Changelog

Follow new updates and improvements to Wingbits.

August 3rd, 2026

Client Updates:

No client updates. The most recent client version remains 1.12.1.

Site Updates:

Station Heartbeats now visible to everyone - The per-station Heartbeats tab was admin-only; it's now the 4th tab on every station page, and reworked to actually be readable. A ↻ marks where the client restarted, every column header explains itself on hover, and the row colours for missing heartbeats and other anomalies were rebuilt to be distinguishable for colourblind users in both light and dark mode. Terminology now matches the Statistics tab (input messages in, output batches out) so the two tabs teach one mental model.

Rank percentile now reads the way percentiles actually work - Correcting last update's rollout: the figure was showing its complement, so a lower number meant better. It's now a true percentile — higher is better, with the network's best station near 100%. A station that read "Top 12%" before now reads about 88%. Sorting is unchanged, and each station's Rewards History chart has its percentile axis flipped to match, so best sits at the top.

Dashboard 7-day breakdowns finished - Hovering the Hexes, Rewards and Pending values on the overview now shows a per-day breakdown for the last 7 days, matching the Rank tooltip from last update. Pending shows an "upcoming unlocks" schedule day by day. The Rank tooltip also now notes it reflects Base stats and excludes low-altitude stats.

Flight history rebuilt as a flight log - The flight detail History tab used to split flights by UTC calendar day, which chopped every red-eye in half: one leg ending 23:59, another starting 00:00. It's now a reverse-chronological log where one row is one complete flight, takeoff to landing, so an overnight appears once as "23:14 → 01:42 (+1)". The tab also opens faster and more reliably, "Show older flights" now genuinely loads more history instead of doing nothing, and there's clear feedback while more is still loading — a partial list used to look like the complete history.

Statistics charts get a time range - The station Statistics charts now have a 1–4 day selector, defaulting to 1 day, so small movements aren't flattened by the widest peak across four days. Two bugs there also fixed: how much history you saw depended on which tab you opened first and whether you'd refreshed, and the charts tore themselves down and redrew every ~10 minutes when a new heartbeat arrived, which looked like the page reloading.

Map fixes - Aircraft no longer vanish when you toggle Globe view off and back on. The map dock's unselected icons were too dark to make out — worst in light mode, the AI glyph especially — and are now one consistent, readable tone.

Wallets and mint wording - On the Wingnauts mint, pre-claim Cost and Your balance now read "rewards" rather than "WINGS", since they aren't tokens until claimed; post-claim references stay WINGS. In the Wallets Ledger and Reward Details, the unselected filter chips were nearly unreadable in light mode and have been lightened.

Flight detail readability in light mode - The Technical tab on flight details rendered flat in light mode, with no visible separation between its sections. Card and header backgrounds now follow the theme so the groupings are clear again. Dark mode is unchanged.

July 29th, 2026

Client Updates:

No client updates. The most recent client version remains 1.12.1.

Site Updates:

Redesigned dashboard - The logged-in dashboard got a full redesign and multiple iterations since: cleaner, mobile-first, and reorganized to lead with your earnings and station health. The "Your Stations" fleet table now appears for everyone (it was previously limited to larger fleets), is sortable by any column, and reflows into a card layout on phones instead of a cramped horizontal scroll.

Station rank percentile - On dashboard each station now shows where it sits across the whole network as a percentile... for example "Top 12%", where a lower number is better, instead of a bare up/down trend arrow. Because it's based on rank relative to the field, it's an absolute read of standing that doesn't drift just because the network grew. Hovering a station's rank reveals its last 7 days of rankings. Each individual station's Rewards History chart now also plots that rank percentile (0–100%) over time so you can see how your network importance tracks alongside rewards (since pagerank was added).

Dashboard clarity fixes - The weekly stat now reads "rewards change vs prior 7 days" so a flat week isn't misread as zero rewards, plus tidied labels and tooltips across the overview.

Globe view, military filter, and coverage rank on the map - The flight-tracking map gained an optional 3D globe projection, and the public map now has a military-only filter to show just military aircraft. Removed a misleading "hex ranking" denominator on the coverage overlay that could show impossible values.

Rebuilt multi-flight replay - You can now play two or more compared flights together on a single shared wall-clock timeline, rather than replaying them one at a time.

Cleaner map search and smoother live updates - Map search now hides address/location results when your query matches a callsign, so the list isn't cluttered with irrelevant places. Live aircraft updates are also smoother, the map polls for new positions at a cadence that scales with your zoom level.

Light and dark mode contrast fixes - Fixed several spots showing the wrong theme's styling: the wallet ledger, some other minor spots, and the header logo — which had left unreadable or low-contrast elements.

Mobile navigation fix - Fixed the language dropdown overlapping the first items (Overview, Map) in the mobile hamburger menu, which had made them hard to tap. RTL also followed now for the language dropdown positioning, for those using RTL languages.

Support chat - Hardened identity for better security. Sorry hackers...

API Updates:

New endpoints - The customer API added an account usage endpoint (reporting your plan, rate limit, monthly quota, and remaining calls) and a batch aircraft-details endpoint for looking up many aircraft at once, plus a military-aircraft filter on area queries, and fuller documentation of every response field.

July 17th, 2026

Client Updates:

No client updates. The most recent client version remains 1.12.1.

Site Updates:

Smoother, more reliable live map - We did a large performance pass on the live aircraft map to remove flickering, the brief freeze when clicking a plane, and a crash risk. Planes now update more smoothly as new data comes in. We also made the map more resilient when our backend is slow or briefly unavailable: it keeps the last-known planes on screen when it can, and shows a short "live data unavailable" message only when there is genuinely nothing to display (which clears itself automatically once data returns), instead of silently looking frozen.

Cleaner flight tracks (current flight only) - When you click an aircraft, the map track and the cockpit altitude profile now show just its current flight rather than stitching several separate flights together across long ground stops. Tracks and altitude graphs are much easier to read, and history loads faster.

Rebuilt flight replay - Live, historical, and collision-alert (ACAS/TCAS) replays now run on one unified engine with consistent controls and camera behavior. The camera smoothly follows the aircraft and releases when you pan or zoom. The altitude profile now shows gaps and uncertain data the same way the map does (grayed and dashed where coverage was lost) and can be expanded into a larger view. We also fixed a bug where closing a collision-alert replay left leftover info in the URL and could keep live planes hidden.

Clicking a flight now focuses the map on it - Selecting a flight anywhere in the app (for example a past departure or a live arrival from an airport's schedule list) now pans the map to that aircraft, instead of leaving you on the previous view with the plane off-screen. This also works for aircraft that have aged out of live tracking by falling back to their last-known position, and searching by hex or callsign now finds those aircraft too.

Light mode fixes - Fixed several places on the map that were still showing dark-mode styling while in light mode, which left unreadable dark boxes or low-contrast text. This covered the Reserved and Offline station info panels, the map filter chips, the aircraft info panel, and the selected-tab highlighting.

Rewards charts - The rewards chart hover popup now shows the daily total up front plus the top contributing stations, instead of a cut-off partial list, so people with many stations can actually read it. On the individual station rewards chart we also added a PageRank line, so you can see how your station's network importance tracks against its rewards over time.

Clearer reward claims & wallet ledger - Claims now show a per-station breakdown of Daily versus Beta rewards that make up the amount. The wallet ledger is ordered by timestamps, and clicking a claim amount opens a reconciliation breakdown of which stations and reward types it came from. (That breakdown is recorded at claim time, so it appears on claims made from this release onward.) Reward details also now show anonymous and account host splits correctly, and hide split percentages for Beta rewards since splits don't apply to them.

Host contract improvements - The host contract screen now shows when the contract was created, disables the update button when you haven't actually changed anything, and warns you before editing an anonymous host contract that changes take effect going forward (not retroactively).

New "no data" station alerts:

Station notifications are now split into two independent controls: Station Offline and No Data Flow. The new No Data alert catches the case where a station is still online and sending heartbeats but has stopped producing aircraft data, so you find out about a quietly-broken station without waiting for it to go fully offline. Click on the Bell for a station on the MY STATIONS page to update the options.

May 8th, 2026

Announcing here on site instead of just in Discord server, where we run our AMAs…

Discussion about mainnet launch, new product offerings, the NFTs, buyback/burn, and other topics on participants' minds.

Hope to see everyone Wednesday May 20th, 11:00 AM EDT (3:00 PM UTC)

https://discord.gg/wingbits?event=1502012488101658806

May 8th, 2026

Client Updates:

1.10.25 - Improvements to NATS reconnect logic. Improved logs. (Apr 28th)

1.10.26 - Client will no longer attempt to connect to the now-shut-down legacy ingestors. (May 5th)

1.11.0 - Major cleanup of legacy code for connecting to ingestors at feed.wingbits.com and processing/sending JSON. Improved auth token retry logic when rate limited. Updated dependencies. (May 7th)

1.11.1 - FIX: Client panic happening on stations not authorized to connect for 4+ hours. FIX: Stations appearing as not connected for the first hour after restart even though data was flowing normally. (May 8th)

Infrastructure Updates:

Legacy ingestors shut down - The legacy JSON ingestors (feed.wingbits.com) have been shut down. Stations still attempting to send JSON data or running outdated client versions will no longer be able to send data. Updating to the latest client is required.

April 30th, 2026

We’ve managed to decipher some of the strange signals that the network picked up.

It appears to be an urgent SOS for safe refuge, coming from a distant parallel universe.

A collective of 7,470 human-like species are imminently arriving. They have identified themselves as the Wingnauts, unique beings forged from static and signal by the psychedelic priest known only as Stalomir.

Captains. Navigators. Pilots. Explorers. Each one requests a beacon - a signal to be tethered too.

Will you answer their call? https://www.wingbits.com/wingnauts-omniverse

Laws of the Mint

  • Only active Wingbits stations can claim a Wingnaut.

  • Each station receives one free mint, to the current owner wallet.

  • Up to 3 additional mints allowed per wallet.

  • Each extra mint requires burning 747 unclaimed rewards.

Supply

7,470 Wingnauts exist in this First Era. This generation will never be repeated. The signal moves forward.

Rarity

There is no choosing NFTs or traits. Your allocation is based on pure cosmic luck and assigned at random.

Why wear one?

Wingnauts mark operators inside the network. Wearing one unlocks future rewards, access and status. The signal recognizes its own.

April 27th, 2026

We will get some warnings up on the site and docs, but be aware that Kraken has a 800 minimum WINGS deposit requirement (you can see this when trying to get the wallet address for receiving on their interface). This means you should not be using a Kraken wallet as your claim wallet directly unless you ensure every claim to a Kraken based wallet is over 800 rewards. The tokens will just disappear. Kraken will not provide support for recovery. Wingbits cannot help in this case either.

It is always a good idea in crypto to only send to wallets you completely control. From there you can make decisions on what to do with the tokens you hold. Remember, not your keys... not your wallet.

April 27th, 2026

Client Updates:

1.10.22 - Improvements to logs and metrics. Remote config improvements. Auto-updater self cleanup. (Apr 23rd)

1.10.24 - NATS stability and observability improvements. Client self-update improvements to avoid getting stuck in an update state. (Note: v1.10.23 was built but never deployed to any station -- v1.10.24 carries the same changes.) (Apr 27th)

April 27th, 2026

Client Updates:

1.10.16 - Added logs for easier debugging on missed heartbeats or config fetches. Failed certificate issuing requests now log the reason, including "no fresh heartbeat sent", so it's clearer why a data connection can't be established. Tailscale config fix so it doesn't lose state at restarts such as client version upgrades (please report if tailscale issues continue). (Mar 27th)

1.10.17 - Show beast stats instead of JSON on the :8088 dashboard when beast is enabled. Fixed an issue where some invalid config could cause the beast port to not be open, which should make more stations eligible for beast. (Apr 1st)

1.10.18 - Added support for sending BEAST data directly to NATS, bypassing legacy infrastructure. Attempted fix for a port conflict by closing the BEAST listener explicitly on shutdown. (Apr 16th)

1.10.19 - Beast first! Stations now start up in beast mode. If readsb isn't configured for beast but JSON is functioning, the station will fall back to sending JSON after a 90s grace period. The client will continue to monitor the beast connection and, once data is flowing on the beast port (30015), it will automatically switch to Beast mode and stay there. An extra heartbeat is sent once NATS Direct Connect is connected to signal a successful connection and limit early off-line status. The Station diagnostics page also has an added connectivity test toward the NATS Direct Connect endpoint (along with BYOD wingbits status command). (Apr 16th)

1.10.20 - Attempting to fix clients connecting directly with expired tokens by NTP compensating the clock so expiry calculation is more accurate. (Apr 17th)

Site Updates:

TGE rewards page - Now shows data from the actual beta reward tables, and the language has been updated to reflect that it is final.

Dashboard graph cache - The cache on the Overview dashboard graph is now one hour instead of resetting at midnight each day. This should help reduce some of the confusion around when the graph updates.

Other notes/changes:

Heartbeat requirement tightened - In addition to the existing checks (heartbeat count, satellite count, and geolocation within the station's hex), stations must now have sent a recent heartbeat for us to accept their data and award rewards. We're starting with a requirement of at least one heartbeat in the last 2 hours. Heartbeats are crucial for our processing of beast frames and for being able to review the state of the station fleet, so this change makes it more apparent when a station isn't reporting in.

BEAST data direct to NATS (rollout) - We have started gradually rolling out the new path where BEAST data goes directly to NATS, bypassing legacy infrastructure. Station owners shouldn't really notice much. The main observable change is that data is now going to ingest.wingbits.com instead of feed.wingbits.com.

March 25th, 2026

We're migrating client data from json to a new encoding type called beast, which will reduce data transmission usage by approximately 30–50% in most cases. This will be particularly helpful for those using LTE services or other limited data plans.

The same data that is being received by your station will continue to flow through but it will be encoded in a more efficient format before being sent to the servers.

For the majority of participants there is nothing to do as it will happen in the background.

Here's what this means for you, depending on your setup:

✅ No action required

  • Hyfix device owners: your device will be updated automatically, nothing to do on your end.

  • Standard BYOD installs: (as per the official install guide/script) automatically handled, no changes needed.


⚠️ Action required:

  • Custom BYOD Installs: read the below as this applies to you

🔧 Container setups (byod-unofficial-tools) If you're running one of the container setups listed in byod-unofficial-tools, the respective authors have already been advised of this change. Please reach out to them directly for a timeline on when the updated version will be available for you to adopt.

🛠️ Custom container or other setups If you've built your own container setup, you can reference the standard BYOD install script or any of the tools listed in byod-unofficial-tools that have already implemented the change as a guide for updating your setup. Once the change is complete the client will verify and send our system a flag that it is beast-enabled. In batches we will then switch those newly flagged stations to beast mode only.

The deadline to complete this migration is 20 April 2026. After this date, the older endpoint will be removed and stations that have not been changed over will stop sending data.


If you're unsure which category applies to you, feel free to ask in our Support Chat on the site, or in discord, and the team will help point you in the right direction.

As always, thanks for your continued support in helping grow the network! 🙌