🎈 Depin, as a new track that has emerged in this bull market, has already seen large-scale development.
The core of Depin lies in utilizing blockchain technology to encourage global individuals and companies to participate in the construction and service of infrastructures through token incentive mechanisms. In return, these contributors will receive financial compensation as well as ownership shares of the networks they build and service. Among them, Roam is a leading project in the Depin track.

Roam's past and present

Roam was established at the end of 2021, with the original intention of addressing the pain points encountered by the WBA organization in promoting the OpenRoaming program globally. Roam is dedicated to building an open global wireless network, aiming to provide enterprise-level WiFi security services, supporting seamless access to OpenRoaming and self-built WiFi nodes worldwide.

📌 At the same time, Roam is building a global open wireless network, establishing the telecom data layer of the DePIN ecosystem, connecting and sharing data between people, devices, assets, and AI.

Roam's co-founder once stated that from the first day of Roam's establishment, the core goal was to enable global WiFi to achieve the same roaming experience as mobile data cellular networks. For many years, traditional WiFi connection methods have faced numerous problems, such as poor connectivity, needing to re-enter account passwords after switching different WiFi networks, and the lack of protection for user privacy and data security. Roam, by introducing Web3's decentralized identity (DID) and verifiable credential (VC) technology, provides users with a secure and global wireless usage experience. This feature makes Roam popular not only among crypto enthusiasts but also among non-crypto users. Once these users join, they can experience the possibilities of Web3 through Roam's multi-chain wallet, providing many people with their first encounter with Web3.

Moreover, Roam has also gained the support of top investment institutions. At the end of 2023, Roam completed a $5 million financing round led by Anagram and Volt Capital, with participation from Comma3 Ventures, ECMC Group, Awesome People Ventures, Stratified Capital, DePIN Labs, Future 3 Campus, IoTeX, ZC Capital, and JDI. In this financing round, early angel investors Synergis and SNZ also continued to increase their investment. Additionally, in April 2024, Roam received investment from Samsung Next.


Closed-loop landing Depin applications

(1) Opening Roaming and eSIM

Roam Network is the foundational flagship product of Roam and the underlying logic of Roam's commercial cycle landing.
OpeningRoaming was originally promoted as a multi-supplier solution for WiFi networks by Cisco and the Global Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA).

Compared to traditional public WiFi, the OpenRoaming network has achieved a qualitative leap. In different traditional public WiFi, users typically need to repeatedly click to register through a webpage to log in. However, OpenRoaming technology helps users achieve seamless switching between mobile 5G networks and WiFi networks without manual connection.
Moreover, in traditional communications, user privacy and data are not protected, and WiFi providers may leak users' sensitive privacy information.
In contrast, OpenRoaming network WiFi can not only help users achieve automatic verification login but also ensure that all communication is securely encrypted. At the same time, OpenRoaming enables seamless switching between cellular networks and WiFi, allowing users to avoid repeatedly logging into different networks.

Users do not need to reopen the application after the first connection. This seamless connection process can achieve WiFi roaming, allowing users to maintain connectivity even while moving across local access points. Currently, WBA has deployed nearly four million OpenRoaming nodes worldwide, and Roam users can automatically access free WiFi at these nodes. Furthermore, there are no location restrictions, allowing access at train stations, coffee shops, and hotels.

Roam eSIM is a virtual eSIM card, and users can obtain international traffic for free by participating in the network verification construction or activities of the Roam App, currently covering over 130 countries. Since the launch of Roam eSIM, the number of users has increased from 750,000 to nearly 1.4 million in less than a month, fully demonstrating the attractiveness of Roam eSIM to new users. In addition, Roam's points will also support exchanges with mainstream airlines and operators overseas for point card benefits in the future.


(2) DID (Decentralized Identity) + VC

In terms of user privacy, many projects are already working on DID. However, many projects are just for financing, creating a false demand to meet it. However, Roam's DID is not a castle in the air, but is built on real landing scenarios.

Decentralized identity is a unique code sequence used to identify any specific entity, and is decentralized verified by a set of nodes on the blockchain. While connecting to Roam network nodes, the DID is used as a special WiFi credential. This blockchain-based verification process eliminates the need for centralized third-party verification of WiFi credentials. Instead, the DID can be decentralized verified through a collection of individual routers working collaboratively as blockchain nodes, allowing for WiFi connections without centralized storage of credentials.
So when users have a decentralized identity, they still need to verify whether such identity is real.

Another main component of Roam is Verifiable Credentials (VC), used to represent the user's identity to the router. The main idea behind verifiable credentials is that identity cards can be used to prove the identity of the holder. For example, the ID cards and passports we use in daily life can be understood as VC being a form of identity verification under encryption.
However, compared with traditional physical credentials with digital identifiers, verifiable credentials achieve complete digitization of identity credentials, eliminating the need for dedicated physical objects to store them.

Anyone can access Roam's WiFi OpenRoaming network through decentralized identity (DID) credentials, which can be obtained for free on the Roam application. Roam uses DID+VC technology to ensure that users' privacy information is fully respected and protected. DID (Decentralized Identifier) allows users to decide what identity they want to use. VC (Verifiable Credentials) enables users to decide what information can be disclosed externally. The form of DID+VC is equivalent to putting a 'double lock' on users' personal information.

(3) Roam Token Incentive System

Roam's overall incentive mechanism design is not different from traditional Depin projects, such as Mobile and Honey. In Roam's decentralized network system, any Roam OpenRoaming hotspot WiFi login is executed by blockchain nodes, which verify the user's decentralized identity (DID) during the connection process. When users connect at specific nodes, all Roam routers work collaboratively to verify their DID credentials. As a result of the mining process, miners will earn Roam points, which can later be exchanged for $ROAM tokens.

However, unlike the false demand met by Mobile and Honey, Roam already has real landing application scenarios. In November of this year, Roam ranked second in the number of nodes on DePINScan, with the number of self-built nodes exceeding 840,000, second only to WiFiMap. At the same time, Roam's global registered user count has surpassed one million, and the number of self-built nodes has exceeded 840,000. The innovative new wireless operator business model proposed by Roam is successful and growing rapidly. Roam has quickly attracted a large number of real users through the construction of OpenRoaming and rewarding eSIM traffic or Roam points.

Roam has demonstrated that Web3 technology has vast potential for real-world applications. By introducing the concept of decentralization into the WiFi industry, it has not only achieved breakthroughs in technology but also promoted user interaction and active participation through a unique business model.
As Roam's future strategy unfolds, Roam will accelerate the implementation of the Roam Telecom Data Layer, strengthening its position in the decentralized wireless ecosystem and building a network infrastructure for global users, devices, and data, providing secure and convenient connections for fields such as smart homes and industrial IoT. Roam's Depin path will become wider, promising to become a truly landing enterprise in Web3.#depin #SOL