DePIN is so popular, but you still don’t know what it is?

With the rise of blockchain and the growing interest in decentralized solutions, DePIN has become a hot topic. Although DePIN is still in its early stages, it has the potential to disrupt existing infrastructure models in a wide range of applications in the future.

DePIN is the abbreviation of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network, which is a general term for networks that use blockchain technology to decentralize the control and ownership of physical infrastructure in the real world.

Generally speaking, physical infrastructure such as data networks, transportation or power grids has always been owned and managed by centralized entities. The DePIN project seeks to replace this situation by creating a peer-to-peer (P2P) network in which individuals can contribute their physical resources and have shared control of the network.

Several centralized Web2 projects, such as Airbnb, have successfully leveraged the power of the community. The DePIN project will empower users with decision-making power through decentralization and incentive mechanisms, and allow user benefits to grow as the network scales, thereby further promoting the community's active participation in project development.

The DePIN project built on blockchain technology is more transparent, reduces dependence on a single institution, and is less prone to single point failures. In addition, since DePIN participants are also collective decision makers, the driven community can manage the platform more flexibly and efficiently.

DePIN Application Cases

DePIN's use cases involve distributed finance, data storage, telecommunications, transportation, and healthcare. Filecoin is one of the more well-known DePIN projects. It is a peer-to-peer decentralized data storage platform that ensures security and stability by leveraging a network of personal computers. Data storage providers can receive rewards from Filecoin by providing reliable data storage for a certain period of time. Some other known examples of DePIN include Render, Livepeer, Akash Network, Helium, AIOZ, and Hivemapper.

"To sum it up in one sentence, DePIN is about making infrastructure smart and flexible by aligning the incentives of participants." Kerem Ozkan, founder and CEO of Sar Robotics, the company behind the transportation DePIN project Soarchain, once said this. Soarchain aims to create a token-based data and connection infrastructure specifically for the mobility industry, enabling vehicles to securely collect and share data, thereby improving the safety and efficiency of transportation.

In addition to transportation, Ozkan believes that DePIN can also promote the future development of artificial intelligence. One of the current problems facing artificial intelligence is the lack of sufficient GPUs, CPU clusters and basic computing power. Ozkan said: "This is because in the field of artificial intelligence, innovation itself is much faster than the development of data centers, so this shortage occurs." The CEO of Soarchain believes that the token-incentive and community-led DePIN data network has great potential to provide artificial intelligence with the scalability and agility currently required. As the DePIN concept gains traction, multiple DePIN projects have begun to receive funding from venture capitalists. Blockless, which focuses on providing decentralized computing power support, announced last month that it had raised $8 million in pre-seed and seed rounds. WeatherXM, a DePIN project that uses environmental data stored on Filecoin to produce hyperlocal weather forecasts, received $7.7 million in Series A funding. Still, as a relatively new field, DePIN still faces challenges. "The physical environment is uncontrollable, so interoperability, scalability, or anything related to the security of the entire system are still challenges," Ozkan said. "Users will have access to different hardware and infrastructure, so you have to verify whether they are trustworthy, tamper-proof, etc." DePIN developers say the technology has the potential to have a huge impact like the railway did when it was first used, but it will need to continue to innovate itself before it can be more widely adopted.