Will 2024 Become the Year of DePIN?
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Will 2024 Become the Year of DePIN?
DePIN is a visionary赛道 that can both "put old wine in new bottles" and completely突破 industrial boundaries.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: MIIX
If you were to ask what was the biggest surprise in the crypto world in 2023, the answer would undoubtedly be ETFs, inscriptions, and DePIN—with DePIN being a case of an old tree blooming anew, thanks largely to Helium, founded in 2021, which delivered the sector’s most significant breakthrough.
1. The Rapid Expansion of the DePIN Sector
DePIN spans a wide range of fields, including server networks, wireless networks, sensor networks, and energy networks. According to Messari, a crypto research firm, the overall market size of DePIN is currently around $2.2 trillion and is projected to grow to $3.5 trillion by 2028.
As topics like Mobile and Honey swept across the internet, established projects such as Filecoin (FIL) and Storj have also re-entered the spotlight. The DePIN sector is gaining momentum, with MOBILE, IOT, and HNT consistently performing strongly. Streamer Network's DATA token has also stood out, achieving a peak 7-day gain of over 215%. This suggests that DePIN has become a hot trend in the current market cycle and will play a crucial role in the next bull run.
2. Solana and DePIN: A Mutual Boost
The market capitalization of DePIN projects on Solana ranks second only to Ethereum, reaching $2.7 billion—just shy of Ethereum’s $3 billion. Over the past year, both Solana and DePIN have shown remarkable growth, demonstrating the powerful synergy between Solana’s blockchain infrastructure and DePIN protocols.
Helium Embraces the Solana Narrative
In September 2022, Nova Labs, the developer behind Helium, announced a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement with telecom giant T-Mobile, planning to launch commercial smartphone services under the Helium Mobile brand in Q1 2023.
In November 2022, Nova Labs stated it would provide SIM cards and free trials to users of Solana Labs’ new Saga phone—a flagship Android device tightly integrated with the Solana blockchain.
In early 2023, Helium successfully completed its migration to Solana, proving the viability of building DePIN applications on Solana and triggering broader growth across the entire DePIN sector.
Amplified by Solana’s technical capabilities and the compelling DePIN narrative, $MOBILE’s price surged, delivering an intraday gain of 110% in December and leading the charge among DePIN-related tokens, significantly boosting sector-wide visibility and interest.
Solana Ecosystem Champions DePIN
Within the Solana ecosystem, primary focus areas include DeFi, Memecoins, and DePIN. Kuleen Nimkar, DePIN lead at the Solana Foundation, noted in an interview with The Block: “DePIN projects on Solana—including Helium, Render, and Hivemapper—demonstrate the potential of decentralized physical infrastructure networks to elevate the gig economy to new levels. As a leading DePIN project in the Solana ecosystem, Helium is one of Solana’s core strategic priorities for 2024.”
Kuleen emphasized that contributors to DePIN networks can earn substantial income by supporting the network early, with their earned tokens appreciating in value as the network grows: “This kind of upside has never existed in Web2 gig economies—early Uber drivers didn’t benefit financially from Uber’s later success.”
Clearly, Solana aims to deepen its collaboration with DePIN, forging a strong symbiotic relationship akin to DeFi and Ethereum or inscriptions and Bitcoin, thereby establishing its own distinctive ecosystem. The broad rally in Solana-based DePIN tokens serves as clear evidence of Solana’s commitment to the sector and the positive market dynamics this generates.
3. Advantages and Challenges Coexist Long-Term
Resource Sharing and Efficient Utilization
At its core, DePIN is about resource integration—using token incentives to encourage users to share resources, enabling more efficient allocation to those in need. Thus, DePIN’s key characteristics are clear:
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Crowdsourced Hardware — More cost-effective
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Collective Ownership — Aligns user incentives and rewards participation
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Democratized Access — Open and permissionless network environment
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Decentralization — Censorship-resistant and permissionless
DePIN versus traditional infrastructure mirrors the relationship between DeFi and CeFi—it reduces the role of intermediaries, allowing resources to flow more freely between suppliers and consumers.
The Flywheel Effect of the DePIN Model
By leveraging tokens, DePIN projects can benefit from a positive flywheel effect: increased usage (demand) drives up token prices through burning or buybacks, which in turn provides greater incentives for contributors to continue expanding the network, as the dollar value of their earned tokens rises.
As the network grows, it attracts increasing investor interest and funding. If a project is open-source or provides public access to contributor/user data, developers can build dApps on top of this data, creating additional value within the ecosystem and attracting even more users and contributors. The image below illustrates how this flywheel operates in today’s market.
Technology and Models Are Not Yet Mature
DePIN aims to democratize infrastructure by enabling individuals and small businesses to participate in deploying and operating infrastructure networks, thus ensuring fairer access to essential services and resources. As such, DePIN is a visionary sector capable of both revitalizing existing industries and transcending traditional boundaries.
The core of DePIN lies in a token-incentivized infrastructure framework. However, most current models resemble Filecoin’s mining approach, suffering from excessive early rewards and an inability to sustain growth at scale. There remains a lack of mature token economic models capable of supporting long-term DePIN ecosystem development. Moreover, most DePIN projects focus primarily on incentivizing hardware purchases, with only a few exploring financial models designed to stimulate demand.
Whether measured by technological maturity, cost efficiency, or optimization of financial models, DePIN still has a long journey ahead. In my view, the sector needs at least tenfold growth before transitioning from short-lived hype to sustainable, long-term development.
4. Conclusion
The number of DePIN projects continues to rise, and the recent market enthusiasm reflects growing recognition of the sector. However, DePIN remains relatively new and small in absolute terms, making it still niche within the broader Web3 landscape. It requires greater attention and resource allocation—more investors focusing on the space and more community developers willing to contribute and deepen application development.
In 2024, as the next market cycle unfolds, DePIN will inevitably be part of the action—but whether it becomes a “DePIN year” remains uncertain. Once truly innovative, even revolutionary, financial models emerge within DePIN, these uncertainties will fade. The DePIN flywheel will then self-sustain, resolving technical challenges, cost inefficiencies, and adoption barriers organically.
In the long run, DePIN’s maturation will require sustained investment, institutional support, and developer engagement over extended periods. Only through such long-term commitment can DePIN gradually integrate into everyday life and applications, evolving from complementary to parallel—and eventually replacing—existing infrastructure systems.
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