Accelerating Innovation in the DePIN Sector

It takes a founder that’s a special kind of crazy to launch a DePIN. Many have said that DePIN is the most multidisciplinary sector in crypto and to me, that’s spot on. While working in crypto broadly might require a fairly diverse skill set, DePIN is on another level entirely. In addition to having to deal with (design, manufacture, ship, and sell) hardware, DePIN founders have to create businesses that can effectively compete with established Web2 players in some of the largest industries in the world like telecom, energy, and mobility. While I truly enjoy the intellectual stimulation offered by working at a company dedicated to serving DePIN founders, I do not envy them!

This op-ed is part of CoinDesk's new DePIN Vertical, covering the emerging industry of decentralized physical infrastructure.

While I’ve been in DePIN long enough to be called an “OG” (~4 years), some of the companies I mentioned previously have been around since before the sector even had a name (2017)! As such, we all have a unique perspective on the industry, what has worked and what hasn’t, and most importantly, the parts of the tech stack that every DePIN founder will need to build to be successful. Today, we’ll dive into one of the most important - the map explorer.

Every single DePIN project needs an explorer that shows the number and location of their devices, their token price and trading volume, their on-chain revenue, and other important metrics. Historically, each DePIN has had to create this for themselves which involves smart contract, backend, and frontend work and can take months. This is incredibly inefficient as this piece of the stack is basically the same across every DePIN project. Luckily, Hotspotty, EV3, IoTeX, and DePIN Pulse are here to help.

Read more: Jasper De Maere: Why DePIN Is Taking Off Now

Hotspotty’s DePIN Hub provides DePINs with a profile page with a high-level description of their project with a focus on social sentiment and community growth. It also includes recent third-party media coverage on podcasts and information on token price and trading volume. DePIN Hub helps founders tell the story of how they started and grew their projects.

EV3’s DePIN.Ninja serves as the industry’s default on-chain revenue tracker for DePINs. It also provides project profile pages that include links to their socials, recent podcast episodes, and total capital raised. DePIN.Ninja helps founders easily show their financial metrics to investors and the world.

Read more: Connor Lovely - DePIN 2.0: What the Next Generation of DePINs Is Doing Differently

IoTeX’s DePINscan is the go-to-explorer for the DePIN space. It includes both sector-wide metrics like total market cap, trading volume, and devices as well as free project profile pages with number and physical location of devices. It also includes miner-relevant metrics like device cost, earnings, and payback period. DePINscan helps tell the story of what DePIN (and specific projects within it) have accomplished so far and provides a snapshot of the industry today.

Unleashing DePIN’s DePIN Pulse isn’t quite live yet, but promises to provide DePIN projects with a place to highlight their miner earning opportunities as well as facilitate lead generation for supply-side contributors as well. DePIN Pulse helps founders directly communicate and capitalize on their value proposition with potential contributors.

Because of these tools, life for a DePIN founder is much simpler now. They can easily submit their projects for inclusion, integrate their backends, and suddenly have profile pages they can call home, display their data on, and point investors and contributors to. Aggregating and publishing data in this way is great for the entire DePIN sector too. These tools have meaningfully decreased the go-to-market time for DePIN founders and increased their discoverability across the sector and across crypto more broadly.

DePIN represents one of crypto’s best chances to meaningfully impact the world in a positive way. It represents a novel method of capital formation and a new, more equitable way to build physical infrastructure. If (any of) these ideas work, the fabric of society will be changed forever. While the sector has come a long way since last cycle and there is a palpable excitement in the air given the number and quality of projects being funded and launched, there is still much work to be done. Commoditizing the map explorer part of the DePIN tech stack increases the pace and ease with which DePINs can be created because, after all, the more experimentation we can encourage here, the more innovation will undoubtedly occur. And that’s something we can all agree is worth fighting for.

Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.