Wavestar Markets · Class II cash market
Optical inter-satellite link capacity.
- 2030 addressable spend
- $6B
- Clearing take
- 2%
- Avg cleared trade
- 120 Gbps-hr · $14,400
- Settlement
- T+0 atomic · USDC
What you trade
1 Gbps × 1 hour on a named link, signed at both ends.
- 01
Unit of trade
1 Gbps-hour on a named link — source-satellite DID × destination-satellite DID × link mode. Both endpoints resolve through the did:orbit registry. - 02
Bilateral attestation
Source signs bytes-sent. Destination signs bytes-received. Attest reconciles — a mismatch opens a dispute window before settlement clears. - 03
Common-mode failures
Sun-conjunction blackouts, point-ahead loss, station-keeping maneuvers. The contract specifies whether these are buyer-risk (market-standard, cheaper) or seller-risk (premium pricing). - 04
Named-pair liquidity
Cross-fleet pairs (Kepler ↔ partner, SDA ↔ commercial) trade first. Intra-fleet capacity on major broadband constellations — SpaceX, OneWeb, Kuiper — activates as operators publish their own inventory. - 05
Mode distinction
Different modulation and FEC profiles produce different usable Gbps. A booked link at 1 Gbps × 1 hour means usable goodput, not raw PHY. Mode is part of the contract. - 06
Hosted-mesh participation
Fleets without their own mesh can buy through a mesh-host partner. The settlement leg remains point-to-point on the registry's resolved route, not on the intermediary.
Contract specification
ISL-Gbps-Hour (ISL) · Rulebook exhibit 4.8.2.
ISL · Standard contract
- Ticker
- ISL · [source-fleet] · [dest-fleet]
- Unit of trade
- 1 Gbps × 1 hour · named link pair
- Resolved endpoints
- did:orbit:sat:<src-DID> ↔ did:orbit:sat:<dst-DID>
Endpoints carry registry-anchored identity; aliasing or fleet-level substitution is not supported in v1.
- Tick size
- $5 per Gbps-hour
- Minimum block
- 24 Gbps-hours
Enough for a full orbit-pass of sustained Gbps on a typical LEO geometry.
- Delivery window tolerance
- ±60 seconds on start; full hour on completion
- Delivery attestation
- Tx-side bytes-sent + Rx-side bytes-received + Attest reconciliation
- Settlement
- T+0 · atomic · USDC primary · Fedwire / SWIFT optional
- Initial margin
- 12%
Higher than DLM reflects cross-vendor reliability variance and sun-conjunction risk.
- Variation margin band
- 3%
Daily mark based on cleared Gbps-hour curve per named-pair class.
- Force-majeure exclusion
- Named sun-conjunction windows settle pro-rata; station-keeping maneuvers settle per buyer/seller-risk election
- Position limit
- 10% of cleared named-pair open interest per operator
Price discovery
RFQ at launch; CLOB once each named pair has standing depth.
- Reference price · Kepler ↔ partner
- $120 / Gbps-hr
- Bid/ask spread · tier-1 pair
- 0.75%
- Cross-fleet pairs in book
- 0
- Observer quorum · 8-of-12
- T+0.42s
Illustrative; draws from Kepler commercial service list rate reconciled to actual delivered hours.
Design-partner target after 60 days of depth accumulation on the most-active named pair.
Month-12 activation target across Kepler, SDA, and three commercial broadband fleets.
BLS-aggregate attestation time on reconciled Tx/Rx bytes. See /technology/attestation.
Counterparties
Mesh providers, broadband fleets, hosted participants.
- MESH
Mesh specialists
Kepler Communications runs the first commercial cross-fleet optical service. SDA Tranche 1 is on orbit; Tranche 2 under contract. These are the primary net sellers of capacity at market open. - BROAD
Broadband constellations
SpaceX Starlink, OneWeb, Amazon Kuiper, Telesat Lightspeed. Each operates thousands of Gbps between their own spacecraft. Cross-fleet handoff between these is the headline liquidity event of 2027. - GOV
Government and defence
SDA and partner agencies sell non-classified capacity under established procurement rails. Wavestar settles the commercial leg; classified traffic never touches the public registry. - HOST
Hosted mesh
Fleets without native optical mesh purchase through a mesh-host partner. The contract still names endpoints; the host's role is routing, not counterparty. - OBS
Independent observers
Telemetry aggregators, RF monitoring partners, and fleet-operator observers form the Attest quorum that reconciles Tx and Rx bytes. Observer diversity is the correctness guarantee. - CCP
Wavestar ORCH
Novates every match. Holds IM and VM. Executes the resource-leg release on observer-quorum attestation. Settles the cash leg atomically with the delivery signature.
Why this market works now
Three preconditions that flipped in the last 18 months.
- Optical mesh — commercial
- Kepler commercial service live
Cross-fleet Gbps capacity sold on a published rate card for the first time in the industry.
- Optical mesh — government
- SDA Tranche 1 on orbit; Tranche 2 under contract
Hundreds of spacecraft on orbit in a single interoperable mesh, with public documentation of interfaces.
- Cross-vendor interop
- OISL standardisation active
Vendor-neutral optical interface standards (CCSDS, SDA) mean an ISL booked on Wavestar can be satisfied on any compliant terminal.
- Settlement substrate
- Attest quorum + USDC atomicity
8-of-12 observer quorum attests byte delivery; USDC settles the cash leg in the same atomic step. No pre-funding, no escrow timer.
Optical inter-satellite link capacity between mesh-capable constellations is sold bilaterally, with no standard SLA, no clearing, no secondary market. That is the 1995 OTC bond market for capacity that was built this decade.
Live M4 · Cross-fleet first
The first cleared cross-fleet ISL book opens with five named pairs.
Design-partner fleets clear zero-fee through their first $10M of named-pair capacity. Hosted-mesh participants receive a permanent routing-provider seat on the rulebook committee.