Wavestar Markets · Tiered by signal, not by hierarchy
Spectrum is the loudest signal. Downlink is the simplest unit. Compute is the catalyst. The rest follow.
Live-signal
Spectrum · Downlink
Emerging
Compute-Hours
Adjacent
ISL · Hosted Payload
Roadmap
Propellant / ISAM
Market directory
Four tiers. Six markets. One registry.
Tier · live signal
Live signal — bilateral volume crossing today
The two markets where bilateral OTC volume is loudest in 2026. Spectrum is the largest signal; downlink is the simplest unit to clear. Both are the same unbundling thesis.
- Live signal · Loudest bilateral volume
Spectrum-Hours
Short-term lease of authorised transmit rights within a named ITU coordination zone. $28B of bilateral direct-to-device deal flow has accumulated in 18 months. The FCC's April 2026 EPFD modernisation just opened private bargaining as the default coordination model.
2026 → 2030 spend
$4B bilateral → $20B
Clearing take · 2030 fees
1% · $200M
Settlement
T+0 · atomic
Counterparties
AST · SpaceX · Globalstar · ITU SNS · FCC IBFS
- Live signal · v1 cleared market
Downlink Minutes
Authenticated data-transfer time at a named antenna, band, and polarization. The simplest unit of bilateral capacity to clear — defined ground station, defined window, defined throughput. This is what the v1 cleared market is.
2026 → 2030 spend
$1.8B → $9B
Clearing take · 2030 fees
1.5% · $135M
Settlement
T+0 · atomic
Counterparties
KSAT · AWS Ground Station · Viasat RTE · Atlas · Leaf
Tier · emerging
Emerging — substrate live, contract spec forming
Compute clusters running production in orbit and bilateral capacity being signed. Unit-of-trade, observer methodology, and export-control jurisdiction are still being settled — clearable as the working group lands the rulebook in 2027. The category most likely to pull every other market forward.
Tier · adjacent
Adjacent — substrate ready, market forming
The substrate (SDA optical standard, SDA HALO procurement) is in place. Commercial wholesale trade is forming. Clearable on a 2-3 year horizon as volume crosses.
- Adjacent · Substrate standardised
ISL Capacity
Optical inter-satellite link capacity per Gbps-hour between named constellations. SDA's optical comms standard makes cross-constellation capacity fungible for the first time. Wholesale trade is forming. Clearable as a standardised unit when commercial volume crosses.
2026 → 2030 spend
$0.3B → $6B
Clearing take · 2030 fees
2% · $120M
Settlement
T+0 · atomic
Counterparties
Kepler · SDA Tranche 1/2 · LEO broadband fleets
- Adjacent · Procurement institutionalised
Hosted-Payload Slots
Bus slots graded by mass, volume, power, pointing, and orbit window. SDA HALO institutionalises hosted-payload procurement across nineteen vendors. Staged escrow across contract, integration, and on-orbit handover with a first-commission attestation.
2026 → 2030 spend
$0.9B → $4B
Clearing take · 2030 fees
2% · $80M
Settlement
T+launch · forward
Counterparties
Loft Orbital · Apex · Muon · Spire · SDA HALO
Tier · roadmap
Roadmap — clearable when standards lock
Standardisation underway (CONFERS, ISO/DIS 24330) but not done. The market is not yet clearable in 2026. We track it because the contract architecture matters now even if the cleared market lives later.
Participant directory
Members, observers, counterparties, regulators.
Every enrolled entity on Wavestar — operators, ground-station providers, ISAM servicers, observers, regulators — in one registry-anchored directory.
Browse participantsClearing principles
Four mechanics that apply to every cleared market.
- 01
Standardised contracts
Every cleared instrument is defined in the Wavestar rulebook: unit of trade, tick size, delivery methodology, margin schedule, settlement rail. Standardisation is what converts OTC bilateral flow into cleared flow — and it is the moat in markets where the contract specification does not yet exist. - 02
Observer-signed delivery
The resource leg settles against a BLS-aggregated quorum of independent observers — ground-station RF telemetry, fleet telemetry, SSA tracks, ITU/FCC reconciliation. Trust the underlying, not the vendor. - 03
Atomic cash-and-resource
USDC, Fedwire, and SWIFT settle the cash leg in the same atomic step as the resource-delivery attestation. No pre-funding, no race conditions, no one-sided exposure. - 04
CCP novation, Cover-2 fund
Every match novates to Wavestar as the central counterparty. The mutualised default fund is sized to the Cover-2 standard that regulators accept for DCOs, with a documented waterfall in the rulebook.
Capacity · 2030 fee line
The fee-pool geometry, by tier.
Spectrum bilateral · today
$28B / 18mo
Direct-to-device deal flow, uncleared. The empirical demand signal.
2030 gross cleared flow
$57B
Sum across spectrum, downlink, compute, ISL, hosted-payload, propellant.
2030 clearing fees
$925M
Direct clearing fees only. Terminal, Market, Attest, derivatives additive.
Blended take-rate
1.6%
Within the 0.5–3% historical range for clearing utilities.
Every liquid, fragmented, multi-counterparty asset class on Earth grew a clearing layer that captured outsized economics. The orbital commodities market is that asset class today.
Design partners · Q3 2026
Spectrum operators. Ground stations. Constellation operators. Compute providers.
Design-partner cohort terms across the live-signal and emerging markets. Permanent seat on the rulebook working group, including the Compute-Hours spec convening Starcloud, NVIDIA, Crusoe, hyperscalers, and frontier labs. First-look at every adjacent and roadmap market as it comes online.