Solana DePIN project semi-annual report: The market capitalization of related projects exceeds 10 billion, and Helium Mobile attracts nearly 90,000 users.

Original author: Chloe, PANews

AI and data storage and other resource-intensive industries have become the mainstay of real-world infrastructure, and DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) is also reshaping the blockchain field through its innovative use of existing infrastructure and data-centric business models.

Unlike traditional Internet of Things (IoT), DePIN is not limited to the hardware devices themselves, but focuses on the value exploration and circulation of data. Through a decentralized network architecture and incentive mechanism, DePIN encourages participants to collectively maintain and contribute data, thus maximizing the value of data.

By 2023, data from Messari and DePIN.Ninjia shows that the DePIN ecosystem includes 650 projects, with a total market cap of 35 billion USD. These projects cover various fields, including 250 in the computing sector, 200 in artificial intelligence, 100 in wireless technology, 50 in sensors, 50 in energy, and 25 in the service sector. It is estimated that the current market cap of the DePIN market is close to 2.2 trillion USD, with an expected increase to 3.5 trillion USD in the next 4 years.

And in a trusted and massive data infrastructure, DePIN must heavily rely on community participation, as the community is the cornerstone of this decentralized hardware network, with many projects including io.net, mainly focused on Solana, to leverage Solana’s advantages in liquidity, speed, scalability, and cost to realize value transfer and unlock potential economic value.

Becoming the primary option for deploying the DePIN project, Solana’s DePIN project has an FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) of over $10 billion and a market capitalization of over $4 billion.

Recently, Flipside released the Solana DePIN half-year report. In this article, PANews listed four main DePIN projects in Solana: Render Network, Helium, Hivemapper, and ShdwDrive, analyzing on-chain data and the latest developments of the projects.

Render Network（RNDR）

Render Network provides GPU rendering services through decentralized computing to meet the needs of creators for a large amount of GPU computing support during the rendering process. The project offers a distributed GPU rendering platform, allowing nodes to provide idle GPUs. This enables creators to use GPUs without being limited by hardware conditions, while GPU owners can profit from providing them.

Recently, Render’s Octane software was recommended by Apple, highlighting its rise. Since migrating to Solana in November 2023, Render has successfully generated 33 million still images. These images could be part of visual content for movies, TV shows, games, or other types. It would take approximately 1,375 days (about 3 years and 9 months) to complete the same number of rendering tasks if using an NVIDIA RTX 3090 graphics card (currently a high-end consumer GPU) for continuous rendering.

The number of active node operators reached a peak of 19,000 in January 2024, a 66.3% increase since the migration. With the increasing demand for GPU performance, it is expected that more projects will follow in the footsteps of Render, building infrastructure on high-performance blockchains such as Solana.

Helium Network

Helium Network wireless project migrated to the Solana blockchain in April this year. The project enables decentralized wireless networks to provide connectivity services by using distributed nodes instead of centralized infrastructure, successfully transforming the paradigm in the communication field.

Currently, Helium not only has dual products for IoT and mobile services. In the past six months, the Helium ecosystem has shown significant growth, especially in the mobile network area. Helium Mobile has attracted nearly 90,000 users in less than a year and has since remained above the level of 2023. This growth is largely due to Helium Mobile’s announcement last year that it will launch unlimited 5G telecom services nationwide in the United States, costing only $20 per month, officially bringing decentralized network services to the general public.

From the figure below, it can be seen that the DC consumption of Helium Mobile far exceeds that of the Internet of Things (IoT) network. This indicates that the launch of Helium Mobile’s 5G telecommunications service project significantly increases network usage and adoption.

In addition to the general user growth, Helium Mobile has also driven network participation through various incentive measures. The distribution amount of Mobile Discovery rewards has significantly increased since December 2023, and more and more users are actively participating in network coverage and data collection tasks to earn more MOBILE token rewards, surpassing the rate of new user growth. It is expected that with the acceleration of 5G deployment, the Helium ecosystem will have the opportunity to maintain strong growth in the coming years.

Hivemapper

Decentralized digital map network Hivemapper competes with traditional players such as Google Maps by creating real-time 3D maps worldwide through map drawing and spatial data. In 2022, it will launch its native cryptocurrency HONEY, to reward users of dashcams providing driving data and road images.

Hivemapper has mapped over 50 million kilometers of roads in less than two years, and as of the official website data, it has mapped over 2 billion kilometers of roads in total. Its incentive model promotes strong community participation, with nearly one third of HONEY token holders being active contributors, a high level of engagement driven by Hivemapper’s incentive model. Contributors can earn HONEY by participating in activities such as mapping, quality assurance, and training Map AI.

And with the rise in demand for high-precision map data in the next generation of applications such as autonomous driving, it is expected that decentralized solutions such as Hivemapper will receive more attention and investment.

ShdwDrive

Decentralized storage is a key pillar of the DePIN ecosystem, aiming to provide secure data hosting solutions. ShdwDrive is one of the emerging participants on Solana, aiming to provide scalable object storage for Web3 builders.

Although ShdwDrive has not yet launched its mainnet, it has also performed well on the testnet. In a recent test, the network demonstrated the ability to process up to 38,000 transactions per second in a surge. The number of SHDW token holders is also steadily rising, reaching a peak of 67,000 in March 2024.

DePIN’s composability with other ecosystems is positioned to transform the economic system through data integrity and scalable suite solutions. Therefore, continuous growth in data volume is inevitable, and projects such as ShdwDrive are expected to provide users with more secure and resilient space, driving new usage cases and innovations in the entire Web3 ecosystem.

What challenges does the DePIN project need to face?

In the process of realizing the vision of all project descriptions, the first and most complex process is the integration of physical equipment and blockchain. The core of the DePIN project is to build seamless integration of physical equipment and data, which not only needs to meet technical requirements but also needs to consider cost-effectiveness and market acceptance. Currently, the main practice of the project party is to cooperate with hardware manufacturers such as sensors and monitors, and install the DePIN application on existing devices. However, how to ensure data security and privacy while achieving large-scale device connection and data interaction is still a difficult problem that urgently needs to be solved.

Next, performance bottlenecks and storage consensus are also major challenges that the DePIN project needs to face. When millions of devices are running on the blockchain at the same time, existing blockchain infrastructure struggles to provide sufficient performance support. While high-performance public chains such as Solana offer new options for the DePIN project, they may only be suitable for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage.

Furthermore, the core of decentralization is the verifiability of data, while IoT devices typically involve non-deterministic data sources. Building a robust data traceability and authentication system, and using statistical and AI technologies to simulate historical data, are essential to ensure the authenticity and reliability of the data.

The DePIN project is in a stage full of opportunities, but it cannot be ignored that it also brings challenges such as data, efficiency, and centralization. For example, for applications such as geolocation services, users hope to ensure their privacy, while the project team hopes to ensure the fairness of the system. This leads to conflicts between personal privacy and data security. Therefore, how to continue to innovate in technology and business models will determine whether the DePIN project can truly achieve the integration of the physical and digital worlds, and open a new era of the next generation of the Internet.