The Role of Cryptocurrency Incentives in DePIN: Enhancing Participation and Security

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks, commonly called DePINs, are cryptocurrency protocols that build and maintain a decentralized network of real-world infrastructure.

DePINs utilize crypto rewards to incentivize participants to share their computing resources with the network, such as storage, internet, and graphics processing power. Incentivization is critical within a DePIN network as it helps onboard users, fostering decentralization and, subsequently, security.

Using Crypto Incentives to Encourage Participation in DePINs

DePINs are rapidly gaining popularity, with projects in the sector boasting a combined market cap of over $20 billion. Crypto incentives are critical for enhancing DePIN participation. People who are paid fairly for their resources will likely continue participating in the network long-term, significantly boosting user retention and promoting growth via word of mouth.

As a DePIN grows and more participants join, decentralization and security improve. As the infrastructure is widely distributed, there are no single points of failure in a DePIN. Therefore, even if a single node fails, there is ample redundancy, and the system will remain operational.

Moreover, as more people contribute resources to a network, it becomes viable for larger, more valuable projects to use the service, leading to increased revenue, which the DePIN can use to continue facilitating growth. Moreover, as a DePIN gains more users, the project’s underlying token will grow in value, affording early participants additional revenue potential.

As more resource providers enter a DePIN, the network benefits from economics of scale. People providing hardware can scale their offerings as more buyers enter the market, leading to greater efficiency. In turn, prices are reduced, making a DePIN much better value than traditional sources of computing power.

The typical business model of DePIN-based projects relies on revenue from companies purchasing their computing resources. Companies save money because they don’t have to buy dedicated hardware. The project passes on some of those earnings to the resource providers offering their hardware. The benefits of crypto incentives get distributed among all ecosystem participants, and costs can be at least partially regained through growth, making them crucial for a DePIN project.

Earning DePIN Rewards

DePINs enable users to earn revenue from unused resources while providing a more cost-effective way for developers or creators to access hardware. Crypto incentives are easily distributed and blockchain-verifiable, making them ideal for paying participants across a multi-border decentralized network.

DePINs can encompass many resources, including storage, bandwidth, and processing power. With these networks, users can earn revenue passively, in the background, by sharing unused resources while using a device like a phone or desktop computer. However, if users earn a reasonable income through their efforts, they will likely invest more resources into the DePIN.

Participants benefitting from a DePIN may add spare devices, like old laptops, to the network to earn from redundant hardware. In time, the user may even purchase dedicated hardware to earn additional crypto rewards from the DePIN. While the user earns money from unused hardware, the network enjoys greater decentralization, and computational resources become more abundant.

Users are ultimately unlikely to pledge resources to a DePIN when they gain no benefit. Without users pledging resources, a network will be centralized and unable to provide computational power for buyers. Therefore, crypto incentives are vital in rewarding resource providers and growing the entire DePIN.

The Future of DePINs

Although the term “DePIN” was pioneered in a Messari report titled “The DePIN Sector Map,” the technology has existed for much longer.

The 2019 launch of Helium (HNT), which allowed users to earn revenue for providing network coverage, marked the beginning of the DePIN space. From the jump, investors saw the value of DePIN technology and the benefits of decentralization when applied to cloud computing.

There are many successful DePIN projects encompassing various sectors. However, the majority specialize in a particular category, such as decentralized storage (Filecoin), network (Helium), or graphics processing (Render). Few projects let users contribute multiple resources, but doing so would vastly increase the convenience of DePIN services.

The DePIN sector’s potential market size is estimated at $2.2 trillion, with Messari analysts projecting it will reach $3.5 trillion by 2028. As using a DePIN service becomes more cost-effective than purchasing hardware and the services become more accessible, we will likely see a large influx of creators utilizing DePIN services in their projects, which will help the ecosystem grow.

How tomi Incentivizes DePIN Contributors

We at the tomi team are building a global DePIN network rewarding people who contribute resources like memory, storage, and processing power. The exact calculations for earning rewards are still being refined, but users who contribute resources to the network will earn rewards paid in TOMI tokens for their efforts.

The ability to earn rewards by sharing computational resources will draw users into the tomi DePIN ecosystem, but it’s not the only incentive available to contributors. Users will also be able to earn rewards by referring users, allowing them to make additional profit while growing the DePIN ecosystem in which they participate, benefiting users both directly and indirectly.

Participants in our DePIN ecosystem are incentivized via:

• TOMI rewards for contributing resources
• Bonus rewards for referring users to the ecosystem
• Voting rights on updates and proposals
• Possible free access to premium features

Leveraging Incentives to Build a Secure, Decentralized Network

We will leverage crypto incentives to foster growth in our global DePIN network. We will draw users into the network by allowing resource providers to earn revenue distributed in TOMI tokens.

Utilizing TOMI tokens for reward payouts lets us ensure fast, low-cost, and seamless distribution. Moreover, TOMI can be sold on leading exchanges like Bybit, making it simple for users to cash out their rewards to a bank account or convert their holdings to a stablecoin for storage.

Efficient, consistent reward distribution is critical for promoting growth in a DePIN ecosystem. It helps build trust in the project, giving resource providers the confidence to pledge more of their computational power to the network. In turn, buyers can place larger orders, introducing more revenue to the DePIN and creating a positive feedback loop.

The tomi team will also use crypto incentives to foster growth in other ways. Users will be able to earn additional rewards by referring people to the global DePIN, providing multiple revenue generation opportunities while helping to onboard new users to the network. As the DePIN grows, the referral program will likely experience a cascading effect as the quantity of referred users exponentially increases.

As the tomi global DePIN grows, the infrastructure will be spread across the network, removing issues like lack of integrity that arise from excess centralization. Moreover, contributors will gain voting rights on upcoming propositions related to the project, ensuring that our DePIN will always have our users’ best interests at heart.