Airspace

AirSpace is the first blockchain-powered marketplace that allows anyone to buy, sell, and lease air rights — the legal right to control and monetize the vertical space above physical properties.

In cities around the world, the space above buildings is becoming increasingly valuable for drone delivery, advertising, real estate development, and view preservation. Yet today, these air rights are locked behind archaic legal systems, inaccessible to most property owners, and nearly impossible to trade. AirSpace is solving this by turning air rights into verifiable digital assets that can be easily listed, leased, and transferred.

What AirSpace Does

Tokenizes Air Rights Each air right — defined by GPS location, altitude range, and legal boundaries — is minted as an NFT on Flow. This NFT includes linked legal documentation, zoning permissions, and geospatial metadata.

Stores Verified Data All critical data like 3D coordinates, drone activity logs, and ownership proof is uploaded to Filecoin, ensuring decentralization and permanence.

Connects to Web2 via Flare To ensure only authorized entities interact with the system, Flare’s FDC bridges to Web2 licensing APIs and verifies pilot credentials. FTSO oracles dynamically price airspace based on factors like demand, location, and time of day.

AirSpace is built as a modular Web3 application that bridges the gap between physical air rights and digital asset management. We focused on three core pillars: verifiable ownership, real-time leasing, and geo-based pricing. Here’s how we made it work:

1. Tokenization Layer — Flow Blockchain We chose Flow as our base chain due to its strong NFT architecture, low fees, and composability.

Each air parcel is tokenized as an NFT using Flow’s Cadence language. Metadata includes: GPS coordinates, altitude ranges, zoning ID, and a Filecoin CID for off-chain data. Leasing state and current operator are embedded in NFT metadata, updated via events. Flow’s resource-oriented model made it easy to enforce ownership constraints without complex smart contract logic.

1. Data Storage — Protocol Labs (Filecoin) We integrated with Filecoin to store:

3D polygon volumes representing leased airspace. Drone activity logs and audit trails. Legal documents (zoning permissions, lease agreements). All NFTs on Flow reference Filecoin CIDs in their metadata. We used web3.storage during dev to simplify uploads.

1. Real-Time Leasing — Yellow State Channels + ERC-7824 This was the hackiest and most innovative part.

We used Yellow’s Nitrolite state channels to allow real-time scheduling of airspace corridors. Each lease triggers an off-chain interaction, negotiated through a state channel. We implemented ERC-7824 to encode lease start/end timestamps, ensuring atomic handover of airspace between drones or operators. If two operators attempt to lease the same corridor, Yellow handles conflict resolution and refunds based on time slot priority. This gives us high-frequency leasing with no on-chain congestion or gas costs.

1. Licensing & Pricing — Flare Network (FDC + FTSO) We used Flare’s FDC to connect with external aviation licensing APIs (mocked in our hackathon version) to verify pilot credentials before leasing is allowed. FTSO (Flare Time Series Oracle) powers our dynamic pricing model, adjusting airspace prices based on: Location (city center vs. outskirts) Time (rush hour vs. night) Demand (lease requests per square km)