7 Thoughts Following Our Webinar: “The Promise & Challenges of DePIN”
On June 27th, the CryptoOracle Collective held a webinar titled, “The Promise & Challenges of DePIN.” Our three esteemed panelists included Leonard Dorlochter, Co-Founder of peaq; Giuseppe De Luca, Head of Developer Relations for IoTeX, and Antonio Gonzalo, Head of Business Operations for Swarm.
You can view the entire insightful webinar below:
Or you can read our seven highlights below:
#1 DePIN Was Originally Referred To As MachineFI
Giuseppe shared that before the term DePIN was coined by Messari, the ecosystem was referred to as MachineFI. The panelists agreed that DePIN was more descriptive,, but MachineFi was more powerful.
#2 — DePIN Can Solve Fragmentation
Currently, DePIN / IoT devices are built in silos of their own proprietary software. They can’t communicate with devices from other OEMs and vendors. As a result of the lack of interoperability, web2 can’t facilitate the smart cities and machine economies of the future. Beyond the limitations on the ability for the devices to communicate with each other, users are often burdened by having to interact with multiple proprietary software. So IoT users often limit themselves to certain silos to maximize utility.
3. DePIN Is More Effective For Scaling
While DePIN infrastructure can scale at low costs as the users provide the capital to puta hotspot in their home, traditional networks have massive overhead to but and deploy their networks. deal with. A traditional telecom provider has to purchase/lease land and build antenna. networks. Helium relies on it’s community. This extends to a wide variety of DePIN applications including, solar energy, electric car chargers, and GPU networks. .
4. Decentralization in DePIN is A Spectrum
In response to a question, Giuseppe shared the slide below to provide context for the different elements of the DePIN tech stack.
Because of the composability of web3, DePIN projects can choose among the elements highlighted above when they build their project. As different decentralized elements are added (e.g. identity, offchain computing, a storage layer like Swarm), a DePIN project can move along the decentralization spectrum, until they’re fully decentralized.
5. The Best Near Term DePIN Opportunities Could Be Those That Leverage Infrastructure That People Already Wwn
As an example of a DePIN project that leverages exisiting infrastructure, Leonard highlighted Siliencio, which pays ~300,000 people for providing their smart phone data. So Silencio, and other projects that leverage existing infrastructure, generally provide a higher IRR for investors than projects like Helium, which require new expenditures. Importantly, projects that leverage existing infrastructure can attract web2 users, which is a far larger pool than web3. Thus the view that existing infrastrucutre projects are the low hanging fruit in DePIN for the next few years.
6. DePIN Has Huge Social Implications
Obviously, everyone likes to make money. But DePIN, like much of web3, can also be highly impactful, particularly in developing countries where there is limited access to energy or mobility or connectivity. And DePIN users often don’t even need to know or understand that blockchain is involved. And as infrastructure projects proliferate in underdeveloped areas, there generally comes a higher standard of living and lower levels of inequality.
7. DePIN Is So Promising, But Today, Most DePIN is “CeFIN’ As Challenges Remain
As noted earlier, decentralization is a spectrum, and today, most of DePIN are centralized, other than the actual devices. Notably, decisions on token rewards are centralized. Infrastructure is being built to decentralize computation and governance, but its early days.
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This content is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute trading advice. The author of this article may hold assets mentioned in the piece.