With the increasing AI and DePIN trends, Why should you consider keeping an eye on Meson Network early?
At the juncture of the old and new year, reflection and anticipation remain timeless themes.
If asked which tracks leave a lasting impression and still hold development potential next year, DePIN certainly claims a spot.
Top-tier crypto VCs repeatedly mention DePIN in their annual outlooks, and with the year-end momentum of Solana’s ecosystem recovery, tokens of various DePIN concept projects like Helium Mobile, DIMO, and HONEY have seen a frenzy of surges. Recently, Grass also announced a $3.5 million financing, quickly attracting interest in the gaming community for ‘0-lift mining.’
Amidst the collective climax of these tracks, it might be worthwhile to calmly consider with an investment mindset:
What is the intrinsic logic behind the growth of the DePIN track? Is diving into the trend now still a good choice?
As the Solana ecosystem buzzes with activity, the rush of players entering to grab profits is gradually declining. Should one be proactive and observe other undervalued assets?
If you are seeking new opportunities in the DePIN track in the new year, you need to penetrate the narrative logic of DePIN, look beyond the market focus, and find projects that can support this logic but have not yet gained widespread recognition.
Transitioning from DePin to AI, gathering public data to raise the ceiling of the track.
Regarding DePin, different perspectives on its narrative logic may lead to varying investment strategies and outcomes.
- Surface-level perspective: DePin equals device mining
From the end-user’s standpoint, this perspective has its merits. The lower the threshold for device requirements, the earlier you connect to the project network, and the more project tokens you can earn. The more you mine, withdraw, and sell, the greater your short-term gains.
However, this is a strategy geared towards short-term profits.
- Deep-level perspective: DePin equals a decentralized collection of public resources (data)
Have you ever considered what exactly you are mining?
In DePin, individual mining rewards are essentially incentives for contributing resources (driving data, IP, geographic location, bandwidth, etc.).
Under the incentive system of Web3, a large amount of public data can be rapidly collected in a decentralized manner. The more dispersed and diverse the data, the greater the value various industries can derive from it.
However, in traditional models, no centralized organization or institution can efficiently acquire such massive, scattered, and diverse data.
Therefore, the overt narrative of DePin is device mining, but the core logic behind it is the ‘efficient collection of public data.’
Let’s simplify this logic further:
You have the right to produce data — — You use devices to generate data — — You transfer ownership of the data — — You contribute to other data needs — — Ultimately, you receive rewards.
So, which industry requires the use of extensively collected public data? Undoubtedly, the most apparent need is for AI model training.
Take the well-known GPT as an example; its outstanding performance is the result of OpenAI collecting a vast amount of publicly available text data from the entire human internet for training.
On the other side, who is likely to contribute a large amount of public data? Naturally, it’s DePIN projects with low entry barriers, low device costs, and minimal technical constraints.
However, it’s important to note that the abundance of internet IP addresses directly affects the efficiency of crawling public data for AI training. Therefore, theoretically, the richer the IP resources of a DePIN project, the more direct its contribution to AI’s access to public data.
Therefore, as a hardware layer collecting data for AI or other industries, with the support of a dual narrative, DePIN projects can push their limits higher.
This approach has been validated by the recent success of Grass.
Chris Nguyen, CTO of Grass’s parent company Wynd Network, publicly stated:
We aim to make public web data more accessible to open-source AI projects, and decentralization is the only way to achieve this goal in a manner that balances ethics and efficiency.’
Clearly, Grass understands its role not only at the hardware level of DePIN but also as a booster for assisting AI in accessing data for training.
Top research firm Messari has also categorized various Web3 projects in a study on AI. Interestingly, in the category of ‘AI Data Collection,’ Grass seems to be the only project recognized for its value.”
Everyone is aware of Grass, and the marginal returns from participation are inevitably diminishing. While Solana is buzzing with activity, it’s also necessary to explore projects on other chains to find opportunities for ecological differentiation.
So, which DePIN projects align with the narrative logic mentioned earlier, facilitating large-scale public data collection and playing a role in AI data training?
We have researched various crypto project financing databases and, considering different projects’ core businesses and current development scales, identified two projects that are similar to Grass but have their unique characteristics:
- Wicrypt: Focusing on the African market, it leverages idle WiFi resources, with users contributing network resources to facilitate public data collection. However, the project has already issued tokens, and the market is relatively limited. We have covered this in a previous research article.
- Meson Network: It emphasizes the sharing and utilization of idle bandwidth and IP resources, boasting numerous IP nodes and an established business model with support from Arweave and Filecoin. Importantly, the project has not yet issued tokens, and from an Alpha yield perspective, further research seems warranted.
Meson Network: Aggregating idle IP resources to meet the demands of public data
In simple terms, Meson Network operates through a long-tail market and a sharing economy model, aggregating idle IP and bandwidth resources from individuals worldwide. These resources are then distributed to those with specific needs according to certain rules, creating a decentralized network of IP and bandwidth resources.
Currently, any residential or commercial bandwidth globally, including residences and data centers (IDC), can join the network as contributing nodes. Additionally, small devices such as personal smartphones and computers can also participate, significantly lowering the entry barrier.
As a reward for contributing idle resources, users connecting to the network can receive varying amounts of MESON tokens. However, according to the official product page, the project is currently in the testnet phase, and users’ token rewards are denominated in tokens issued on the Ethereum testnet.
Before delving into the current specifics and data of the project, the author is more interested in narrative coherence:
Meson, through user hardware participation, aggregates idle IP and bandwidth resources, aligning with the concept of DePIN. However, how do IP and bandwidth resources specifically relate to data collection and AI training?
Intuitively, when you connect devices like your phone to the network of such projects, at most, you see an interface displaying the bandwidth you contribute. Throughout this process, the program neither prompts you to upload data nor actively reads your data.
This question actually represents a cognitive bias that users commonly develop when researching DePIN projects — assuming that DePIN hardware directly collects data and that the data is directly used by others.
Not all projects operate in this manner. At least in projects like Meson Network, we observe another effect of DePIN:
Not directly contributing to the data itself but creating more favorable conditions for accessing public data.
If this statement seems too abstract, consider the following specific scenario:
An HR professional is conducting a background check on a job candidate, and accessing public data on LinkedIn to understand the candidate’s past employment and network connections. However, if you attempt this yourself, you will find that your computer, within the same IP environment, gets restricted access after clicking on multiple linked pages on LinkedIn.
About Meson Network
Meson Network is building the decentralized bandwidth marketplace for Web3, using a blockchain protocol model to replace the traditional labor-based sales models, consolidating and monetizing idle bandwidth from long-tail users at a low cost. Meson Network is the foundation of data transmission for decentralized storage, computation, and the emerging Web3 Dapp ecosystem.
