SkySafe, the San Diego drone defence firm backed by Andreessen Horowitz, is rolling out a crypto-powered sensor network that pays ordinary users to spot drones.
SkySafe already sells drone-tracking intelligence to law enforcement and critical-infrastructure operators.
But its coverage is patchy and expensive to scale. The company’s new FliteGrid programme aims to fix that by paying people in crypto to host its sensors at home.
That turns a traditionally top-down surveillance network into a distributed, community-run grid.
For Grant Jordan, the CEO of SkySafe, the arrangement is key to expanding drone coverage nationwide.
“The DePIN model is really about being able to massively scale out that infrastructure in a way that we know we couldn’t do alone,” Jordan told DL News.
The network is built on the Solana blockchain and is inspired by the rise of various decentralised physical infrastructure networks – or, DePIN.
Instead of companies investing in the sensors to track meteorological movements, traffic data, or drone movement, they can incentivise individuals to operate those sensors for them in exchange for a reward.
DePIN growing pains
Token-incentivised hardware networks aren’t new.
Helium, which promised to pay crypto for WiFi hotspotting, and other early DePIN projects made similar promises, only to be dogged by weak real-world demand and rewards that largely flowed to early insiders, leaving many users with pricey hardware that earned little.
SkySafe is stepping into a field that has left a bad taste for many early adopters and now must convince users that this time the model can actually work.
The sensor costs $949 and will start shipping next Spring. At launch, users will earn points that will be converted into the FLITE token in 2027.
Jordan couldn’t provide guidance on how long it would take users to break even on the sensor’s cost.
800,000 drones
Regulations around drone flight in the US have increased over the last five years, namely, remote identification for unmanned aerial vehicles. As rules defining appropriate consumer use of drones have increased, so too has the number of UAVs spiked.
As of October 2024, there were nearly 800,000 drones registered with the US Federal Aviation Administration, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
Drones are used in commercial delivery by e-commerce giants such as Amazon, as well as for search-and-rescue missions by first responders.
They’ve also been used nefariously to probe and surveil critical infrastructure and in the arena of war. One of SkySafe’s very first clients was the US Department of Defence.
“There isn’t just one type of drone,” Jordan said. “It spans a massive gamut, all the way from tiny little toy things to jumbo jet-size things.”
Still, comprehensive detection of every drone in the air remains a massive problem.
“We’ve just got lots of scattered solutions, different types of sensors, different types of technologies, looking at different kinds of things, and it’s really hard to filter out,” he told DL News. “What are the threats from what is normal traffic?”
FliteGrid’s launch is exclusive to the US for now.
Jordan said the network will be rolled out in Japan and the European Union in 2027, as both regions have established clear drone regulations.
Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at [email protected].
