Detailed explanation of how IoTeX 2.0 pushes the DePIN track to a new level

Background

DePIN is an emerging vertical in the cryptocurrency industry and one of the most important narratives of this bull market.DePIN usually incentivizes participants by issuing and distributing tokens. Users can obtain token rewards and generate direct economic benefits by providing resources, maintaining the network, participating in governance, etc., thereby reshuffle the way wealth is distributed and bring wealth effects to more ordinary people. It is expected that the DePIN market will reach 3 trillion US dollars in the next 5 years.
For the crypto market, DePIN is a new concept that only appeared in 2023. But in fact, the original intention of IoTeX when it was established in 2017 was to connect the Internet of Things with the blockchain to help users own and control their smart devices and the data and value generated by the devices. This is actually the current DePIN, but the concept of DePIN did not appear at that time.

IoTeX can be said to be the founder of DePIN, and an indispensable public chain in the DePIN field. On July 18, the IoTeX 2.0 white paper was officially released, and the slogan "DePIN For Everyone" was proposed, which is the vision of IoTeX.

The goal of IoTeX 2.0 is to adopt a new modular platform design and update the energy structure to meet the needs of the rapid growth of DePIN projects and users. At the same time, it showed the entire industry the results of its years of deep cultivation in the DePIN field, and determined the future vision of continuing to improve the DePIN infrastructure, develop the DePIN ecosystem, and help billions of users around the world obtain wealth through DePIN.

In April 2024, IoTeX completed a $50 million financing, led by SNZ Capital, Foresight Ventures, FutureMoney, etc. The $50 million financing includes investment in long-term staked $IOTX (DePIN token, governance and empowering the DePIN ecosystem on the IoTeX chain), as well as cooperation with the IoTeX Foundation and DePINsurf accelerator, and support for DePIN projects built on the IoTeX chain.

Infrastructure Upgrade — 6 years of hard work to create the most suitable modular public chain for DePIN

No ecosystem or field can operate independently. It requires more infrastructure and applications to support each other to ensure that each module has corresponding application support. This is even more true for DePIN, which has higher requirements for infrastructure and public products.

IoTeX 2.0 is upgraded from a Layer 1 public chain to a modular DePIN open platform. It is the only ecosystem that supports the openness, modularity, and large-scale adoption of DePIN.

Infrastructure modules DIM are the core of the technical architecture in the IoTeX 2.0 upgrade.These modules cover the entire DePIN technology stack, covering identity recognition, off-chain computing, L2 SDK, and public products. Together, they form the indispensable basic products for building DePIN projects. DePIN projects can choose the technology stack that best suits their needs from a range of products according to their needs.

With infrastructure modules, any team with good enough ideas and creativity can easily build DePIN projects through IoTeX 2.0 and turn ideals into reality. This process is faster, simpler, and lower cost than before.

The lower threshold for construction will help turn more ideas into reality, forming an interdependent and composable ecosystem, and will attract more users to enter Web3 and benefit from Web3.

Of course, public resources are also indispensable in this process, and IoTeX 2.0 has also made some achievements in public facilities:

W3bstream

W3bstream is the world's first zero-knowledge chain decentralized off-chain computing infrastructure designed for smart devices and real-world data. It solves the verification problem of DEPIN projects and devices (proposed by a16z), and it uses the optimized zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) developed in-house. In essence, it is to trigger smart contracts by leveraging crowdsourced data from DEPIN devices to generate "real-world activity proofs". Currently, w3bstream's development network has been deployed to IoTeX L1, Solana, ETH, and Arbitrum.

DePINscan

DePINscan is a comprehensive DePIN data dashboard that helps DEPIN users, miners, and investors discover early projects, monitor their growth, and act as a real-time price, volume, and market value monitor for DEPIN assets. As a visual data panel, DePINscan has integrated more than 200 projects with a total market value of more than 26 billion US dollars and connected more than 1.2 million Web3 devices.

Multi-chain AA Wallet IoPay

IoPay is a multi-chain AA wallet for managing IoTeX accounts. The low threshold and ease of use of the AA wallet provide a window for more Web2 users to seamlessly enter Web3.

Cross-chain bridge IoTube

IoTube is a cross-chain bridge for transferring tokens between IoTeX and major L1/L2, providing an important channel for funds to enter and exit IoTeX conveniently.

In addition, DeviceConnect is about to be launched, which is an SDK that abstracts the complexity for various hardware that want to connect W3bstream and various L1/L2; IoID, an on-chain and off-chain self-sovereign digital identity, helps people and machines establish rich digital relationships, thus no longer relying on centralized identity providers.

Economic System Upgrade — Comprehensive Architecture of the Economic Flywheel

In IoTeX 2.0, the new economic system expands the utility of IOXT, balancing inflationary staking rewards and gas fee destruction (similar to Ethereum's EIP-1559) as well as deflationary mechanisms in the case of creating device identities (ioIDs) and obtaining verifiable credentials.

The foundation of modularity is a unified, trusted layer, and loTeX 2.0 builds a modular security pool MSP for this purpose. It enables loTeX L1 to lease its proof-of-stake security to DIM for security and trust. loTeX L1 and MSP together serve as the trust anchor and immutable ledger for all activities within the DIM layer, dApp, and L2 layer.
Validators can earn incentives and provide security for projects by re-staking their Proof of Stake (PoS) security to DIMs and DePIN projects. In addition, DIMs that gain security and trust from MSP will regularly anchor their status to IoTeX L1 to support dApp builders in developing innovative and trusted products.

MSP is actually a Restaking mechanism similar to Eigenlayer. IoTeX has Node Stake and the upcoming MarshalIDAO staking. MSP is actually one of them, which allows IOXT to earn more through Stake and Restaking, and introduce market-oriented mechanisms such as LSD on this architecture, so that the practicality and income attributes of IOXT can be superimposed to obtain a positive flywheel.
At the same time, IoTeX 2.0 has also launched a number of measures in terms of ecological incentives:

DePIN Surf Accelerator Program

DePIN Surf Accelerator was launched at ETHDenver 2024 in cooperation with FutureMoney, Foresight X and IoTeX Foundation. As long as you have a good idea, even new entrepreneurs in the crypto market can get financial support and guidance, communication and other resources from a professional team at IoTeX.

This $5 million Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) accelerator program focuses on DePIN and AI startups with real-world applications. Program participants will receive guidance, communication opportunities and resources, and each selected project will receive an initial investment of $50,000.

DePIN Liquidity Center Program

Insufficient liquidity is one of the biggest challenges facing new projects. IoTeX launched the DePIN Liquidity Center to inject vitality into young DePIN projects. This program includes six founding members, WiFi Map, GEODNET, DIMO, Drop Wireless, XNET, and WiCrypt, to bring projects into an ecosystem with more than 300,000 community members, and provide up to $10,000 in liquidity pool matching on mimo, a decentralized exchange focused on DePIN, as well as many other products.

Integrate new project tokens onto IoTeX through ioPay, ioTube, and mimo to facilitate seamless transactions and broader ecosystem compatibility. After the integration, the next step is to create a secure 3/4 multi-signature wallet hosted by Safe. New projects only need to contribute $10,000 of native tokens to the liquidity pool, which will then be matched with IoTeX for $10,000 equivalent in IOTX tokens. This matching mechanism greatly enhances the liquidity pool and provides a stable foundation for market growth.

After the liquidity pool is established, the native token/IOTX trading pair will be listed on mimo DEX, which will not only facilitate user trading, but also gain immediate support from IoTeX's cross-chain ioPay wallet. IoPay increases the accessibility of tokens to a wide user base and increases awareness and token adoption. To further incentivize trading, a liquidity mining program will also be launched, providing participants with rewards such as native tokens and physical hardware giveaways.

The "Liquidity Center Program" will ensure continued user growth and project impact through ongoing marketing activities and collaboration between all listed DePIN projects. These initiatives are designed to continuously increase exposure and participation, and leverage the collective power of the ecosystem to create an ecological closed loop.

Marshall DAO

Marshall DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with an on-chain voting escrow management model, designed to allow IoTeX project stakeholders to propose how to allocate IOTX to promote the growth of the IoTeX ecosystem, such as enhancing liquidity, supporting early and growing DePIN projects, public goods subsidies, and donations to the ecosystem. Explore how to introduce well-known DePIN projects and how to fund innovative projects across the entire network.

It will create a transparent optimization system to propose and implement the most beneficial plans for the development of IoTeX through the collective wisdom of the community. This is not just about allocating funds, but about building a new DePIN ecosystem led by IOTX holders, and jointly pushing the IoTeX network to unprecedented new heights.

Ecosystem Upgrade — Ecosystem Map Emerges, Explosion Imminent

IoTeX 2.0’s open modular technology and mature infrastructure, coupled with multi-initiative ecosystem support plans and economic flywheel effects, any DePIN project can be easily built and operated on IoTeX. Currently, more than 200 projects have been connected to its ecosystem.

With the launch of IoTeX 2.0 to accelerate deployment and development, with the help of these infrastructures and incentive plans, more native innovative projects will be deployed on IoTeX, and IoTeX will become the biggest gold rush in the DePIN era.

The IoTeX ecosystem has taken shape, and many high-quality projects are ready to explode. You can focus on:

AI Layer2 project Network3, helps global AI developers quickly, conveniently and efficiently conduct large-scale model training or verification, and the number of global nodes has exceeded 200,000.

The United Nations-cooperated shared WIFI infrastructure Wayru, has exceeded 100,000 mobile downloads, 10,066,027 active WiFi networks, 79,880 active users, and a total number of connections of 707,729, and has been widely used.

Inferix, a decentralized GPU network for visual computing and AI reasoning, has just ended its alliance activities. You can continue to pay attention to subsequent activities and wait for opportunities to participate.

Shared charging pile energy network PowerPod,Build a decentralized energy Internet, connecting global electric vehicles, charging stations, solar panels and energy storage systems into a unified network.

Smart wear WatchX,An AI wearable device ecosystem equipped with multi-chain dApps, covering millions of users. According to official news, pre-sale will be carried out in Q3.

DeFi is an indispensable liquidity infrastructure for any ecosystem. A comprehensive DeFi ecosystem has been established on IoTeX, ready for the upcoming outbreak.

• DEX: PinSwap, Loxodrome

• Derivatives trading platform: Quenta

• Decentralized stablecoin: Magma

• Restaking: Bedrock

Full upgrade - the launch of IoTeX 2.0 is a milestone in the development of DePIN

Through modular infrastructure DIMs, matching modular security pools (MSPs), and innovative economic flywheel mechanisms, IoTeX 2.0 has built a solid DePIN underlying architecture, laying the foundation for the trillion-dollar DePIN track. These technological innovations not only improve the security and flexibility of the system, but also greatly reduce the complexity of development and deployment. It is expected that 100 million devices will be connected in the next 3-5 years, and trillions of dollars of real-world value will be released on the blockchain. This is a very large and vast space waiting to be explored.