Live signal · v1 cleared market
Downlink minutes. The simplest unit. The v1 cleared market.
2030 addressable spend
$9B
Clearing take
1.5%
Design partners
Top-5 EO operator · Tier-1 GS provider
Settlement
T+0 atomic · USDC
The reconciliation
Spectrum is the loudest signal. Downlink ships first.
The Ground Station as a Service market is between $0.5B and $1.4B in 2024 and growing 15-19% CAGR. It is also fragmenting — Microsoft retired Azure Orbital in 2024, EQT acquired Eutelsat's ground-station assets the same year, and AWS, KSAT, Leaf, Atlas, and the long tail are vertically integrating. The neutral coordination layer between operators and ground infrastructure is missing.
Vertical integration without interoperability is the opening. Operators are already paying the coordination tax bilaterally — chasing PDFs across ground-station providers, reconciling invoices by hand, eating delivery risk on every contact. A neutral clearing layer compresses that into one rulebook, one ledger, and one atomic settlement.
A downlink minute is what makes this market clearable. A defined ground station. A defined antenna. A defined band. A defined window. The atom is countable. The delivery is attestable via independent RF monitoring and SSA tracks. The cash leg settles atomically against USDC, Fedwire, or SWIFT. Every active operator on orbit touches downlink weekly — so the counterparty diversity is built in. This is the cleanest v1 cleared market in the orbital commodities catalogue.
Downlink ships first not because it is the largest market, but because it is the simplest unit to clear. The market signal is loudest elsewhere. The infrastructure is identical.
What you trade
One standardised downlink-minute — at a named antenna, band, and polarization.
- 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.
Reference price · Ka · tier-1
$19.80 / min
Rolling 30-day volume-weighted mid, sourced from cleared matches.
Bid/ask spread · Ka · CLOB
0.40%
Tighter than any bilateral spread observed in KSAT/AWS reference pricing.
Depth at mid ± 1%
42,000 min
Standing book depth at design-partner volume target (month 18).
Cleared trades / day
0
Design-partner month-18 target; 2030 steady-state 60k+/day.
Counterparties
Ground stations, operators, brokers.
- 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.
- 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.