Binance Research once wrote that "Decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) is one of the most interesting innovations in the cryptocurrency industry and is worth paying close attention to in the coming year. Solana has provided strong support for the development of DePIN and provided services for projects such as Helium, Render, and Hivemapper. This field currently has good development prospects. Take the community-driven decentralized map service Hivemapper as an example. The project has mapped 27% of the world's roads."
Today, Hivemapper Network has been officially launched for two years. What progress has been made in the past two years?
● Supply: Hivemapper is the fastest growing mapping project, having mapped 28% of the world’s road mass in just two years, a growth rate five times that of Google Street View. Despite hardware shortages in its second year, its map coverage is still expanding faster than other crowdsourcing mapping projects, even faster than some projects that rely on smartphones for mapping.
● Demand: Three of the world’s top ten map makers currently rely on Hivemapper to keep their maps updated, and leading companies in industries such as automotive, logistics, and ride-sharing are also using Hivemapper services. Bee Maps released Hivemapper’s first customer case study this year, which highlighted Hivemapper’s collaboration with Dutch digital map production service provider HERE Technologies. HERE’s shareholders include Audi AG, BMW AG, Daimler AG, Intel, Mitsubishi, NTT Japan, and Pioneer. As Hivemapper continues to develop, more planned cases are expected in its third year. On the other hand, as Hivemapper usage continues to increase, more than 6 million HONEY tokens have been destroyed to date.
● Map AI: With the help of global contributors, Hivemapper's AI Trainer channel has developed a massive human-machine data generation and verification engine, with more than 800 million community comments. Some investors believe that if AI Trainers operates independently as a service product, it is likely to become the industry's leading artificial intelligence DePIN project.
● Marketing: In terms of marketing, Hivemapper is also continuing to consolidate its market position in the field of decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN). Industry giants such as A16Z, Binance, Blockworks, Coinbase and Messari have listed Hivemapper as a top project.
● HONEY: In its second year, Hivemapper has successfully promoted the listing of HONEY tokens on top exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken, increased token liquidity, and further improved token economics (the proposal MIP-15 has designed the project token economic model as deflation). Although the external market environment of DePIN has fluctuated to a certain extent, the market value of HONEY tokens has steadily increased, and has increased by more than 50 times since the first anniversary of Hivemapper.
It is reported that the cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io has also announced plans to launch HONEY, aiming to continue to promote expansion in the Asian market.
Frankly speaking, these achievements of Hivemapper are hard-won. On the day when Hivemapper mainnet was launched, November 3, 2022, the cryptocurrency market was in chaos. The day before, Coindesk released the leaked balance sheet news, which exposed FTX fraud and led to its bankruptcy. Since then, the cryptocurrency market price has plummeted, and SOL has fallen by more than 95% from its historical high, making people doubt the future of projects based on the Solana ecosystem such as Hivemapper.
However, Hivemapper did not get through this difficult moment by simply chasing narratives. In fact, Solana was not the hottest blockchain at the time, and the term "DePIN" did not even appear in the crypto industry.
Hivemapper survives because the community shares a vision for a future where humans work together to build newer, more accurate maps—and unlike other crowdsourced mapping projects, people will be fairly rewarded for their contributions. Everyone is constantly building, mapping, and collecting HONEY to make this vision a reality.
For the coming year, Hivemapper has given a clear plan: continue to build.
Hivemapper will be launching the next generation of dashcams, increasing map coverage, signing up new customers, expanding usage for existing customers and scaling Map AI, and adding some exciting new components to the HONEY token economy.
Promote the continuous development of HONEY token economy
Hivemapper does not pursue niche or unproven markets like some DePIN projects. Instead, Hivemapper has focused on the enterprise map market from the beginning, a field with a scale of tens of billions of dollars. At present, some well-known global map companies and technology companies have begun to use Hivemapper Network products, and Hivemapper's market share is also expanding.
In terms of token economy, according to the MIP-15 proposal, 75% of the HONEY tokens exchanged for map points each week will be permanently destroyed, and 25% will be recast as consumption rewards. The maximum weekly consumption reward is 500,000 HONEY. Any excess will be permanently destroyed, which means that with sufficient income, the HONEY token supply will remain deflationary.
Blockworks Research recently pointed out in an analysis report: "Hivemapper's HONEY token reward model has impressive capital efficiency. Considering the multi-billion dollar scale of the map market, the upcoming Bee dashcam and the relatively low release of HONEY tokens, it is believed that in the foreseeable future, the on-chain destruction of HONEY tokens will exceed the issuance, and then present a net destruction state."
Despite Hivemapper’s strong fundamentals, we cannot ignore the many ups and downs that have occurred over the past two years, such as the “two steps forward, one step back” situation during the development of the project. In addition, the process of waiting for the next generation of dashcams to be released is also painful. But from another perspective, the HONEY token economy still has a lot of room to grow and become stronger. As Hivemapper is about to enter the third year of project development, the potential development opportunities of the HONEY token economy are gradually expanding, including:
● Increase the share of HONEY token consumption in developer revenue;
● Promote the listing of HONEY tokens on centralized and decentralized exchanges to attract more people to trade tokens and support additional liquidity;
● Increase investment in innovative applications of HONEY tokens.
The importance of the above work is self-evident. If resources are sufficient, it makes sense to complete more work, but building in a bear market requires a firmer focus and the courage to say "no" to many jobs. Focus is a blessing, but sometimes it comes with a curse. Fortunately, as the market improves, Hivemapper has the opportunity to increase investment and complete more work. Yes, it's time to increase investment in developer subsidies, APIs, and documentation, and it's time to launch more products that interact with the HONEY token economy, including consumer navigation, fleet intelligence, new map data layers, third-party explorers, etc.
Hivemapper third year project development roadmap
Based on the work of the past year, Hivemapper has listed the priorities for the third year of project development, including:
HONEY Token Economics and Liquidity
○ The pricing table will be updated and will take effect on January 1. The new pricing table may have the following two changes:
■ The price of map credits will increase, and more fiat currency revenue will be used for token buybacks;
■ A new annual licensing fee pricing model for map functionality is proposed, which is expected to support year-round amortization.
○ Incentives for launching DEX liquidity vaults
○ Support listing on more centralized exchanges
Consumer and Fleet Navigation
○ Privacy-focused navigation service
■ Differentiate through advanced AI capabilities, not just a white-label navigation app;
■ Give consumers the opportunity to earn and use HONEY tokens while experiencing map services.
○ Fleet products, such as Bee Maps’ Beekeeper
■ Route intelligence products require Map AI support, which will then promote the destruction of HONEY tokens.
Developer Ecosystem
○ API library exposes more network data than ever before
○ The Hivemapper Network Grant Program provides support for ecosystem projects in areas such as value-added products, contributors, and customer-facing dashboards and tools
○ Bee Maps promises funding programs for startups and public institutions
○ Potential bounties for third-party apps that add map data layers
Network decentralization and transparency
○ Provide independent documentation for the Hivemapper Foundation on network design, governance, funding, and HONEY token economics
○ Consider MIP proposal as a way to govern HONEY tokens
○ Accelerate the Open Dashcam program according to Bee specifications
○ Assess the current state of decentralized storage and computation
In short, Hivemapper’s goal is very clear, which is to completely change the way humans make maps. In the next few weeks and months, Hivemapper will explore the above topics in depth and update relevant content, which is worth looking forward to.
