this data to sell you relevant ads, ad companies reach the right audience, and everyone wins. As time passed, data collection became more advanced and intrusive, profits increased, while your side of the deal stayed the same. This model was so profitable that it ended up being implemented everywhere — from social media and online newspapers, to TVs that run ads in their menus. And, as it turns out, even in flight tracking. I will come back to this last one in a minute.

Web3 promised us the solution. Instead of giving away your data, what if you kept ownership over it? During the last bull market, everyone tried to find problems that Web3 could fix. Everything was tokenized: art, watches, carbon credits and random memes. It should have been the other way around: first identify the problem, then apply the solution.

Helium was doing just that. By using Web3 incentives, it built a decentralized network of hotspots that together provide connectivity to IoT sensors. It incentivized people who don't know each other to work together and create the largest telecom network in history by combining their home Wi-Fi networks. It did this successfully by proving that the problem was not in data ownership. Instead, it's in how the profit is distributed among the data providers or the ones that provide the infrastructure for the data to travel from one place to another. The value is in the network of people that generate the data — a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN).

So, what does any of this have to do with flight tracking? The flight enthusiasts' community is a small but global group that collects data from airplanes flying around them and sends it to a couple of large flight tracking networks. In return, they get full access to the platforms (sounds familiar?). Those networks then collect this data and sell it to all sorts of different companies operating in aviation, travel and logistics. This data is critical for aviation operations, yet it's being collected by enthusiasts using cheap Raspberry PIs. Flight tracking networks such as Flightradar24 and Flightaware are highly profitable, yet the people who provide the data that makes these networks possible do not get paid for their contributions.

By applying a DePIN model to flight tracking, Wingbits is building a much fairer and more performant network where the data providers will get a share of the profits that their data generates, based on their performance and uptime. While data providers for the other networks don’t have any incentive to maximize their coverage and uptime, the Wingbits rewards model makes sure that the best participants earn the most.

It's just the right thing to do and we can see the results. Since we launched our public beta in November 2023, the Wingbits community grew from 40 to over 1450 live antennas, growing in half a year more than Flightradar did in their first three years. We now have almost complete coverage over Europe and a large part of the US, tracking over 35000 flights daily.

I'm super excited about DePIN. It will create real-world value and give all of us an opportunity to monetize our data as we please. New projects will challenge existing business models and reignite the public perception that our data is valuable and we shouldn't just give it away.

Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.