Ariel Seidman, CEO of Hivemapper, on DePIN, Decentralized Maps, and AI in Crypto | Ep. 341
In a wide-ranging, exclusive interview with Cryptonews Podcast, Ariel Seidman, the CEO and co-founder of the decentralized mapping community Hivemapper, discussed what led him from Yahoo to creating ‘the freshest’ map of the world where mappers get rewarded.
He talked about the differences between Google Maps and Hivemapper and how the latter works to surpass the tech giant.
Additionally, Seidman touched on the company’s key markets, the businesses that use its products, and how it plans to expand.
Seidman said his time at Yahoo was very formative, as he learned how to build maps in detail.
Also, the competition between Yahoo and Google at that time was “pretty fun and fascinating.”
However, this was early 2000s, and building maps then was very different. The primary source of data was satellite imagery.
Google Street View came onto the scene in 2007, scaling and building its own maps over the following years. The fact that they gathered so much of their own data pulled it way ahead of Yahoo.
That was the time when Seidman realized how expensive it really was to build maps.
It wasn’t just collecting a tremendous amount of data but also processing it. And the work was not complete then. It’s never done, as the world is constantly changing.
Moreover, the iOS and Android smartphone revolution was a massive push in the mapping industry.
And yet, over the past decade or so, Google maps on our phones have looked pretty much the same, Seidman said.
The reason is that “there fundamentally isn’t a new large-scale data source.”
On the other hand, Hivemapper is introducing cameras everywhere, “constantly refreshing a city.”
Quick demo using Jackson Hole Airport as the location pic.twitter.com/5tXkCOdKZi
— ariel seidman (@aseidman) May 23, 2024
