One of the most popular pastimes you may or may not have heard about is flight tracking.
It is also a goldmine for data.
Popular flight tracking websites display the trajectories of tens of thousands of flights per day across their digitised maps.
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The idea is to foster rapid coverage growth and improve data reliability.
The rewards are based onperformance, coverage, and uptime.
There are also leaderboards that compare the best performing antennas around the world.
This is a new method of satellite-based tracking which requires both an airborne component and ground infrastructure.
About 70% of the worlds commercial aircraft now have an ADS-B transponder.
The ground component consists of the volunteers who agree to host receivers in the form of antennas.
[The performance-based model] allows us to do so many things, Wingardh said.
Our uptime is really high, and we can release area bounties.
If we need to grow in a specific area, we can incentivise higher there.
But pure-hearted avgeeks may now face some competition from the Web3 community.
It has worked out well so far.
At the end of 2023, the Wingbits platform included 40 antennas.
Today there are 1,600, simply as a result of word of mouth and the support of the community.
As a result, Wingbits platform, despite still being in beta, has very low latency.
Its under two seconds for 95% of all the data, Wingardh said.
While its not a massive issue yet its growing, Wingardh says.
Story byLinnea Ahlgren
Linnea is the senior editor at TNW, having joined in April 2023.
Dabbles in gaming and fitness wearables.
But first, coffee.
