This time we look through the direct competitor of Google Maps — Soar project, which creates a decentralized global map of the world built on blockchain technology.
Google Maps rival?
Soar is a super-map that will include access to all mapping systems, including daily satellite imagery, aircraft data, and information from the entire global community.
According to the whitepaper, Soar developers began working in 2012, when several mining companies requested the development of a display mechanism that can work on mobile devices offline, in remote locations.
The project saw the light in 2017, when a ground-based platform for civilian use was released with a Super Map. The platform will operate using blockchain technology to connect and transmit dynamic mapping data.
Soar will also create a mapping "app store" that will encourage experts to download specific image analysis algorithms to help further data processing.
According to the developers of Soar, the super-map will serve as the basis for a wide range of applications in various industries.
Google Maps be afraid!
What are the features?
The internal market of the platform will allow operators to download and sell content to other users anywhere in the world. This service has great potential to provide an exponential increase in the cost of map data by using drones.
The developers claim that they will be able to guarantee the integrity of the content meta data using smart contracts through an automatic transparent system. This will ensure the protection of such private data as the location of the author of the content, the time and type of equipment.
Blockchain technology will serve as confirmation that the received images and videos are reliable, thus avoiding problems such as inaccurate data. Сombining content collected by thousands of unmanned operators, developers of Soar promise to create a dynamic database to form a very detailed super map of the world.
The demo version of the cards can already be viewed here. Only the map is very much similar to Google Maps.
The project even made a comparison table with Google Maps, but apart from shooting with drones, there seem to be no special features.
Token Economy and Sale
Soar’s economic model is based on the theory that not all locations in the world have the same value. Dynamic urban areas require more mapping than isolated desert. SkyBounty is a ‘task’ placed above an area to collect cartographic content. SkyBounty can be installed by anyone who owns a SKYM token. As soon as SkyBounty is collected, payment is made through SKYM to the original content creator.
Token sale of SKYM will take place on the platform called Tokeneed. Registration for the main sale of SKYM tokens has already begun.
SKYM is a standard ERC-20 token, its total amount of issued tokens is 510,000,000, with only 137,700,000 for sale. The fundraising goal is $20,250,000 million. SKUM token can be bought only for bitcoin or ethereum.
According to the official website the team managed to raise 93% of the planned total.
Distribution of tokens is as follows: 12.3% for the team, 19.4% for the development, 15.4% for community formation, 13.7% for partners, 32.9% for presale and only 4.3% for crowdsale.
Therefore the project is based on a very ambitious and massive idea of creating a high-quality super-map, but has a rather weak model of token distribution. At the same time during the private sale the project attracted $17,250,000 which is almost equal to the hard cap. That means that experts in the field of ICO believe that an experienced and solid team behind this project is able to achieve success.
Click here to visit Soar page in the list of our ongoing ICOs.