Explain Like I'm Five
What this Hivemapper thing is about, in the simplest possible terms
Hivemapper is a new way of building maps of the world.
The project is called Hivemapper because it is like a beehive. A beehive makes honey by having thousands of bees fly around and collect nectar from flowers. By working together, all the bees in the community get to enjoy some delicious honey.
Hivemapper makes maps by having thousands of people use a dashcam to take images of the world while they drive. By working together, all the people in the community get to share the fruit of their work: a fresh and detailed map of the world. Anyone can see the current status of the map using a website called Hivemapper Explorer.
When members of the community do things that make the map more useful, they get a crypto token called HONEY. A crypto token is a digital currency that can be exchanged or traded. HONEY tokens have value because redeeming HONEY tokens is the only way to access Hivemapper’s useful map data.
Every type of crypto token is based on a blockchain, which is a “distributed ledger” of transactions. To understand the concept of a distributed ledger, imagine a public document on the Internet. Anyone can read the document. Anyone can add a page. Any time the document changes, everyone can see the changes. Hivemapper uses a blockchain called Solana that can handle many transactions quickly and at low cost, making it a great fit for a busy community like ours.
There are many different “wallets” where people can securely keep their crypto tokens. A wallet is secure because only the owner of the wallet has the private key that is needed to access it. (This is why you should never, ever give anyone the private key to your wallet!) Hivemapper currently uses a wallet called Phantom. By logging into your Phantom wallet, you prove to the Hivemapper network that you are who you say you are.
To join the Hivemapper community, there are just a few things you need to do:
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