Executive Summary
Last updated
Last updated
The launch of the LayerDrone Network introduces a revolutionary standard for imaging the planet using drones - in ultra-high resolution, with on-demand updates, and at a significantly lower cost than other available imagery. This innovation in capturing and delivering aerial earth imagery serves myriad applications and uses - offering an improved product to city planners, real estate and development professionals, and insurance analysts. Furthermore, it unlocks new uses for aerial imagery, providing the foundation for spatially-aware AI and enabling the development of highly realistic digital twins of our physical world for metaverse, augmented reality applications, and the mass intelligent automation of physical objects. The overall market for aerial imagery and drone services is forecast at $214 billion by 2032*.
Prior to LayerDrone, aerial imagery was captured predominantly via satellite, manned fixed-wing aircraft, or by independent drone operators. Satellite imagery can provide a reliable base map of the world, but at low resolutions and less predictable frequencies. While aircraft can provide high resolution imagery, it is at significant cost, limiting its use for hyperlocal jobs, quick turnaround, or frequent updates. Independent drone operators offer high resolution custom imagery over small areas, but result in siloed fragmented data limited for use beyond the original commissioned purpose. LayerDrone, with its decentralized network of drone pilot contributors, solves this classic triangle of constraints, offering imagery that is good, fast, and cheap:
900x more detailed than satellite imagery
200x faster to initiate and deliver than manned aircraft
50x less expensive than other methods
LayerDrone achieves these outcomes through core innovations in operations, technology, and economics. LayerDrone has standardized image capture through consistent technical specifications over uniform 25-acre hexagons, called spexigons, that cover the earth’s surface. As of April 2025, the network includes images from 100,000 spexigons (over two million acres). Drone pilots are the engine of the decentralized network, accessing available “missions” (the work to capture and submit imagery) through an app, and earning rewards for uploading imagery. Pilots in the network use standard, sub-250g, autonomously flown drones, maximizing regulatory compliance, privacy, safety, and affordability. The LayerDrone Protocol makes use of blockchain technology to power its economy across the world (via a token), for image verification, and for network governance.
Users of the imagery can gain access in multiple ways - as raw images directly from the LayerDrone protocol, or in a variety of post-processed formats from value-added providers, such as interactive panoramic views, 3D models, or enhanced gaussian splatting. Imagery users can also request capture of specific spexigons.
Today, the LayerDrone Network is building and expanding its supply of imagery in primarily urban centers across North America as it demonstrates the promise of these innovations. Tomorrow, the LayerDrone Network may grow, refresh, and evolve in response to demand from imagery users in a variety of industries and applications across the planet, maximizing the potential of decentralized earth imagery.
*Fortune Business Insights, Drone Services Market Size, Share, Russia-Ukraine War Impact Analysis, By Service Type, By Application, By End-use Industry, and Regional Forecast, 2025-2032. Updated March 17, 2025.
