How Foam is Solving The GPS Crisis

The U.S Department of Homeland Security designates 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks – whether physical or virtual – are considered so vital to the U.S that if a sector failed it would create irreparable consequences. These sectors are mostly what you imagine including Nuclear, Healthcare, Financial Services, Transportation, and Information Technology. Of the 16 critical sectors, 14 are dependent on GPS.

Unfortunately, GPS can easily be exploited, jammed, or spoofed – the act of using malicious software to broadcast phony signals and fool receivers. Spoofing can mess up a credit card reader or drones.

GPS is relied on for more than just location data. All GPS clocks are synchronized to within nanoseconds and are able to provide a unified reliable time. GPS time is used for crucial processes like bouncing calls between cellular towers, regulating energy flows in electrical grids, and time-stamp financial trades on the major exchanges. Time is so crucial that all major trading firms run backup atomic clocks for redundancy purposes. With a world increasingly reliant on location services and time-synchronization, complementary services to GPS will be required.

Enter Foamspace

The Foam protocol – developed by Foamspace – provides the tools to enable a crowdsourced map and decentralized location services. Unlike GPS which runs via satellites, Foam uses terrestrial radios that anyone can operate.

The Foam protocol is comprised of two location service components: