Celebrating the Hivemapper Network’s First Year

A year ago, we began a remarkable journey — we started building a better map, together. We faced many challenges and doubters along the way, but proved that we could bootstrap a decentralized mapping network and map the world with unprecedented freshness. Today, we’re the only DePIN project that combines specialized hardware, advanced Map AI, and a global community of contributors. Most importantly, we now have paying customers who are licensing the map data that our contributors and Map AI are generating at scale. 

As we celebrate the first anniversary of the Hivemapper Network, we reflect on the extraordinary progress achieved through the collective efforts of rideshare and gig drivers, commercial fleets, and everyday drivers who mounted Hivemapper dashcams in their vehicles. We also applaud the thousands of dedicated contributors who play AI Trainer games, refining the Map AI as it extracts road features from street-level imagery.

These elements all support Hivemapper’s focus on building map data products that customers want to use. Our Map Image API and Map Features API are currently available, with more map data products coming soon. Together, we’re transforming the way we build and update maps.

Here’s a review of our achievements, along with a glimpse of what’s on the horizon.

We were certain that we would only be able to provide a dependable and consistently refreshed data feed to our customers with a standardized collection device. That’s why we designed and built the Hivemapper Dashcam and the Hivemapper Dashcam S.

Our customers choose our Map Image API because it delivers standardized, high-resolution street-level imagery, sparing them from the complexity of dealing with imagery from many different cameras. This standardization significantly enhances the efficiency of computer vision systems and provides valuable data for training AI systems. View samples of our front-facing imagery here, and samples of our side-facing imagery here.

Deploying sufficient dashcams to ensure global coverage and an unmatched refresh rate depends on an easy onboarding process and effortless contributor experience . That’s why we designed our dashcams for passive data collection. We also built privacy safeguards into our hardware and software to protect the privacy and anonymity of all contributors.

To date, we’ve delivered over 8,000 dashcams that have mapped across more than 90 countries. Contributors have mapped more than 80 million total road kilometers — a distance that could circle the globe nearly 2,000 times! More than 5.7 million of these are unique kilometers, representing more than 9% of global roads. On average, Hivemapper contributors are now mapping more than 800 km per week.

Scaling rapidly, our decentralized mapping network has covered previously overlooked regions, giving businesses, government organizations, and nonprofits operating in these zones access to critical information. Our incentive structure has boosted coverage beyond the United States and Western Europe in places like Malaysia, Taiwan, and South Korea. 

The ratio of total road kilometers to unique road kilometers indicates frequency of coverage, which in turn equals greater accuracy. Hivemapper sees a location 24 to 100 times more frequently than services like Google Street View, providing multiple shots on goal. Repeated data collection acts as a validation mechanism, continually refining potential inaccuracies. This level of precision is essential for the automotive, navigation, logistics, infrastructure, and insurance industries.

Dashcams are the eyes of the Hivemapper Network, and Map AI is the brain. Our Map AI extracts map features from standardized street-level imagery in 4 phases: classification, positioning, landmark merging, and auditing. 

We launched the first iteration of Map AI Trainer games in April. The concept is simple: players are rewarded with HONEY tokens for completing AI Trainer games that enhance Hivemapper’s machine learning models and validate their outputs. 

AI Trainers have completed more than 75 million reviews to train our Map AI. Our Map Features API includes speed signs, turn restriction signs, highway exit signs, stop signs, and vehicle traffic lights.

Hivemapper’s street-level imagery provides access to previously unmapped regions and unlocks an unparalleled level of freshness. This is invaluable to map customers seeking superior map data sources.

If you’re in the business of route planning for trucks, you need to know vertical clearance on potential routes, parking rules, and the turn radius at intersections. If you’re an autonomous vehicle developer, your vehicles need up-to-date road information and awareness of construction zones to drive safely. If you’re a home insurance company, you need fresh data on road quality and exterior conditions to conduct assessments. All this critical data is embedded in our street-level imagery. It’s been incredible to see businesses use our Map Image API and Map Features API for diverse use cases. 

Hivemapper Scout is a revolutionary location monitoring tool that gives map customers real-time data on the street locations that matter to them. Say goodbye to depending on out-of-date images from free street-view products. Eliminate the need to hire someone to spend hours to visit a single location and take photos. Just mark the real-world locations you care about, and wait for the images to roll in. If you need more data, you can put a bounty on a location you’d like to monitor with a Burst. 

Our Bursts feature gives map customers a way to access fresh data on demand. If you’re an autonomous vehicle manufacturer, you need relevant map data for your cars. Without up-to-date information on new roads, turn restrictions, and construction zones, your cars can't drive safely. Sending a dedicated mapping vehicle or fleet to collect the map data you need is too costly and time consuming. Bursts let you direct a community of drivers who can collect map data for you. Simply highlight a geographic area and let Hivemapper contributors provide the data you need quickly and cost-effectively.

Visit our product page and contact sales to learn more. To get started, generate an API key.

On our continuous journey of innovation, our product roadmap includes four focus areas:

Hivemapper’s decentralized mapping network wouldn’t be possible without its global community of more than 24,000 active map contributors and AI trainers. Our heartfelt thanks goes out to every map contributor and AI trainer. On social media, the Hivemapper community boasts more than 50,000 members across such platforms as X (Twitter), Discord, LinkedIn, and YouTube. We’re grateful for your active participation in our monthly Discord AMAs, competitions, and challenges, and for all of your feedback and support. We’re still building a better map, together.