Original author: Chloe, PANews
Resource-intensive industries such as AI and data storage have become the mainstay of real-world infrastructure, and DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) is also reshaping the blockchain space through its innovative use of existing infrastructure and data-centric business models.
Unlike the traditional Internet of Things (IoT), DePIN is not limited to the hardware devices themselves, but focuses on the value mining and circulation of data. Through a decentralized network architecture and incentive mechanism, DePIN encourages participants to jointly maintain and contribute data, thereby maximizing the value of data.
As of 2023, data from Messari and DePIN.Ninjia show that the DePIN ecosystem includes 650 projects with a total market value of $35 billion. These projects cover various fields, including 250 projects in computing, 200 projects in artificial intelligence, 100 projects in wireless technology, 50 projects in sensors, 50 projects in energy, and 25 projects in services. According to estimates, the current valuation of the DePIN market is close to $2.2 trillion and is expected to reach $3.5 trillion in the next 4 years.
Under the trusted and huge data infrastructure, DePIN must rely heavily on community participation, because the community is the cornerstone of this decentralized hardware network. Many projects, including io.net, mainly focus on Solana, and use Solana's advantages in liquidity, speed, scalability, and cost to achieve value transfer and release potential economic value.
Becoming the premier option for projects that have deployed DePIN, the Solana DePIN project has a FDV (full circulation market value) of over $10 billion and a market value of over $4 billion.
Recently, Flipside released the Solana depin semi-annual report. In this article, PANews reviewed the four major DePIN projects in Solana: Render Network, Helium, Hivemapper, and ShdwDrive, and analyzed the on-chain data and the latest project progress.
Render Network（RNDR）
Render Network provides GPU rendering services through decentralized computing, meeting the needs of creators who need a large amount of GPU computing to support the rendering process. The project provides a distributed GPU rendering platform that allows nodes to provide idle GPUs, and creators are no longer limited to hardware conditions, allowing those who need it to use it, and those who own it can profit from it.
Recently, Render's Octane software was recommended by Apple, highlighting its growth momentum. Since migrating to Solana in November 2023, Render has successfully generated 33 million still images. These images may be part of a movie, TV series, game, or other type of visual content. If an NVIDIA RTX 3090 graphics card (currently a high-end consumer GPU) is used for continuous rendering, it will take 1,375 days (about 3 years and 9 months) to complete the same number of rendering tasks.
The number of active node operators reached a peak of 19,000 in January 2024, an increase of 66.3% since the migration. As the demand for GPU performance continues to grow, it is expected that more projects will follow Render's footsteps, and high-end projects such as Solana will Building infrastructure on the performance blockchain.
Helium Network
The Helium Network wireless network project migrated to the Solana blockchain in April this year. The project allows decentralized wireless networks to provide connection services by utilizing distributed nodes instead of centralized infrastructure, successfully completing a paradigm shift in the communications field.
Helium currently has dual products in IoT and mobile services. In the past six months, the Helium ecosystem has shown significant growth, especially in mobile networks. Helium Mobile attracted nearly 90,000 users in less than a year and has remained above the 2023 level since then. This growth is largely due to Helium Mobile’s announcement last year that it will launch an all-you-can-eat 5G telecommunications service across the United States for only $20 per month, officially bringing decentralized network services to the general public.
As can be seen from the figure below, Helium Mobile's DC consumption far exceeds that of the Internet of Things (IoT) network, indicating that Helium Mobile's launch of 5G telecommunications services has significantly increased network usage and adoption.
In addition to general user growth, Helium Mobile has also driven network participation through various incentives. The number of Mobile Discovery rewards issued has increased significantly since December 2023, and more and more users are actively participating in network coverage and data collection tasks to earn more MOBILE token rewards, outpacing the growth rate of new users. It is expected that as 5G deployment accelerates, the Helium ecosystem will have the opportunity to maintain strong growth in the coming years.
Hive folders
The decentralized digital map network Hivemapper competes with traditional players such as Google Maps by drawing maps and spatial data to create real-time 3D maps on a global scale. In 2022, it will launch its native cryptocurrency HONEY to reward dashcam users who provide driving data and road images.
Hivemapper has mapped more than 50 million kilometers of roads in less than two years, and as of the official website, has mapped more than 200 million kilometers of roads in total. Its incentive model promotes strong community participation. As shown in the figure below, nearly one-third of HONEY token holders are active contributors. This high level of participation is driven by Hivemapper's incentive model. Contributors can earn HONEY by participating in activities such as mapping, quality assurance, and training Map AI.
And as the demand for high-precision map data for next-generation applications such as autonomous driving grows, decentralized solutions such as Hivemapper are expected to receive more attention and investment.
ShdwDrive
Decentralized storage is a key pillar of the DePIN ecosystem, which aims to provide secure, data hosting solutions. ShdwDrive is one of the emerging players on Solana that aims to provide scalable object storage for Web3 builders.
Although ShdwDrive has not yet launched its mainnet, it has also achieved results in testnet. In a recent test, the network demonstrated the ability to process up to 38,000 transactions per second under surge conditions. The number of SHDW token holders has also been growing steadily, reaching a peak of 67,000 in March 2024.
DePIN's composability with other ecosystems is positioned to transform the economic system through data integrity and scalable suite solutions. Therefore, the continued growth of data volume is inevitable, and projects like ShdwDrive are expected to provide users with more security and flexibility, and are also expected to promote new use cases and innovations in the entire Web3 ecosystem.
What challenges does the DePIN project need to face?
In the process of realizing the vision expressed by all projects, the integration of physical devices and blockchain is the first complex process. The core of the DePIN project is to build a seamless integration of physical devices and data, which not only needs to meet technical requirements but also needs to consider cost-effectiveness and market acceptance. Cooperation with hardware manufacturers such as sensors and monitors and installing DePIN applications on existing devices are currently the practices of most project parties, but how to achieve large-scale device connection and data interaction while ensuring data security and privacy is still a difficult problem that needs to be solved.
Secondly, performance bottlenecks and storage consensus are also major challenges that the DePIN project needs to face. When millions of devices are running on the blockchain at the same time, it is difficult for the existing blockchain infrastructure to provide sufficient performance support. Although high-performance public chains such as Solana provide new options for the DePIN project, they may only be suitable for the minimum viable product (MVP) stage.
Furthermore, the core of decentralization is the verifiability of data, and IoT devices usually involve non-deterministic data sources. By building a strong data traceability and authentication system and using statistical and artificial intelligence techniques to simulate historical data, the authenticity and reliability of the data can be ensured.
The DePIN project is in a development stage full of opportunities, but what cannot be ignored is that the other side brings challenges in data, efficiency and centralization. For example, for applications such as geolocation services, users hope to ensure their privacy, while the project party hopes to ensure the fairness of the system at the same time, which in turn leads to a contradiction between personal privacy and data security. Therefore, how to continue to work hard in technological innovation, long-term business models, etc. will determine whether the DePIN project can truly achieve the integration of the physical world and the digital world and usher in a new era of the next generation of the Internet.