Wingbits

Wingbits is a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) on Solana that builds a community-powered global flight tracking system, compensating station operators with $WINGS tokens for capturing ADS-B aircraft data that is then sold to commercial aviation clients.

The Problem Wingbits Solves

ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) is the global aviation standard by which aircraft broadcast their GPS position, altitude, speed, and heading every second. Incumbent flight tracking services like FlightRadar24 and FlightAware have built multimillion-dollar businesses aggregating this data from tens of thousands of volunteer hobbyist operators — who receive nothing in return. Wingbits identified this as a classic platform extraction model: a community generates value, a centralized company captures it.

Beyond the compensation gap, traditional networks suffer from data spoofing vulnerabilities, inconsistent hardware quality, and no mechanism for verifying that a station is actually located where it claims to be. Aircraft data used for safety-critical and financial applications demands higher integrity guarantees than these volunteer networks can provide.

How It Works

Wingbits station operators deploy ADS-B receivers — ranging from an indoor USB Lite Node (~$495) to a weather-resistant outdoor Pro Miner (~$999) and a rooftop Enterprise Gateway capable of tracking 500+ aircraft simultaneously. Each device captures raw aircraft position signals and cryptographically signs them using Wingbits' Proof-of-Location (PoL) hardware. The system uses multilateration (comparing signal reception timestamps across multiple nodes) combined with GPS-disciplined oscillators to verify station coordinates with millimeter precision, making data spoofing or station impersonation economically unviable.

Validated data flows into a global airspace dataset organized using Uber's h3 hexagonal grid system at resolution 3, with individual stations claiming coverage hexagons at resolution 6. This geographic structure prevents over-saturation in dense urban areas while creating reward incentives for operators who deploy in underserved regions. In February 2025, Wingbits launched a satellite via Spire Global aboard a SpaceX Transporter-13 mission, extending coverage over oceans and remote areas unreachable by ground stations.

As of mid-2026, the network includes 6,000+ active or reserved stations across 120+ countries, tracking roughly 200,000 flights daily. The project claims to have expanded six times faster than any prior flight tracking network.

$WINGS Token

The $WINGS token is a Solana SPL token with a fixed supply of 10 billion. It launched on April 22, 2026, with listings on Kraken (centralized exchange) and Orca and Raydium (Solana DEXs).

Token allocation: 40% (4 billion) to station rewards distributed over 20 years; 24.5% to capital partners (investors); 19% to team members, with a 12-month cliff and 24-month linear vesting; 11% to ecosystem (exchanges, liquidity, marketing); 5.5% to advisors and consultants.

Rewards are distributed through a dual-bucket system. The Network Score Bucket (3 billion tokens over 8 years, extending to 20) applies a PageRank-style algorithm evaluating each station's data quality relative to nearby peers — a station in a contested hex earns proportionally less than one covering an underserved region. The Early Participant Bucket (1 billion tokens over 5 years with 10% annual reduction) rewards geographic coverage regardless of local competition, favoring operators who joined early and expanded into sparse areas.

Claiming is manual rather than automatic, giving operators flexibility over when they realize income — a meaningful consideration in jurisdictions where each token transfer constitutes a taxable event.

When Wingbits sells aviation data commercially, 50% of net revenue is used to buy back and burn $WINGS tokens, 25% covers operations, and 25% goes to the treasury. Regular burns are already on-chain: in July 2026, the project announced burning 4.4 million $WINGS from June buybacks.

Revenue and Commercial Clients

Wingbits sells data access to airports, airlines, hedge funds, cargo operators, air taxis, drone operators, universities, and government and defense contractors. Commercial plans range from hobby-tier API access to enterprise subscriptions covering real-time feeds, historical datasets in multiple file formats, and integration support.

The project has evolved its product line beyond basic flight tracking. In 2026, it launched Wingbits.AI — billed as the world's first airspace intelligence platform — and Wingö, an AI assistant integrated into its live flight tracking map. A partnership with World Monitor produces a real-time GPS interference dashboard, free and public by region, using the verified station network to detect GNSS jamming. As of July 2026, the dashboard shows a Middle East corridor where 98.7% of flights reported degraded GPS during the prior month, and 31% GPS degradation around Riga in the Baltic.

Funding and Team

Wingbits has raised $9.2 million across two rounds: a $3.6 million seed in July 2024 led by Borderless Capital, Tribe Capital, and Antler, and a $5.6 million round in January 2025 led by Borderless Capital and Bullish Capital, with participation from Spartan Group, SNZ, and Heartcore.

The company was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Co-founders Robin Wingardh (CEO) and Alex Lungu (co-founder and CTO) previously worked together at Klarna, the Swedish fintech giant.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

Wingbits sits at the intersection of DePIN and real-world aviation data markets, a category Solana has attracted more projects to than any other Layer 1. Its architecture follows the canonical DePIN pattern — hardware contributors earn tokens, token value is anchored to real-world revenue from data sales — while adding differentiating elements: satellite-hybrid coverage, cryptographic location verification, and an expanding AI data product suite. The $WINGS token's buyback-and-burn mechanism directly links token demand to commercial aviation data consumption, providing a non-speculative demand driver as the network scales.