I. Introduction
Most people are probably not aware that air traffic data is openly broadcast. ADS-B transmissions broadcast rich data including aircraft position, altitude, speed and more over radio frequencies. This data is sent over unencrypted radio signals, yet that data usually disappears unless captured by centralized providers.
Derad Network brings a new approach and incentives to ADS-B data broadcasting. By building a decentralized network of ground stations and integrating directly with Arweave via AR.IO and ArDrive Turbo, Derad makes flight data tamper-proof, censorship-resistant, and permanent. This is an important first step towards trustless, verifiable infrastructure for airspace monitoring.
II. What is ADS-B?
ADS-B stands for Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast. It is a system used in aviation that allows aircraft to broadcast their position, velocity, and other flight data in real-time.
What the acronym means:
- Automatic: The system works without pilot input.
- Dependent: It relies on the aircraft’s GPS or onboard navigation system.
- Surveillance: It provides tracking information about the aircraft.
- Broadcast: The data is continuously sent out to anyone with the right equipment to receive it.
An aircraft with ADS-B Out capability broadcasts live telemetry including its GPS-based position, ground speed, altitude, heading, vertical rate, and unique identifier. This information is used by air traffic controllers, nearby aircraft, flight tracking services, and researchers to improve situational awareness, prevent collisions, and analyze flight behavior.
Anyone with a basic antenna and SDR receiver can pick up these transmissions. The data is open by default, but until now there has not been a incentive to expand ADS-B coverage in underserved areas through a community driven approach.
III. What is Derad Network
Derad is building a decentralized sensor network that captures, validates, and archives ADS-B data. Instead of relying on expensive commercial infrastructure, Derad allows anyone to run a ground station with low-cost hardware. A Raspberry Pi and a $5 antenna are enough to receive global aircraft data and send it into Derad’s processing layer.
The network uses a zero-trust model that verifies the quality of incoming data across stations. Accuracy scores are calculated based on signal consistency, comparison with peer stations, and node reliability. This system allows the network to scale organically while preserving data integrity.
Each station that contributes valid data is rewarded with DRD tokens, creating an incentive structure that aligns participation with reliability. This allows Derad to expand into underserved regions where traditional ADS-B infrastructure is limited or absent.
With the growth of UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles) or drones in the civilian and, commercial, and law enforcement/military context, having a reliable and scalable ADS-B management system is important for preventing collisions in airspace.
Read the Derad Network whitepaper here.
DeRadar
DeRadar is a user interface to the Derad Network. It allows users to view real-time aircraft traffic and save snapshots of the sky directly to Arweave. These snapshots include aircraft positions, flight paths, call signs, and timestamped metadata at a specific moment in time.
Uploads are performed through ArDrive Turbo. Once the data is stored, it becomes a permanent, cryptographically signed record on the permaweb. Because DeRadar is served through AR.IO gateways, it remains accessible even if the origin server goes down. The front-end itself is hosted on Arweave, removing reliance on any single server or cloud provider.
This architecture ensures that historical air traffic data is preserved in a decentralized, censorship-resistant archive that anyone can access and verify.
IV. How Derad uses Arweave
Derad integrates Arweave in multiple layers of its system. Historical flight data is uploaded using AR.IO SDKs. The front-end of DeRadar is served directly from the permaweb, making the interface resilient to downtime or censorship. Real-time snapshots taken by users are encoded and uploaded as Arweave transactions using ArDrive Turbo, creating immutable logs of aircraft activity.
Each snapshot is content-addressed and timestamped, allowing it to be verified and referenced indefinitely. The Arweave network acts as a global memory layer for Derad’s ADS-B data, anchoring it in a permanent, distributed archive.
Here is a snapshot of air-traffic data on Arweave.
V. Arweave integrations with DePin
Storing rich, high-frequency telemetry like ADS-B data on Arweave is a milestone for decentralized infrastructure. It proves that Arweave can handle more than static files or archived documents. It can support live data from decentralized hardware networks.
By anchoring real-time flight data to the permaweb, Derad creates a tamper-proof, cryptographically verifiable record of global air traffic. That data becomes usable across a wide range of contexts: from forensic analysis of aviation incidents, to real-time monitoring of UAV corridors, to journalistic investigations or defense intelligence. Cities can use it to model airspace congestion. Regulators can enforce no-fly zones without relying on centralized APIs. And because the data is stored permanently, it becomes a timestamped ledger of the sky that anyone can audit.
But the bigger unlock is what can be built with this data.
Arweave is just one part of the permaweb puzzle. With a global pool of data from unique sources such as Derad Network, developers could build innovative systems on top of this layer using AO. Examples include agents that monitor specific air routes, flag unusual flight patterns, or combine air traffic with weather, shipping, and news data to generate real-time insights.
If you’re interested in building in this direction, check out the Agents of the Permaweb Hackathon kicking off August 11. It’s your chance to explore how autonomous agents can operate on live, verifiable data from sources like Derad and beyond. Applications are open until August 7.
VI. Conclusion
Derad is building new infrastructure and incentives for decentralized, community-driven aviation data networks. With support from AR.IO, that data is now permanent and immutable on Arweave. By capturing ADS-B signals and anchoring them to the permaweb, Derad creates a public record of airspace activity that cannot be erased or manipulated.
This integration also highlights the potential for DePIN projects to leverage Arweave’s permanent storage. With rich, real-time telemetry like ADS-B now onchain, new systems will emerge such as autonomous agents, analytics engines, and real-world intelligence tools built directly on top of the permaweb.