How to Successfully Transition a Web2 Business to Web3

Over the past seven years at Spexi, it was apparent that transitioning from Web2 to Web3 isn't about slapping a token on an existing business and calling it decentralized. It's a thoughtful and strategic journey that requires balancing the demands of running a real business with the opportunities that blockchain technology offers. It also requires navigating the oft-misleading hype new technologies like this can attract. 

Spexi is now the founding core contributor of the LayerDrone network: the world's largest standardized drone imagery network, with over 167,000 successful missions (representing roughly 22,000 flight hours, or 2.5 flight years), 6,700+ registered pilots, and over five-million acres of ultra-high resolution imagery mapped on the network (that’s roughly 20-million images!).

We developed a playbook for this transition. Here's what we've learned.

The Four Pillars of Web2 to Web3 Transition

1. Start With a Real Business

This might sound obvious, but it's the most commonly overlooked principle in Web3. Real businesses solve real problems for real customers before introducing tokens.

When Spexi was founded in 2018, the team wasn’t thinking about tokens. Spexi was looking at a massive market opportunity, and it’s only grown since then: the geospatial data market is worth $385 billion as of 2025, and it’s projected to reach $872 billion by 2030. Traditional aerial data from planes and satellites was low-resolution, infrequently updated, and prohibitively expensive. Drones can provide better detail and faster updates at a fraction of the cost—but the drone data ecosystem was fragmented and impossible to scale.

So Spexi became the "Uber for drone data", a platform that standardized drone imagery collection and connected drone pilots with customers who needed high-quality aerial data. The business focused on proving three things:

• Revenue from customers (not token speculation): Spexi generated seven figures in revenue on testnet in 2024, with customers paying in traditional fiat currency.
• Product-market fit through retention and growth: Municipalities, disaster recovery organizations, and spatial AI companies keep working with us because the platform works.
• Unit economics that work without token subsidies: Each transaction was profitable on its own merits, and the introduction of a token augments these (proven) incentives.

For example: Render Network launched as OTOY in 2009, spent years building studio relationships and proving their GPU rendering service actually worked, and only then introduced their decentralized protocol. That's the right sequence.

If your business doesn't work without a token, it won't work with one.

2. Thoughtfully Transition Your Community 

Once you have a working business, you need to bring your community along for the Web3 journey. The key principle here is to incentivize supply, not bribe it into existence. Rewards should correlate to the value created.

With the Spexi app, drone pilots were receiving value before any blockchain functionality was introduced:

• They were earning cash payments for flying missions
• They were part of a community of aviation enthusiasts
• They had access to standardized, autonomous flight technology that made their work easier

In addition to the originalcash rewards system, Spexi uses a “Reputation Points” (RP) system to track pilot contributions to the network (i.e. successful missions). The LayerDrone foundation continues to use RP to track contributions, with another points system, “Experience Points” (XP), introduced in 2025 to track non-pilot (i.e. community) contributions to the network. Crucially, both systems amplify existing behaviours instead of creating artificial activity. They also align product, network, and contributor incentives. 

This approach ensures three critical things:

• Contributors are already getting value before tokens: Your community isn't just waiting around for a token to make the platform worthwhile.
• Tokens amplify existing behavior instead of creating artificial activity: You avoid the "farm and dump" dynamics that plague so many token launches.
• Community understands the product and mission: When token mechanics get complex, you have a base of users who genuinely believe in what you're building.

For example: Farcaster launched in 2020 as an invite-only social network, using the exclusivity and wallet requirement as a quality filter. When they removed the waitlist and went permissionless, they'd already established strong community norms. Their introduction of Frames and Channels didn’t create new behaviors—it amplified what users were already doing naturally.

Your community needs a reason to exist outside of a token, and they cannot be left behind in the pursuit of one.

3. Decentralize Thoughtfully

A lot of businesses that attempt to cross the web2 to web3 chasm fail because they decentralize too fast. Minimal decentralization in the early stages is a feature, not a bug. Maximum decentralization offers maximum risk with minimal control — which is exactly what you don't want when you're still figuring things out.

The key is knowing what to decentralize and when, with the balance of control and complexity as your primary levers. 

• Retain control over critical infrastructure early: The quality assurance, safety protocols, and core technology that makes standardized drone flights possible shouldn't be decentralized—they're too important to the user experience, and they require accountability and regulatory compliance.
• Transfer governance when the community can handle complexity: Spexi and LayerDrone have been progressively introducing governance mechanisms, like letting contributing pilots vote on which cities to launch in next. This tests governance and showcases supply-side signals without requiring blockchain or tokens (yet).
• Some things should never be decentralized: Quality control and safety will always require centralized oversight in a network involving physical aircraft operations.

For example: Uniswap launched as a fully centralized protocol with a simple automated market maker. After proving the mechanism worked, they introduced a governance token two years later. Even now, they maintain a Labs team for critical development, with progressive transfer of control as the protocol matured.

Spexi introduced blockchain functionality in 2024, with a year of testnet producing over seven-figures in revenue. In 2025, the LayerDrone Foundation was created to steward the network for mainnet release. Initially, the LayerDrone Network will be minimally decentralized to give maximum operating flexibility as the network scales. This isn’t a compromise—it’s strategic. 

If it requires accountability or control, it shouldn’t be decentralized until the associated risks can be mitigated.

4. Play Both Games

Running a real business and launching a token are two different games with different rules. You need to win at both without letting either cannibalize the other.

The business game focuses on:

• Growth and retention
• Unit economics
• Customer satisfaction
• Product development

The token game focuses on:

• Liquidity and exchange listings
• Market makers
• Value accrual mechanisms
• Community rewards and governance

Spexi and LayerDrone have separated these concerns organizationally:

• Spexi focuses on demand: enterprise customers, business development, and revenue generation for the world's largest drone imagery network
• LayerDrone focuses on supply: the contributor community, the upcoming token, and building the world's first fly-to-earn network

Contributors receive token rewards; customers use tokens to access the network. The two sides complement each other without compromising either.

This separation is crucial. Too many projects destroy their business fundamentals by over-optimizing for token performance, or tank their token by ignoring the needs of traders and holders. You need to respect both games.

The Market Opportunity

Why did Spexi create LayerDrone to transition to Web3? Because the opportunity is massive.

Next-gen applications in spatial AI, AR/VR, autonomous systems, and digital twins require data that's:

• 30x higher resolution than satellite imagery
• 50x cheaper than traditional aerial capture
• 200x faster to obtain

Spexi, powered by the LayerDrone network, delivers all three. Traditional satellite imagery requires a 6,200-acre minimum area, costs at least $750, and has a 30-day lead time. With LayerDrone, we're down to 25 acres minimum, $15 minimum spend, and 4-hour turnaround.

Spexi already serves major customers in spatial AI with an eight-figure customer pipeline. The technology works. The market is there. Now it's about scaling with the right incentive structures that Web3 enables.

Looking Ahead: LayerDrone Mainnet in 2025

As we prepare for our mainnet launch in 2025, we're excited about what we've built:

• 167,000+ total flights (representing over two-and-a-half years of flight time!)
• 6,700+ drone pilots (contributing to the world's largest drone network!)
• 5+ million acres imaged (and growing!)

But more importantly, we're confident in our approach. Spexi didn't start with a token and hope a business would emerge. We built a real business, proved the model, transitioned our community thoughtfully, and now we're ready to decentralize in a way that makes strategic sense.

Final Thoughts

The Web2 to Web3 transition isn't a one-size-fits-all playbook, but these four principles provide a solid foundation:

1. Build a real business first: solve real problems for real customers with real revenue
2. Transition your community thoughtfully: incentivize genuine value creation, not speculation
3. Decentralize progressively: maintain control where it matters, transfer it when ready
4. Play both games: respect the needs of both your business and your token without compromising either

The projects that succeed in Web3 won't be the ones that decentralized fastest or launched the flashiest token. They'll be the ones that built something people actually needed, then used blockchain technology to make it better.

That's what we're building with LayerDrone and Spexi. And we're just getting started.

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Interested in joining the LayerDrone network as a pilot or learning more about accessing our drone imagery? Visit layerdrone.com or download the Spexi app to get started.