What The DePin!?
In this issue we dive into the sector of Decentralised Physical Infrastructure and what it currently has to offer.
Crypto continues to develop and with that comes new sectors. We’ve seen the rise of Layer 1’s and 2’s, DeFi (Decentralised Finance), NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), Artificial intelligence, as well as another category that has been around for a while but in recent months has got a lot of attention.
Decentralised Physical infrastructure.
In this issue, we’ll talk about what this sector is, some of the protocols existing within the DePin space, the benefits and some possible projects for you to invest in (NFA!)
Some background first!
Lets take a brief look at the stock market - (yes we’ll get quickly back to crypto don’t worry!). One thing to note is the returns from the S&P 500 come from a concentrated select few companies and we all know the names here, its the usual with Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, AMD etc.
What is interesting about this is looking at what these companies do. Firstly, they’re all tech based and secondly they’re all either software or hardware focused in some shape or form. These combine together to create the concept we know today as ‘Internet Of Things’ or IoT for short. IOT references the connection of physical objects that we have today that connect with software, sensors & other tech to connect data with the outside world.
Consequently, with the advancement of blockchain and the idea of decentralisation, many new pieces of infrastructure have come to fruition building real life revenue generating networks in the hands of people to utilise, benefit and even profit from.
Below we’ll cover the scope of the current DePIN sector and some of the very interesting protocols being built up within this space.
Physical infrastructure v Resource networks
First things first, lets arrange the two main categories of the DePIN sector as physical infrastructure and resource networks. Quite easy to tell the difference, one involves physical hardware to operate, the others are digital networks using online based resources. You could argue these break down into even further subcategories with:
Physical infrastructure networks
Geospatial - includes mapping, imagery, weather, mobility, delivery & logistics
Wireless - including mobile, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
Energy and Carbon Credits
Resource networks
Storage - Decentralised storage protocols
VPNs
Machine learning / AI training - AI x Crypto
Databases
Compute networks - Utilising unused GPUs
Web proxies
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