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

Resource-intensive industries such as AI and data storage have become the main axis of real-world infrastructure. DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) is also using its innovative use of existing infrastructure and data-centric Business model, reshape the blockchain field.

Unlike the traditional Internet of Things (IoT), DePIN is not limited to the hardware device itself, but focuses on the value mining and circulation of data. Through a decentralized network architecture and incentive mechanism, DePIN encourages participants to jointly maintain and contribute data, thereby maximizing the value of data.

As of 2023, data from Messari and DePIN.Ninjia show that the DePIN ecosystem includes 650 projects with a total market value of $35 billion. The projects span a variety of sectors, with 250 in computing, 200 in artificial intelligence, 100 in wireless technology, 50 in sensors, 50 in energy and 25 in services. According to estimates, the DePIN market is currently valued at nearly $2.2 trillion and is expected to reach $3.5 trillion in the next 4 years.

With a trusted and huge data infrastructure, DePIN must rely heavily on community participation, because the community is the cornerstone of this decentralized hardware network, many of which include io.net, which is mainly centralized On Solana, we must leverage Solana’s advantages in liquidity, speed, scalability, and cost to realize value transfer and release potential economic value.

Becoming the primary option for deploying DePIN projects, the Solana DePIN project has an FDV (full circulation market value) of more than 10 billion US dollars and a market value of more than 4 billion US dollars.

Recently, Flipside released the Solana depin semi-annual report. This article, PANews, took stock of the four major DePIN projects in Solana: Render Network, Helium, Hivemapper and ShdwDrive, analyzing on-chain data and the latest progress of the projects.

Render Network (RNDR)

Render Network provides GPU rendering services through decentralized computing to meet the needs of creators who require a large amount of GPU computing to support the rendering process. This project provides a distributed GPU rendering platform, allowing nodes to provide idle GPUs, and creators are no longer limited to hardware conditions, so that those who need it can use it, and those who own it can profit from it.

Render’s Octane software was recently recommended by Apple, highlighting its growth momentum. Since migrating to Solana in November 2023, Render has successfully generated 33 million still images. These images may be part of a movie, TV series, game, or other type of visual content. This is equivalent to using an NVIDIA RTX 3090 graphics card (currently a high-end consumer GPU) for continuous rendering, which would take 1,375 days (about 3 years and 9 months) to complete the same number of rendering tasks.

The number of active node operators peaked at 19,000 in January 2024, an increase of 66.3% since the migration. As the demand for GPU performance continues to grow, more projects are expected to follow Render's lead Following in the footsteps of others, build infrastructure on high-performance blockchains such as Solana.

Helium Network

The Helium Network wireless network project migrated to the Solana blockchain in April this year, which allows decentralized wireless networks to pass Utilizing distributed nodes rather than centralized infrastructure to provide connectivity services has successfully completed a paradigm shift in the communications field.

Currently Helium not only has dual products of IoT and mobile services. The Helium ecosystem has shown significant growth over the past six months, particularly on the mobile side. Helium Mobile attracted nearly 90,000 subscribers in less than a year and has since remained above 2023 levels. This growth is largely due to Helium Mobile's announcement last year that it would launch all-you-can-eat 5G across the United States. Telecommunications services cost only $20 per month, officially bringing decentralized Internet services to the general public.

As can be seen from the figure below, Helium Mobile's DC burning far exceeds that of the Internet of Things (IoT) network. It shows that Helium Mobile's launch of 5G telecommunications services has significantly increased network usage and adoption.

In addition to general user growth, Helium Mobile drives network engagement through various incentives. The number of Mobile Discovery rewards issued has increased significantly since December 2023, and more and more users are actively participating in network coverage and data collection tasks to obtain more MOBILE token rewards, exceeding the growth rate of new users . The Helium ecosystem is expected to have the opportunity to maintain strong growth in the coming years as 5G deployment accelerates.

Hivemapper

The decentralized digital map network Hivemapper creates global real-time 3D maps by drawing maps and spatial data, competing with traditional players such as Google Maps, and will launch native in 2022 Cryptocurrency HONEY, which rewards dash cam users for providing driving data and road images.

Hivemapper has mapped more than 50 million kilometers of roads in less than two years, and as of the official website data, a total of more than 200 million kilometers of roads have been mapped. Its incentive model promotes strong community participation. As can be seen in the figure below, nearly one-third of HONEY token holders are active contributors. This high level of participation is driven by Hivemapper’s incentive model. Contributors can participate by Earn HONEY through activities such as mapping, quality assurance, and training Map AI.

And as the demand for high-precision map data increases for next-generation 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 to provide secure, data hosting solutions. ShdwDrive is one of the emerging players on Solana, aiming to provide scalable object storage for Web3 builders.

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

DePIN’s composability with other ecosystems positions it to transform economic systems through data integrity and scalable suite of solutions. Therefore, the continued growth of data volume is inevitable. Projects like ShdwDrive are expected to provide users with more and higher security and flexibility space, and are also expected to promote new use cases and innovation throughout the Web3 ecosystem.

What challenges does the DePIN project need to address?

In the process of realizing the vision expressed by all projects, the integration of physical devices and blockchain is the first and most complex process. The core of the DePIN project is to build the seamless integration of physical devices and data, which not only requires Meeting technical requirements also requires consideration of cost-effectiveness and market acceptance. Cooperation with hardware manufacturers such as sensors and monitors and installing DePIN applications on existing devices are currently the practices of most project parties. However, how to achieve large-scale device connections and data while ensuring data security and privacy? Interaction is still a difficult problem that needs to be overcome.

Secondly, 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, it is difficult for the existing blockchain infrastructure to provide sufficient performance support. Although high-performance public chains such as Solana provide new options for DePIN projects, they may only be suitable for the minimum viable product (MVP) stage.

Furthermore, the core of decentralization is the verifiability of data, and IoT devices usually involve non-deterministic data sources. By building a strong data traceability and authentication system and using statistical and artificial intelligence techniques to simulate historical data, the authenticity and reliability of the data can be ensured.

The DePIN project is in a development stage full of opportunities, but it cannot be ignored that the other side brings challenges in data, performance and centralization. For example, for applications such as geolocation services, users Hope to ensure their own privacy, while the project team hopes to ensure the fairness of the system at the same time, which in turn creates a conflict between personal privacy and data security. Therefore, how to continue to make efforts in technological innovation, long-term business models, etc. will determine DePIN Whether the project can truly realize the integration of the physical world and the digital world and open a new era of the next generation Internet.

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