Peter Szymczak, co-founder of Spexi, shared the company’s vision at DePIN Day Denver 2025: a decentralized network of drone pilots capturing ultra-high-resolution geospatial data. By applying the DePIN model to geospatial intelligence, Spexi is creating a constantly updating global map with real-world applications across urban planning, emergency response, infrastructure monitoring, and AR/VR development.
Today’s geospatial data landscape relies heavily on satellites and fixed-wing aircraft. Satellite imagery is frequent but low-resolution. Fixed-wing aircraft offer higher fidelity but come with delays, high costs, and significant emissions. Both approaches are inflexible, especially when hyper-local and up-to-date intelligence is needed.
Outdated and Inflexible Geospatial Imaging
Spexi’s comparison of Google Maps imagery versus Spexi Network data clearly demonstrates the resolution gap. Traditional methods simply don’t offer the granularity or on-demand responsiveness that modern applications require.
The Solution: A Drone-Powered DePIN Network
Spexi flips the model by leveraging the latent supply of consumer and commercial drones worldwide. Their platform turns drone owners into active data contributors, offering rewards via crypto incentives.
Using Uber’s H3 hexagonal indexing library, Spexi has divided the globe into standardized hex zones. Drone pilots can autonomously capture each hex via Spexi’s mobile app. Each flight generates a soulbound NFT representing verifiable geospatial data tied to a specific time and location.
Data buyers ranging from government agencies to AI firms and GIS integrators can purchase time-bound, location-specific licenses (NFTs) for this data, which integrates with widely used GIS tools like ArcGIS.
Web2 Simplicity, Web3 Infrastructure
One of Spexi’s core principles is abstracting crypto complexity. Pilots can log in via social auth and start earning in fiat during the testnet phase. Data clients can purchase imagery via familiar payment methods. Yet behind the scenes, a sophisticated crypto protocol governs storage, verification, licensing, and community ownership.
This dual-track approach helps Spexi optimize for product-market fit today while laying the groundwork for a fully tokenized, composable geospatial data protocol in the future.
Real-World Use Cases
Spexi’s imagery is already being used for:
- Emergency preparedness and disaster response (e.g. California wildfire aftermath)
- Bylaw enforcement and city planning
- Infrastructure inspection (e.g. rail lines, roads, bridges)
- Urban planning and land use analysis
- 911 situational awareness
- Advanced AR/VR content generation
- Computer vision training and modeling
The constantly refreshed nature of Spexi’s map allows buyers to order and receive data in minutes to hours, dramatically improving response time for mission-critical use cases.
Protocol Design and Pilot Incentives
Spexi’s protocol issues soulbound NFTs to pilots as immutable receipts of data contributions. On the demand side, license NFTs grant usage rights to specific geospatial datasets. This dual NFT model introduces transparency, traceability, and value alignment between contributors and consumers.
To ensure fairness, Spexi is optimizing its reward system to match pilot effort avoiding micro-rewards that devalue time-intensive missions. The goal is to make contributing economically meaningful while ensuring data quality and coverage.
Network Growth and Key Stats
Since launching public beta in December 2024, Spexi has seen:
- 80,000+ autonomous drone flights
- 1.8M+ acres of land imaged
- 9,000+ hours of active flight time
- Coverage across dozens of North American cities, including Denver
- 27+ pilot and customer waitlists
Decentralized Mapping, Real-World Scale
Spexi is building a new protocol layer for spatial intelligence. By combining autonomous drones, crypto incentives, and traditional GIS compatibility, Spexi offers a real-world application of DePIN that’s scaling today.
The data layer they’re building is composable, verifiable, and globally accessible unlocking new markets in environmental monitoring, urban analytics, immersive tech, and beyond
