Lyft Taps Solana-Powered Bee Maps for Decentralized Mapping Data

Lyft has partnered with Bee Maps, a decentralized mapping platform built on Hivemapper infrastructure, to support its internal mapping efforts, the company has confirmed to The rideshare firm began working with Bee Maps in 2024 and is using the platform’s street-level mapping data to help improve routing and navigation as it expands its autonomous vehicle strategy.Bee Maps publicly announced the relationship in a The consumer-facing mapping product is built on top of Hivemapper, a decentralized, crypto-incentivized map-building network that runs on Solana.The platform relies on a global network of contributors who upload street imagery via AI-powered dashcams, rewarding them with its native HONEY token.“Lyft recognized that old-school mapping couldn’t keep up with the real world,” Ariel Seidman, co-founder and CEO of Bee Maps, said in the post. “For mobility to work and for autonomy to become reality, maps can’t be an afterthought—they need to be crowdsourced, live, accurate, and open.”While Bee Maps has promoted the use of crowdsourced data from drivers, Lyft has previously invested in open-source mapping through contributions to OpenStreetMap, and the Bee Maps partnership points to its continued push toward more flexible and real-time mapping systems, independent of legacy providers.Terms of the deal between the pair were not disclosed.Logan Hitchcock contributed to reporting.