About Navigate

What is Navigate?
Navigate is the new community platform powering the next generation data ecosystem. Every day, each of us contributes to the data trails that power today’s applications and services, but only a small number of companies actually profit from it. We aim to reverse this trend by enabling individuals, groups, and companies to share data with Web3 app builders and be rewarded for their contributions. Navigate is designed to be the ultimate destination for contributing and sourcing the critical data you collect or cause to be created—information we call next generation data (NGD). But Navigate will be much more than just a repository of this data; it will be the catalyst for app innovation. The Navigate ecosystem will be a launchpad for data driven applications, where NGD will be used to build new, exciting apps on the Navigate platform.
Composed of its two distinct layers—Navigate Marketplace and Navigate Dapps (decentralized apps)—Navigate is creating a new way for the world to share data, build applications, and get rewarded for contributions.
Navigate Marketplace consists of data vaults for crowdsourcing large, high-quality data sets, where users can upload, share, and monetize data they have collected through their smartphones, drones, or other devices. 
Navigate Dapps provide developers, enterprises, and diverse organizations access to assets in the Navigate Marketplace, allowing them to use that data as fuel for a new class of applications
What problem does Navigate solve?
Navigate effectively answers the question of how we can monetize our data and have a say in what it is used for, by allowing end users to collect data independently, contribute data to the platform, and be rewarded for their contribution. There are now 4.88 billion people using the internet – with each interaction generating useful data that in most cases, users are unaware of and have little control over. With Navigate, users can now contribute this data to products they believe in.
Simultaneously, Navigate provides access to next generation data (NGD) for Web3 developers. Simply put, this is the critical data that developers and companies need to build a new class of applications. It includes, among many other things, data captured by robotics, autonomous vehicles, IoT sensors, drones, dashcams, and much more. Navigate gives users and developers access to this data—information that is rich with insights, but has historically been siloed or inaccessible—to help build the next wave of exciting applications, like Navigate Maps.
How can I contribute to the Navigate data marketplace?
Once the Navigate Data Vaults are open, Navigate users will be able to contribute data gathered from their technical devices, including their smartphones, computers, vehicles, drones, and dashcams. Navigate will provide announcements on when data vaults are open to the public.
How can I earn rewards for my contributions to Navigate?
Once launched, users will be able to earn NVG8 (Navigate's native ERC-20 token) by contributing to data vaults. For more information on the NVG8 token, check the section on Tokenomics.
What kinds of data should I contribute to Navigate?
Navigate will be a destination for next generation data of many types. It could be data captured by IoT devices tracking air pollution, carbon emissions, water pressure, noise levels, utility efficiency, airspace activity (i.e., radars), or even network signal strength. It could also be drone imagery, dashcam footage, mobility data, among many other things. These examples represent just a small sample of what can be uploaded to the Navigate Platform.
The Navigate Marketplace will offer data vaults for predefined data types to Navigate contributors. Initially, these vaults will help power the first dapp, Navigate Maps. This month, we opened Navigate’s first data vault, our Aerial Vault, but aerial imagery is just the beginning! Over the next few months, we plan on releasing additional vaults -- including a street level vault, which will help us enrich Navigate Maps with incredible street-level detail. If you would like to be notified when these vaults are opened to the community, sign up to our newsletter for updates.
Long term, we plan on expanding into other high-demand data sets across climate, health, mobility, and IoT -- giving users more ways to contribute, and giving developers more next generation assets to leverage.
Who will use the data uploaded to the Navigate platform?
Initially, data shared with Navigate will be used to fuel Navigate Maps, the platform’s first application built by the Navigate team. Long term, we will collaborate with the community to build the next wave of applications on the platform.
Some examples of the groups that could leverage data on Navigate to build new apps include:
Software companies searching for annotated images to improve machine learning algorithms
Auto manufacturers willing to pay for dashcam, battery, and/or lidar data to advance AI capabilities
Climate change researchers looking for live CO2 emissions or air quality index (AQI) statistics
City planners searching for anonymized location data to assess traffic congestion patterns
Agriculture professionals or farmers looking for crop imagery to assess trends in performance
Real-estate professionals sourcing high-quality drone footage of properties they intend to sell
How will I view Navigate Dapps?
Over time, the number of dapps built on the Navigate platform will expand and new use cases will be widely available to the public.
To kickstart the ecosystem, Navigate will launch the first use case and dapp – Navigate Maps – a global map fueled by the data its community provides.
How does Navigate work?
When you contribute data to a vault, that asset is scrubbed, anonymized, encrypted, and then uploaded to IPFS. Contributions are recorded on chain and trigger user rewards in the form of NVG8 tokens. Through Navigate’s API, developers will also be able to use NVG8 tokens to access the data stored in vaults.
Why is Navigate built on the Polygon network?
Navigate chose to build on the Polygon Network for a number of reasons, including the network’s impressively high speeds and superior performance; ready-made strong community; low and predictable transaction fees; and sustainable Proof-of-Stake protocol. The Polygon Network has grown significantly, with more than 130 million addresses registered (by 2022).
​
​
Last modified 4d ago