Wavestar Markets · Class I cash market
Downlink minutes, cleared.
The first cleared market on Wavestar. Every active operator on orbit touches downlink weekly. Every ground-station provider schedules its own fleet in isolation. Wavestar replaces a dozen bilateral calendars with one standardised contract, one observer signature, and one atomic cash-and-minute settlement.
- 2030 addressable spend
- $9B
- Clearing take
- 1.5%
- Avg cleared trade
- 240 min · $4,800
- Settlement
- T+0 atomic · USDC
What you trade
One standardised downlink-minute — at a named antenna, band, and polarization.
Fungibility is the whole point. Every active operator books minutes against a class; the providers satisfy delivery from whichever antenna meets the class spec at the booked window.
- 01
Unit of trade
1 downlink-minute at a named antenna × named band × named polarization, at a specified start-time UTC, tolerance ±15 seconds. The canonical atom of the market. - 02
Fungibility class
Providers certify each antenna into a class — e.g., Class-A Ka-band (≥35 dB/K G/T, 10–20° elevation mask). Minutes within a class are interchangeable; the provider selects the antenna at delivery. - 03
Delivery attestation
Provider signs a post-contact attestation: bits-downloaded, nominal elevation, pointing RMS. Attest reconciles against independent SSA tracks before release of funds. - 04
Substitution and cure
If the provider fails to deliver — weather, antenna fault, scheduling conflict — the buyer receives a substitute from the provider's inventory, from Wavestar's sourced pool, or a cash refund plus pre-agreed penalty. - 05
Named bands
S, X, Ku, Ka, Q/V in v1. Optical ground links are a separate Class, launching alongside ISL. Bands that require ITU coordination check against the registry's spectrum-rights entry for the booking operator. - 06
Cross-provider interchange
A minute booked against a class can be delivered by any provider with a qualifying antenna. The buyer never chooses the specific dish — they choose the class and the window.
Contract specification
Downlink-Minute (DLM) · Rulebook exhibit 4.8.1.
DLM · Standard contract
- Ticker
- DLM · [station-class] · [operator]
- Unit of trade
- 1 downlink-minute · UTC-aligned
- Band coverage
- S · X · Ku · Ka · Q/V
- Tick size
- $0.01 per minute
- Minimum block
- 120 minutes (2 hours)
Matches typical ground-station contact-window sizing.
- Delivery window tolerance
- ±15 seconds from booked start-time
- Delivery attestation
- RF-telemetry completion signed by station operator; SSA track reconciled by Attest
- Settlement
- T+0 · atomic · USDC primary · Fedwire / SWIFT optional
- Initial margin
- 7.5%
Posted to the Wavestar clearing wallet at match; released on delivery attestation.
- Variation margin band
- 2%
Intraday mark to booked-curve; breach triggers call-out within 30 minutes.
- Default cure
- Substitute from provider inventory → Wavestar pool → cash refund + 5% penalty
- Position limit
- 5% of cleared class open interest per operator
Price discovery
A continuous limit order book for the commoditised classes.
Class-A Ku and Class-A Ka on the tier-1 provider roster trade on CLOB. Optical ground and specialised bands trade on RFQ until standing-book depth supports CLOB.
- Reference price · Ka · tier-1
- $19.80 / min
- Bid/ask spread · Ka · CLOB
- 0.40%
- Depth at mid ± 1%
- 42,000 min
- Cleared trades / day
- 0
Rolling 30-day volume-weighted mid, sourced from cleared matches.
Tighter than any bilateral spread observed in KSAT/AWS reference pricing.
Standing book depth at design-partner volume target (month 18).
Design-partner month-18 target; 2030 steady-state 60k+/day.
Counterparties
Ground stations, operators, brokers.
The first market activates with five ground-station providers, twelve fleet operators, and a handful of market-making brokers holding inventory.
- PROV
Ground-station providers
KSAT, AWS Ground Station, Viasat Real-Time Earth, Atlas Space Operations, Leaf Space, plus operator-owned antennas that publish sellable inventory (Planet, Capella, others). - OPER
Fleet operators
EO (Planet, Capella, Umbra, HawkEye 360), comms (OneWeb, Kuiper, Telesat), SDA Tranche 1/2, and tens of smaller fleets currently paying list-price across bilateral contracts. - BROK
Brokers and market-makers
A new category. Traders who hold inventory of downlink windows at tier-1 classes and quote continuous bid/ask on the CLOB. Paid via maker rebate and liquidity-tier fee discounts. - OBS
Independent observers
Third-party RF monitoring (NSR Kratos, analytics providers) plus fleet-telemetry pipelines. Observer signatures form the BLS quorum that clears each post-contact attestation. - REG
Regulators
FCC for authorisation reconciliation on U.S.-licensed antennas; national administrations for comparable reconciliation elsewhere. Filings viewable at /regulatory/filings. - CCP
Wavestar ORCH
Sits as central counterparty on every match. Novation is immediate; bilateral counterparty risk is extinguished on the trade timestamp.
Regulatory context
Authorised by the stations, cleared on Wavestar, filed with the regulator.
Downlink minutes are not spectrum rights — they are performed services under existing station authorisations. Wavestar is neutral infrastructure on top of regulator-authorised underlying.
- FCC Part 25
- Station licenses are held by the provider
Wavestar does not transfer authorisations; cleared minutes are delivered under the station's existing FCC Part 25 authorisation.
- ITU recording
- Minutes trade within the assigned operator's ITU-recorded frequency rights
Attest reconciles booked frequency against the did:orbit registry entry for the consuming satellite.
- Wavestar status
- FinCEN MSB · Module §11.2
Holding member settlement funds in custodial accounts, segregated from operating capital.
- Non-U.S. stations
- National administration authorisations reconciled to cleared minutes
KSAT (Norway), ESA Estrack, and comparable networks pass delivery attestations upstream to Wavestar's observer set.
Every week, Planet, Spire, Capella, Umbra, HawkEye 360 and several dozen others do bilateral deals for ground-station capacity. The demand is there; the rails are not.
Live Q3 2026
Your first $10M cleared at zero fee.
Design-partner terms on DLM contracts across every Class-A and Class-B fungibility class. Maker rebates on CLOB quotes. Rulebook seat for the first five operators.