Setting up a MastChain AIS Tracking System

AIS (Automatic Identification System) is the VHF protocol on ~162 MHz that ships use to broadcast position, speed, heading and identity, and it's long been a popular decoding target for RTL-SDR owners.

Feeder networks like MarineTraffic and AISHub have relied on volunteer receivers for years, but a newer project called MastChain applies the DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) model, similar in spirit to Helium, to maritime tracking. Independent operators run their own stations, feed decoded AIS into a shared distributed network, and earn crypto MAST tokens in return, with rewards based on coverage, uptime, and data consistency.

We wanted to thank "depinguy" who has shared with us a write-up on Medium that walks through a build using a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4, an RTL-SDR Blog V4, and a marine-band antenna (optionally with a Uputronics filtered preamp). Installation is handled by a one-line script called MastControl, which deploys AIS-catcher (branded "MastRadar" here) and configures automatic uploads. You create an account at app.mastchain.io, generate a station token, paste it into the installer, then verify with sudo mastcontrol status. We also note that maritime industry publication Spash247 has also recently covered Dan's post.

We note that MastChain appears to be very similar to 'WAKE', which is another AIS DePin crypto-based model that we covered in 2025.

As with anything crypto-related, we recommend experimenting only for the fun of it and not expecting to even recoup your hardware costs, as this has been the case with many hardware-based crypto projects before.