onocoy: Building a Global Layer for Centimeter-Level Precision

At the heart of onocoy’s mission is a bold vision: to make high-precision GNSS positioning as accessible as Wi-Fi. For co-founder and CEO of onocoy Services AG, Thomas Nigg, this idea is the culmination of more than 25 years in the GPS and GNSS industry, where he witnessed both the transformative power of satellite navigation and the challenges that limited its full potential.

The spark for onocoy came during Thomas’s time leading product strategy at chipmaker u-blox. There, his team launched one of the first mass-market, high-precision GNSS receivers. The technology worked, but customers still lacked an affordable, globally available correction service to make use of it. A joint venture with Bosch, Mitsubishi Electric, and others attempted to fill the gap, but competing interests prevented adoption. The lesson was clear: only a shared, decentralized approach could unite the industry. Inspiration came from Helium’s success in building decentralized wireless networks, showing that a community-driven infrastructure layer could succeed where corporate collaborations fell short.

This became the foundation of onocoy: a decentralized, community-powered GNSS reference station network for the world. But while the underlying technology is complex, its potential applications are easy to understand. Imagine a robot weeding a field with centimeter precision, a drone inspecting a bridge for damage, or life-saving medical deliveries by UAVs in remote regions. These use cases capture people’s imagination, and onocoy allows anyone to contribute by running a reference station, just like setting up a Wi-Fi router.

The parallels with Wi-Fi are strong. GPS itself started as a niche tool with meter-level accuracy before engineers unlocked billions of consumer applications. Thomas believes the same creative explosion will happen with centimeter-level positioning once it becomes widely available. And with the right infrastructure in place, adoption will spread across industries, starting with agriculture, then robotics and UAVs, and eventually into areas like earth observation and improved weather forecasts.

For station operators, also called miners, success depends on quality and reliability. Antennas need an unobstructed view of the sky and a stable mount that won’t shift even by millimeters, paired with a high-quality receiver, uninterrupted power, and connectivity. Rewards for operators are designed to balance supply and demand globally. Incentives are higher in underserved regions. Miners are also evaluated on the quality and availability of their data, ensuring that value, not just location is rewarded.

Beyond its immediate use cases, onocoy’s dense network will unlock unexpected benefits. GNSS data can help measure atmospheric water vapor, a critical factor in forecasting storms and rainfall. With coverage reaching places that currently lack sensors, weather prediction could improve worldwide,an impact far beyond navigation alone.

Underpinning the project is a governance model designed for trust and neutrality. Structured as a Swiss non-profit, onocoy uses square-root voting, ensuring no single player can dominate decision-making. This independence is crucial for building a shared industry layer, avoiding the pitfalls of earlier joint ventures where competing interests blocked progress.

Looking ahead, Thomas sees onocoy becoming as foundational as TCP/IP was for the internet. With centimeter-level accuracy available everywhere, from autonomous cars and delivery drones to tectonic monitoring and disaster response, entirely new applications will emerge. “We believe centimeter-accurate positioning will become ubiquitous,” he says. “Not just for machines, but for humanity as a whole.”