Hivemapper and Bee Maps: The future of cartography

What if your morning commute could help build the next generation of maps—and earn you crypto at the same time?

That’s exactly what Hivemapper is doing.

Instead of relying on giant corporations and expensive fleets of mapping cars, Hivemapper taps into everyday drivers who record their surroundings with dashcams. Those images are stitched together into a constantly updating, decentralized map of the world. Contributors earn crypto for their efforts, and the whole thing runs on Solana, making it fast and efficient. It’s like if Google Street View was rebuilt by the internet—fairer, fresher, and owned by the people who power it.

Read on to discover how Hivemapper works, why it matters, and how it's helping companies scale their operations.

What is Hivemapper?

Hivemapper is a decentralized, community-built mapping network on Solana that launched in late 2022. Contributors use purpose-built dashcams to record streets and neighborhoods as they drive around. Those images are then processed and woven together into a living, breathing global map. In simpler terms, Hivemapper is like a worldwide Google Street View run by the people.

Because this all happens on Solana, a decentralized network, no single entity controls the map data—it’s a shared resource. To keep things fair and encourage participation, Hivemapper has its own crypto token called HONEY, which acts as the reward for contributors. Every time you help expand the map, you earn some HONEY tokens in return.

In less than two years, Hivemapper’s community captured over 20 million kilometers of unique road imagery—expanding map coverage five times faster than Google managed with its Street View cars! By 2025, Hivemapper contributors had mapped roughly one-third of all the world’s roads through this crowd-sourced approach.

Why Hivemapper matters

So, why should we care about this new way of mapping?

The short answer: it promises fresher, cheaper, and more scalable maps than we’ve ever had before.

Let’s break those claims down:

• Fresher data: Ever notice how the street imagery on traditional map services can be years out of date? A new building might not appear, or a road change isn’t reflected until the next periodic update. Hivemapper’s crowd-sourced model tackles this by drawing on continuous input from drivers everywhere. The map is essentially being refreshed all the time, because someone with a dashcam is likely to drive down that road today, not three years from now. This freshness is hugely important—especially for things like navigation apps, delivery services, or self-driving cars that need the latest info.
• Cheaper & more scalable: Traditional mapping is expensive. Think of the cost of fleets of mapping cars, specialized camera equipment, and employees to operate them—not to mention managing all that data centrally. Because of these costs, only a few big companies have been able to do it, and even they have to prioritize what areas to map and how often. Hivemapper offers a radically different cost structure: it piggybacks on drives people are doing anyway. Instead of paying drivers to roam around, Hivemapper contributors voluntarily attach a dashcam and go about their normal commute or errands, earning tokens as a perk. There’s no need for a centralized company to buy hundreds of cars or hire drivers; the community collectively provides the coverage. This makes it far more cost-effective to gather map data. And because anyone can join, the map can grow in places that were previously not worth the expense for big map providers. In other words, Hivemapper scales organically.

How Bee Maps leverages Hivemapper

Bee Maps is a brand and platform created by Hivemapper specifically to serve businesses and developers with the map data collected by the Hivemapper network.

You can think of it this way: Hivemapper is to Bee Maps what Android is to Google’s Pixel phones. Hivemapper provides the open, decentralized mapping network (analogous to Android OS), and Bee Maps is one of the products (like the Pixel phone) that uses that open network to deliver something directly to users.

For example, Bee Maps offers a Map Image API (for getting high-res map imagery), a Map Features API (for grabbing detailed map attributes like signs, road features, etc.), and a service called Scout for accessing live street-level views from various locations. These products are tailored to make it easy for other companies or developers to plug Hivemapper’s data into their applications.

By providing ready-to-use APIs, Bee Maps is essentially the bridge between the raw community-collected data and the practical needs of industries that rely on maps. Importantly, Bee Maps isn’t meant to have a monopoly on using Hivemapper’s data—it’s just the first major player to do so, and it happens to be created by the same folks who built Hivemapper.

Bee Maps: Real-world use cases

Here are a few real-world examples across different industries that illustrate how Bee Maps, and the Hivemapper data behind it, are being used:

• Volkswagen: Volkswagen’s autonomous driving unit (ADMT) has partnered with Bee Maps for real-time, street-level mapping to improve its self-driving vehicle operations. Crowdsourced Bee Maps imagery is used to validate Volkswagen’s robotaxi technology by providing up-to-date curbside details for precise pickups and drop-offs, enhancing autonomous ride-sharing accuracy.
• Lyft: Ride-hailing firm Lyft teamed up with Bee Maps to obtain more accurate, crowdsourced mapping data for its platform. Integrating Bee Maps’ constantly updated street-level imagery helps Lyft improve navigation and routing. The live map updates allow Lyft to keep information on road changes current, benefiting drivers and laying groundwork for future autonomous services.
• Maxar: Satellite-imagery provider Maxar joined forces with Bee Maps to merge space-based change detection with ground-level verification. In this partnership, Maxar’s satellites identify where road conditions have changed, and Bee Maps contributors confirm those changes on the street. This combined approach enables faster, highly accurate map updates—an Austin pilot showed about 80% of detected road changes were successfully documented using the satellite-plus-dashcam system.
• NBCUniversal: NBCUniversal, a major media and entertainment company, was recently confirmed as a Bee Maps customer as well. By tapping Hivemapper’s decentralized mapping network, NBCUniversal gains access to fresh, near real-time street-level data. This collaboration enables NBCUniversal to leverage up-to-date geospatial insights for its broad media operations, such as planning productions or managing location-based projects.
• TomTom: TomTom, a global leader in mapping and navigation, entered an ongoing partnership with Bee Maps to enhance its map data with Hivemapper’s up-to-date street-level imagery. Through this collaboration, TomTom can supplement its own mapping resources with Bee Maps’ crowdsourced data, ensuring more frequent and precise updates to road information.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Essentially, any industry that relies on knowing “what’s where” in the real world can benefit from the crowd-updated, rich data that Bee Maps provides.

Getting started with Hivemapper and Phantom

The HONEY token powers the Hivemapper economy, rewarding contributors who power the map with fresh data. Whether you're capturing street imagery or checking AI annotations, your work is recorded onchain and compensated transparently—no middlemen, no mystery, just fair rewards for real contributions.

Here’s how to get started:

• Purchase a Hivemapper Bee dashcam
• Set up your Bee and install it in your car
• Download and set up a Phantom wallet
• Start driving and contributing real-world imagery to the Hivemapper network
• Earn HONEY tokens for your contributions; redeem them directly to your Phantom wallet
• Use Phantom’s built-in swap feature to trade HONEY for other tokens such as SOL or USDC

It’s that simple—map the world, earn tokens, and swap seamlessly.

How to share HONEY with friends and family

Know someone who might be interested in HONEY? You can share a simple token page with them so they can get involved.

Here's how:

• Open Phantom
• Search for e.g. “HONEY” and select the token
• Click the “Share” button
• Copy the link
• Send the link through your preferred app, such as iMessage, Telegram, Instagram, or others

When you share this link, the recipient will receive the official HONEY token page from Phantom.

FAQs

Disclaimer: This guide is strictly for educational purposes only and doesn’t constitute financial or legal advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.