Why Airwaive is Essential for the Next Generation Internet
Background
5G already fits into our daily lives, but this emerging technology is still in its infant stage because of limitations in coverage and a lack of functional radio equipment. On the one hand, it is costly for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to scale up as it is challenging to find enough access points to host millions of equipment. On the other hand, the ISP may have to get approvals from local governments for equipment installation, making the acceleration process even less efficient. Therefore, there is a market gap between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and access point hosts where both parties could freely partner with each other to speed up 5G development. Airwaive, the next-generation internet infrastructure provider, empowers 5G to better serve a Metaverse that requires high-speed data transmission and calculation.
Airwaive-The Airbnb of 5G Cells Hosting
Airwaive is an ecosystem of wireless internet industry stakeholders consisting of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), hardware manufacturers, engineering service providers, and property owners. An ISP (operator) is responsible for providing Internet services to an end-user, where such Internet connectivity is provided by a wireless access point managed by a property owner (host). The property owner can either buy wireless equipment for active income and greater rewards or simply provide the property rights and power supply to earn passive income. Airwaive does not provide small cell equipment; the equipment is determined by ISPs that partner with Airwaive. Airwaive, using blockchain technology, acts as a “broker” that connects those stakeholders to ensure wireless hosting service can be compensated and tracked. This “host-operator” model removes barriers to 5G cell deployment.
5G will make the Metaverse become a reality as high-bandwidth and low-latency mobile networks will allow us to use fully-featured virtual reality hardware. Airwaive will foster 5G and Metaverse acceleration with its unique features:
● Provide high-speed, low-latency mobile communication through massive network access points to greatly enhance the VR experience of the Metaverse portal device.
● Provide game rendering computing resources directly at the user edge.
● Provide users with the required edge storage and edge computing hardware to lower the threshold for reaching the metaverse.
● Provide a decentralized network that is more secure and transparent by leveraging blockchain technology, accelerating peer-to-peer transactions and ensuring data security.
Airwaive’s Highlights
Depending on manufacturers and wireless spectrum, the cost of a 5G small cell is typically around $10,000 plus $500 in maintenance fees per month. To run millions of 5G small cells could be massively expensive for a network operator, thus, Airwaive provides property owners with opportunities to earn passive income by either buy-and-run hosting or simply meeting the criteria for hosting cells. Property owners are paid depending on the number of customer connections each month.
Airwaive aims to help operators improve efficiency and reduce deployment costs in a number of ways. The Airwaive Operator Application can 1）help operators design each base station location more quickly，2）help operators save time finding the right deployment site, and 3）help operators deploy sites at no cost, saving them a lot of money and teamwork. In addition, the network expansion requires operators to pay a large number of equipment costs. Airwaive aims to help operators save that amount of money by having hosts pay for the equipment themselves or having qualified investors act as intermediaries to pay for the equipment. Since the network deployment is composed of millions of hosts, operators can also save a lot of daily maintenance costs.
Currently, Airwaive has already signed 33 operators and their partners (mobile carriers, WISPs, IoT ISPs) in the US, and more than 6 million potential hosts registered with Airwaive (most of which are on-net or near-net fiber). In the coming year, it will roll out services in Los Angeles and Dallas by cooperating with leading ISPs like Dish and digital NGOs like Comp-U-Dopt to consolidate digital connectivity across the US.
In early December 2021, Airwaive and leading electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian Automotive announced a partnership in which Rivian became Airwaive’s first IoT signatory. Rivian was listed on NASDAQ on November 10, 2021, with the largest IPO in 2021 and ranked the sixth largest IPO in U.S. stock history.
Airwaive’s Competitive Advantages
In the current market, Airwaive’s potential competitors include existing ISPs (e.g., local cable ISPs), software solutions (Sitenna, Smallcellsite, Aurora Insights, etc.). These centralized services have no incentives and some of them do not provide a high level of service while being expensive. Among blockchain solutions, the biggest competitor is Helium. On February 19, Helium completed a $200 million Series D financing at a valuation of $1.2 billion, with Tiger Global and FTX Ventures participating. And last summer, it achieved a $111 million token sale led by a16z. In contrast, Airwaive has obvious advantages and more potential in terms of consensus, network business cooperation, business partner, small cell devices, and a flexible incentive model.
The Airwaive network is expanded based on real business needs, rather than transitional incentives to overdraw future development potential. More importantly, Airwaive is not bound to any device or manufacturer, nor does it require manufacturers to change the bottom layer of the device to ensure the overall security of the hardware device. As long as it is a network device supported by the operator, it can directly join the Airwaive network. Airwaive aims to leverage partners’ existing infrastructure and resources to scale the network, reduce the cost of participation, and make the entire network more efficient and competitive.
Experienced Team Behind Airwaive
Airwaive is co-founded by former ZTE and AT&T executive Jeff Yee, and blockchain serial entrepreneur Bin Zhu, who also previously founded Stratos（a decentralized data storage network) and MindGeek (a distributed cloud computing project).
The core members of the Airwaive team have extensive experience in the communication network services industry and have worked in mobile application development companies, accumulating a large number of resources in the industry. The team launched Airwaive in 2020. Airwaive creates a proof-of-connectivity (PoC) consensus to leverage the internet for property owners with incentives enabling wireless network coverage globally.
Early on, the team realized that the Web 3.0 ecosystem required far more infrastructure to be built, and they developed a new project called Stratos Network. Stratos is the next generation of decentralized data mesh that provides scalable and reliable solutions for data storage and computation. As a new type of decentralized data infrastructure, Stratos is dedicated to offer the blockchain industry with a trinity of decentralized storage, decentralized database, and decentralized computing.
Metaverse Infrastructure Alliance: Airwaive and Stratos
Airwaive and Stratos are two parallel projects and work in the same alliance to build a decentralized world. Airwaive works on the network layer, Stratos works on the cloud layer. Edge computing and distributed storage have been heavily demanded by IoT networks and traditional businesses. Working with Airwaive 5G access points directly, Stratos services can be deployed at the edge directly to significantly decrease network latency. Airwaive PoC consensus can be built on the Stratos computing component, while Airwaive auditing logs can be stored in Stratos storage, and the database can help organize Airwaive customer bills. Thus, the Airwaive team can concentrate on the business and 5G network development.
Stratos has shown great strength in decentralized cloud storage. Stratos creatively proposed the PoT (Proof of Traffic) consensus mechanism, and like traditional Internet companies, Stratos uses traffic to motivate its users.
Stratos has demonstrated a very strong presence in the decentralized cloud storage space. Like traditional Internet companies, Stratos uses traffic to incentivize its users. Internet traffic is the creation of value, rather than data storage. Therefore, Stratos’ PoT is one step ahead of PoS （Proof of Stake）and PoSt (Proof-of-Spacetime) applied by other storage and computing projects, making it healthier and more sustainable to use in the era of Web3. At the same time, Stratos provides developers with more user-friendly SDKs by leveraging distributed cloud to deploy, store and execute the code and data of DeFi and NFT projects.
Stratos recently launched the Tropos Incentive Network on February 17, which has ignited the passion of the community, with community members actively joining the incentive network. Now the Stratos Tropos Chain has more than 800 full nodes only days after its launch.
As of writing, Stratos Tropos Chain has maintained 100 active validators. The block height has reached 143,153, with a stable block-out time of about 6.31seconds.
Prominent Investors and Supporters
The team’s technical strength and vision have proven to be supported by many notable institutions. Airwaive and Stratos both successfully raised early-stage financing.
Airwaive just closed a $3 million seed round of funding in early February of this year with investments from DFG, Jsquare, United Overseas Bank (UOB) Venture Management, Signum Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Spartan Group, Fundamental Labs, Spark Digital Capital, Gate.io, Athena Ventures, and other well-known institutions.
This funding brings Airwaive more great partners, supports Airwaive’s mission to accelerate the development of decentralized wireless networks, and enables Airwaive to expand its global community of operators and hosts that are instrumental in creating networks. In addition, this investment round accelerates the rollout of the Airwaive partner network and its PoC mechanism and blockchain integration in the coming year.
Stratos has received investments from institutions such as DFG, Fundamental Labs, Kenetic Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Particle XYZ, Spark Digital Capital, Bixin Ventures, SNZ Holding, and Nothing Research, among other institutions.
Summary
In summary, the Airwaive team is well prepared for Web 3 and will provide stable and reliable infrastructure services. Airwaive and Stratos will grow together and support each other when the decentralized network is extended globally.
As one of the early investors in Airwaive and Stratos, DFG firmly believes these two epic projects will become indispensable infrastructure in the Web 3 era and is deeply committed to working closely with these brilliant team members in order to assure the development of the project.
