Unlocking the Power of DePIN: How tomi Is Leading the Charge

Physical infrastructure refers to everything from physical networks like roads and bridges to internet services. Typically, public-facing physical infrastructure is managed by centralized organizations, like governments or private companies. Even when only focusing on governments, public infrastructure represents an enormous global investment, worth trillions of dollars and up to 4.8% of a country’s GDP.

Yet, as with all forms of centralization, the express control of the construction, management, and maintenance can create operational inefficiencies. As the company or government is the only one responsible for these tasks, they may lack accountability to hold each segment to the highest possible standards.

Citizens are frequently dissatisfied with the quality or cost of these public services, not to mention the high rates of corruption and the commonality of delays in centralized operations.

Source: Global investment in infrastructure as a share of GDP, top 10 countries.

A Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) provides an alternative to traditional centralized infrastructural systems by offering collective ownership, improved transparency, reduced risk, and lower operating costs.

Let’s explore the power of DePIN, outline what it is and how it works, and demonstrate how companies like tomi are leading the charge to bring DePIN to mainstream infrastructural services.

What is DePIN?

A Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) aims to alter the standard dominance of centralized parties over the construction, management, and upkeep of these infrastructural systems. By taking a decentralized approach, where each infrastructural asset and its management is carefully traced by using blockchain technology, the general public will have a more transparent view of how these projects run and whether or not they are effective.

Blockchain technology allows businesses, companies, and contractors alike to create an immutable record of transactions. In relation to the development of infrastructure, this could create an accessible paper trail of contracts, financial transfers, and a clear record of the movement of resources.

Instead of the general public seeing their tax dollars going into an infrastructural project without any clear understanding of where that money actually goes, DePIN changes the narrative. By recording all transactions to the blockchain, DePIN creates a high degree of accountability. The use of smart contract technology automates the production and recording of transactions, lowering managerial tasks and costs while improving speed and visibility.

Additionally, a DePIN structure for managing infrastructure serves to reduce dependency on any one single point of authority. In traditional public architectural management, governments are the sole responsibility, making accountability for projects difficult to enforce.

A decentralized structure creates a democratic opportunity for all, distributing the governance across many parties and, therefore, creating a system where accountability is easy to trace, monitor, and enforce.

Numerous sectors could benefit from more cohesive and streamlined management systems; the deployments of DePIN range from physical infrastructural projects and managing the energy sector to improving internet services around the globe.

Where Does DePIN Originate From?

The foundational pursuit of DePIN architecture dates back to 2015 with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS is a file-sharing system that allows users to upload content and distribute it across a wide network of physical nodes. This system creates a reliable method of ensuring that content is always available, without any one point of failure that could prevent access.

Typically, in a centralized system, one single website will host content. If that website became unavailable or was deleted, the content would be lost. With important documents, books, and archives, a single point of failure also represents a cybersecurity risk.

An example of this comes from the October 2023 cyberattack on the British Library. During this cyberattack, academics from around the world were unable to access any of the 13 million digital books in its archives. This attack represented a clear display of how centralization can pose a threat, as the failure of one institution to protect its archives meant that no one could access them throughout the duration of the attack.

Systems like IPFS use decentralized networks to prevent this. If the British Library had a DePIN structure, then a cyberattack on their institution wouldn’t be cause for alarm, as thousands of other stable nodes could step in to deliver content.

Presently, IPFS is the largest distributed network of data in the world, with over 1 billion CIDs, 280,000 active nodes, and 2,000 contributors encompassing the live system.

IPFS serves as a representation of exactly how much is possible with a DePIN system, creating reliable, transparent, and secure systems that public infrastructure can rely on.

What Are the Benefits of Integrating DePIN into Infrastructure?

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network systems have already had several famous successful use cases, such as IPFS. In its years of activity, DePIN has garnered attention in spheres beyond the blockchain space, with media outlets and academic institutions turning their sights on its feasibility as a supportive architectural system.

Researchers at the University of Shenzhen, China, recently released an academic paper that explores the main benefits of integrating DePIN into the centralized infrastructural network. According to paper, the main benefits of integrating DePIN into infrastructure are as follows:

• Improved Operational Efficiency — By reducing redundancies in an architectural system with decentralization, DePIN infrastructure offers enhanced operational efficiency. DePIN’s use of intelligent design principles further serves to create a better system for both providers and end users.
• Enhanced Transparency — DePIN uses blockchain technology to record data to an immutable public ledger. Every project that is managed within DePIN is available for viewing or auditing, making this a highly transparent method of operation. Not only will this help to increase public trust in certain infrastructural systems, but its open visibility will make corruption and cases of fraud nearly impossible.
• Advanced Data Protection — DePIN technology utilizes decentralized data storage techniques to create a highly encrypted method of keeping data safe. Instead of having one vulnerable point that hackers can concentrate on, the decentralized approach ensures that secondary nodes can emerge to support a service if one is compromised. This approach employs safeguards to ensure that data is protected, preventing typically disruptive attacks like DDoS or malware on a company device leading to major data breaches.

DePIN architecture, whether deployed to improve accessibility to internet services or to enhance visibility over physical infrastructural services, will represent a radical enhancement over our current centralized systems of operation.

Source: The layers of DePIN architecture

How tomi Leads the Way with DePIN

tomi set out to redefine how the Internet operates, creating a system where all users have equal access and the right to freedom of speech and expression, and democracy on the Internet. Aiming to move away from the centralized management of the Internet as is common in Web 2, tomi leverages DePIN architecture to create a fully decentralized internet infrastructure.

tomi uses the foundational infrastructure of DePIN across all its products to enhance their speed, security, and capabilities. By integrating DePIN into its Web 3 internet offering, tomi can:

• Enhance Storage — A decentralized storage solution for the Internet will vastly improve the reliability and accessibility of these services. In many countries, government internet censorship leverages centralized power to ensure that citizens cannot access certain information or find necessary resources. The decentralized internet that tomi offers will ensure that anyone, anywhere, will have access to a highly secure and reliable form of internet, free from censorship or limitations.
• Improve Speed — A distributed approach to storage doesn’t only serve to improve accessibility. Additionally, DePIN architecture helps to optimize the speed of resource retrieval on tomi’s internet. By using decentralized data distribution, users can send requests to nodes that are conveniently close to them, reducing latency and enhancing the speed of the internet.
• Boost Security — Blockchain technology allows tomi to completely eliminate all single points of failure in their internet system while further enhancing data encryption. This pursuit will create a more secure internet for users and businesses alike, reducing the cyber threat and helping to build reliable internet architecture.

DePIN architecture has numerous potential deployments and effective use cases, with tomi’s employment of this system demonstrating how even services as integral as the internet could be enhanced by the use of a decentralized physical infrastructure network.

The Turning Point

DePIN represents a future in which systems like the energy sector, the Internet, and public infrastructure have more effective, transparent, secure, and cost-effective methods of operation. By moving away from centralized infrastructure and embracing decentralization in physical infrastructural systems, we are able to reduce the dependency on governments and private companies while benefiting the end user.

tomi’s ability to democratize access to the internet by improving network distribution, storage, and computing will reshape the global internet as we know it. DePIN enables the creation of user-driven, user-championed systems through decentralized infrastructure.

As DePIN integrates into core sectors across the globe, this could become the most important decentralized technology to come out of the blockchain market since its inception.