The Navigate Platform
More About the Platform
Navigate is the new community platform powering the next generation data ecosystem. If you fly a drone, use a smartwatch, a dashcam, or have a weather monitoring device in your backyard, you are already generating massive quantities of data passively. We refer to these data types as next generation data (NGD). We are designing Navigate to be the ultimate destination for contributing, sourcing and monetizing next generation data. A launchpad for future innovation, Navigate will be a place where NGD is used to build the next wave of data-driven applications.
The Navigate platform encompasses two distinct layers: the Navigate Marketplace and Navigate Dapps.
Data vaults offer an incredibly simple solution to the problems plaguing data monetization today. Data vaults are secure, decentralized containers that reward users for contributing predefined data types. Initially, the Navigate Marketplace will offer two separate vaults: (1) Drone Imagery (2) Street-Level Footage. When users contribute data, it will be cleaned, anonymized, encrypted, and aggregated with preexisting data in the vault.
This is 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. These examples represent just a small sample of what can be uploaded to the marketplace. If you have high-quality, accurate information, there’s a good chance someone can use it. And Navigate will be the bridge to help you upload that data and have a say in what it is used for.
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.
While the first dapp will be built by Navigate, longer term, Navigate will collaborate with the community to establish future applications on the platform and grant API access to developers in the ecosystem.
This platform is being designed to support virtually any profile of data contributor or app builder, and the following examples showcase just a handful of scenarios Navigate could support:
- 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
The more dapps on the platform, the more avenues users will have to earn. And to kickstart the ecosystem, The Navigate Foundation plans to launch its own dapp – Navigate Maps.
Navigate Maps is a new type of map application that crowdsources high quality imagery to create an immersive, constantly-refreshing view of the world. Fueled by the data its community provides, Navigate Maps will reward contributors for sharing aerial and street-level imagery captured by drones, dashcams, smart phones, go pros and more. Built by Navigate, this application will serve as a blueprint for what’s possible on the platform; it collects images from Navigate users and stitches them together to create a new—and better—model of the world.
This vision for Navigate Maps is just the beginning. Over time, Navigate will introduce new applications and features to enhance the value and experience of this dapp.