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About SkyTrade
SkyTrade is a marketplace for tokenizing, buying, selling, and renting air rights—the space above properties—as compressed NFTs on Solana. Its core business: property owners register their airspace, get it verified, and monetize it through rentals or sales. Buyers (drone operators, telecom firms, developers) acquire access rights for specific altitudes and time periods. The key narrative: air rights are an untapped real-estate asset class, and SkyTrade makes them liquid and tradable. Market pain: airspace is fragmented, unregulated, and hard to transact; drone delivery, 5G, and urban air mobility need legal access but lack efficient markets. SkyTrade solves this by creating a transparent ledger, standardizing rights, and enabling micro-transactions. Development in the past six months (2026-03 to 2026-09): According to official channels, SkyTrade has expanded its registered airspace inventory, launched new API tools for enterprise clients, and increased partnerships with drone logistics companies in Southeast Asia and Europe. However, no major public milestones or token listings were confirmed in this period. Important negative info: In 2024, the project faced criticism for overstating the legal enforceability of tokenized air rights in some jurisdictions; regulatory uncertainty remains a key risk. Overall, SkyTrade is an early-stage experiment with growing but unproven traction.
SkyTrade completed its seed round in Aug 2026, led by Modular Capital and Portal Ventures, with participation from Solana Foundation and Mercatus Center, accelerating the tokenization of air rights. In July, it launched "Critical by SkyTrade," a compliance engine for critical infrastructure to address FAA Part 74 proposed rules, enabling facility owners to audit drone threats and build evidence records. The company also expanded partnerships with commercial real estate firms and drone operators, positioning itself as the on-chain standard for low-altitude airspace governance.
Future roadmap focuses on three pillars: (1) building a decentralized air rights marketplace with dynamic pricing and fractional ownership, (2) integrating with UTM systems and government platforms for real-time airspace management, and (3) developing institutional-grade tools for cities and enterprises, including automated permit issuance and revenue-sharing models. The team aims to onboard 5 million commercial drones by 2027, targeting an $84 billion market.
SkyTrade co-founder and CEO Jonathan Dockrell: A marketplace expert, he led Deliveroo's vertical growth ($2B marketplace), helped BMW/Mercedes' rideshare reach #2 in London within 3 months, and served as Product Manager at Ryanair. He has founded and exited multiple ventures and is an Emergent Ventures winner.
Co-founder and CTO Marcin Zduniak: With over a decade of blockchain experience, he co-founded Intelligent Payments (acquired by Evo Payments), CloseCross, and others. He served as CTO of trade.io and Head of Blockchain at Espeo Software. He holds an MSc in Digital Currency from the University of Nicosia.