Hivemapper

Hivemapper (HONEY): Decentralized Mapping + Real Demand on Solana

Hivemapper is a DePIN network that pays people to collect fresh street-level imagery with crypto-enabled dashcams and apps, then sells that map data to organizations. Payments, consumption, and incentives are coordinated by the HONEY SPL token on Solana.

Introduction

Hivemapper’s premise is simple: build a real-time, global map by crowdsourcing data from thousands of contributors instead of a handful of expensive mapping fleets. That flips the cost curve (one Street View car vs. potentially ~1,000,000 community devices for the same budget) and radically increases refresh frequency (locations seen dozens of times per year vs. traditional annual passes). The result is a map designed to be cheaper, fresher, and community-owned, with HONEY aligning contributors (supply) and data buyers (demand).

Bee Maps — the commercial product layer. Bee Maps is the business-facing brand built on Hivemapper’s network: it sells APIs (Map Features, Map Image), fleet tools, and the Bee device that passively captures street-level data. In plain terms: Hivemapper is the network, Bee Maps is how customers buy and use it (and how contributors earn). Bee Maps positions itself as “the fastest-growing mapping company,” offering fresh, high-resolution updates and turnkey fleet workflows.

Bee Maps isn’t just a concept; it has named customers and case studies. Lyft publicly confirmed it uses Bee Maps (powered by Hivemapper) for street-level data to improve routing and support autonomy efforts. Other published customers/partners include HERE Technologies (ground-truth validation), Maxar (satellite + ground fusion), and references to Volkswagen pilots. These are the kinds of real buyers that validate a DePIN data flywheel.

Key Features (what users and buyers actually get)

• Contributor rewards that track what the map needs: Drivers earn HONEY for uploading new roads, refreshing old ones, and labeling/map AI tasks; weekly emissions scale with Global Map Progress so rewards follow coverage, freshness, and quality—not just raw uploads.
• A data product buyers can use immediately: Companies purchase map/API credits that are settled in HONEY under a Burn-and-Mint model; buyers don’t need to hold HONEY long-term, but their usage burns tokens and triggers new contributor rewards (see Tokenomics).
• Network scale and freshness: Public coverage shows hundreds of millions of km logged and ~a third of the world’s roads seen—evidence the model scales beyond hobbyist levels.
• DePIN incentive-to-product loop: Hivemapper explicitly ties token flow to map usage, so revenue demand can support the asset rather than just speculation.

Technological Framework (how it works)

• Capture → Anonymize → Derive map features: Dashcams/phones capture video; software removes sensitive details and extracts map features (signs, lanes, obstructions). Contributors also label imagery to train the mapping AI, earning additional HONEY.
• Quality-weighted rewards: Weekly HONEY distribution is calculated from network-wide progress: unique km, refresh of stale km, and validated edits. That discourages spam and channels effort into under-mapped geographies.
• Solana as settlement layer: Low fees and fast finality support micro-rewards and frequent burns/mints without making payouts or API purchases prohibitively expensive. (HONEY is an SPL token.)

Tokenomics (clear, durable metrics—no real-time price)

Supply & allocations: Max supply 10 B HONEY. Initial allocation includes 40% for contributor rewards and 20% for investors; emissions to contributors began with a 4 B HONEY mint schedule whose weekly amount depends on Global Map Progress. Investor/employee allocations are subject to multi-year release restrictions.

Burn-and-Mint (MIP-15): When buyers consume map data, paid credits burn HONEY; 75% of burned tokens are permanently destroyed and 25% are re-minted as “Map Consumption Rewards” to contributors, capped at 500,000 HONEY/week. This links demand to rewards while creating net deflation when usage grows.

Why this matters: This is the DePIN flywheel most projects aspire to—usage reduces supply and simultaneously funds contributors who create the product users buy. It’s a clean loop from revenue → token → supply/dilution → more/better data.

Market Traction & Scale

• Coverage at consumer economics: Public stats show >500M km mapped and ~34% of world roads captured—evidence that many small devices can out-collect a few expensive cars, at lower cost per km.
• Hardware-enabled DePIN: Thousands of active devices, with community-level break-even math tracked by third-party dashboards—useful for fleets weighing ROI. (Device counts, average device cost and daily earnings are visible via DePIN scanners.)
• Refresh frequency advantage: Leadership claims Hivemapper can observe locations 50–100× per year vs. traditional one-per-year sweeps—crucial for delivery, ride-hail, and AV.

Material Developments

Bee Maps launch + Bee device mass production: Hivemapper introduced Bee Maps as the go-to product brand for buyers (APIs, fleet tools) and cleared the Bee dashcam for mass production, enabling passive, privacy-first capture at scale. This established a clean split: network (Hivemapper) vs. product (Bee Maps).

Lyft becomes a Bee Maps customer: In May 2025, Lyft confirmed it’s using Bee Maps’ decentralized street imagery to enhance routing and support its AV roadmap — a marquee validation from a top ride-hailing platform.

Enterprise proof points beyond rideshare:

• HERE Technologies case study: Used Hivemapper data to validate bridge clearance for fleet optimization — a concrete, operational map use case.
• Maxar partnership: Fuses satellite change-detection with Bee’s on-the-ground verification to deliver faster, more accurate road-network updates.
• Automotive pilots: Bee Maps’ blog highlights work with Volkswagen around PUDO precision in autonomy contexts — signaling OEM interest.

Token–revenue linkage matured (MIP-15 → Burn & Mint): Map buyers pay in credits; the protocol burns HONEY proportional to spend and re-mints a capped share to reward contributors who generated the consumed data — tying token flows directly to real demand.

Risks & What to Watch

• Sustained buyer demand: Burn-and-Mint only works if map customers keep buying credits. Watch API customer logos and recurring usage, not just contributor growth.
• Quality control at scale: Incentives must continue to prioritize validated features over raw footage to prevent noisy data diluting the product.
• Token unlocks vs. consumption: Investor/employee release schedules exist; the net effect on supply depends on whether burns from map sales offset those unlocks over time.

Conclusion

Hivemapper is one of the clearest “token ↔ revenue” DePIN loops on Solana: contributors earn HONEY to build a map; buyers pay for that map, burning HONEY and re-funding contributor rewards with a capped remint—tying network value to actual data consumption. If coverage and refresh stay on pace and the customer list expands, HONEY becomes more than an incentive—it becomes the clearing asset for a mapping business with growing usage.