DePIN & Data Sovereignty
Comparing Centralized and Decentralized Network Infrastructure
“Ya, I know Facebook is selling my data, but what can I do about it? I still want to use the product.”
In centralized digital environments (Google, Facebook, etc.), we by now fully understand the user does not pay with money, they pay with their attention and the data it produces. As a general rule, if you do not pay for a digital product, it’s because you are the product - these companies have built programs or tools that we want to use and have commoditized our attention for resale to the highest bidder (typically advertisers).
When we blindly click “agree” to a privacy statement, we know this means that when we use Google Maps as we drive, the app is collecting as many relevant data points as possible and selling those data points to whoever it makes sense to: advertisers, 3rd party plugins, etc.
It is only natural that this mechanism of attention trading would find its way into any digital, centralized company - They are incentivized by the extremely profitable business of trading data + attention for dollars.
Now imagine if instead of a being a company, Facebook were simply the piece of code that underpins the social network. Consider it being open source, and built by a decentralized community with the intention of building a tool that truly serves the community of peers. They would have no office, no HR, no overhead and no bank account. If such a community built a tool as described on top of a blockchain, they would be incentivized to build a great product by the possible appreciation of an underlying token. Where this hypothetical product really becomes interesting is how users would be incentivized to adopt the product: their attention would still be commoditized, however they would be the ones awarded for sharing it.
When you opt for a decentralized system you remove the traditional incentive structure. In the absence of there being a company at the center of an ecosystem, which has the sole motive of maximizing profits, you can rewire the incentives to favour those using the ecosystem instead. This design also lends itself to a more meritocratic structure with regards to rewarding those who truly put efforts in toward building the system.
Over the last decade, blockchain has been stuck in a phase of critical infrastructure development - similar to the internet in the 90’s. Lowering latency and increasing throughput have been the most prioritized objectives in order to create an environment which will sufficiently host multi-million user DApps (decentralized applications). By these variables, protocols have matured and digital products such as wallets, identity solutions, DeFi and collectables have emerged as the most widely adopted blockchain offerings. While these are critical layers of blockchain infrastructure and they are useful as well as intellectually intriguing to the crypto native, none of these things have penetrated the market of the everyday end-user in a meaningful way.
DePIN (Decentralized physical infrastructure networks) are blockchains counterpart in the tangible world. Networks of hardware maintain consensus and function of blockchains and DApps - previously miners were the only example of this, however projects like DIMO, Helium, Hivemapper, Render and others have developed DePIN that have the potential to penetrate the masses.
For an example of how DePIN might exist to serve us, consider your current cellular provider. Imagine that instead of a company that set up a few massive towers and then grossly overcharges for use of that hardware (especially in Canada), it were a network of millions of much smaller devices - owned and operated by the people that use the network. Consensus would determine fair value to use the network and those many maintaining it would be rewarded accordingly.
Taking it one step further and touching back to the Google Maps example, consider your vehicle as an IoT (internet of things) device. The data recorded by adding a DePIN device to your car, such as mileage, battery life, vehicle health, traffic and distance, can be sold back to the protocol where it would be then used for advertising or application implementations. The glaring difference between a DePIN and Google of course being that instead of the centralized entity (Google in this example) that collects the information getting paid for sharing the uninformed users data, the power is pushed to the decentralized user/hardware owner to decide what data they share and they are paid directly to do so. Another DePIN application is competing with Google on the visual maps front. There is dash cam hardware that maps the world as you drive similar to Google’s mapping cars. The difference here is that the abundant distributed network of drivers will map a given location much more frequently than Google will - making the data from the distributed network much more recent and therefore valuable to any user (purchaser) of such data.
There are also opportunities to host hotspot devices which are used to support IoT networks. Some example use cases for such a network would be to transmit the data from a device like one which monitors the elderly. This network could also be used to support real time weather sensing devices which might be used as an alert system or for distributing farm insurance payouts based on weather events. IoT is a growing and exciting realm and the possibilities are abundant.
In short, decentralized hardware systems push power back to the people. Now that blockchain protocols have sufficiently matured and builders have developed prescient tools for an average end-user, the realization of the decentralized revolution is nigh. I’m preparing accordingly as early adopters will be massively rewarded.
You can now participate with little to no domain specific knowledge by purchasing DePIN hardware and doing your part to secure and support these networks - this could be as simple as using hardware you already have (phone, PC, router) or plugging a device into your car or pairing a hotspot to your internet router.
There are many DePIN projects worth checking out, the ones I’m currently most excited about, in no particular order, are:
Grass
Grass is an app that you install on your computer, it runs in the background (with permissions controlled by you) while you are connected to the internet. It uses your unused internet bandwidth to provide computing power to data intensive AI. You are rewarded for every second you are connected. This is a great entry point for new DePIN participants as there is no additional hardware requirement (it uses your computer), it’s extremely easy and passive to use, and it already has a large network so it’s a relatively sound bet for future success.
World Mobile
World mobile is connecting the unconnected with decentralized cellular and data service. Anyone can buy and run an AirNode (small cell tower). I don’t currently run an AirNode, but I hold World Mobile tokens (WMTx) and stake them to a vault. By doing this, I’m providing stability to the network and I’m being rewarded with more World Mobile tokens. I want the tokens because I believe in a much higher price in the future. World Mobile is also focussing on jurisdictions like Africa and Pakistan, where they are massively underserved with regards to telecoms, but because of this they also have no loyalty to legacy infrastructure making it the perfect playbook for market penetration. They are also rolling out in the US This project has one of they highest counts of daily active users in all of crypto but it’s still under the radar of the mainstream, making it an ultimate candidate for involvement.
Natix
Natix is an app that you install on your phone and run while you drive. It takes in visual data points about traffic, road changes, etc. and computes the data at the edge (which essentially means your data is secure and anonymous). The data collected is sold and the network, AKA you and me, are rewarded. Google Maps and car companies are already packaging up your driving data and selling it, so shouldn’t you be the one getting paid?
Uprock
Uprock is essentially the same as Grass but the mobile app for Uprock has already launched… why not run both?
DIMO
Dimo can either be accessed through their hardware, or installed directly into some newer cars. It functions similar to Natix, but rather than visual data, DIMO is providing vehicle health and location data to the network. I have DIMO set up in my car and get a payout every single week.
The Grass and Uprock links above are affiliate links. So I’ll get rewarded if you sign up through those links. The other links I receive no direct benefit from other than your participation helping grow the network (and the value of the tokens I hold). I include this for transparency because I want to be clear that I don’t write about DePIN because I’m trying to make a few extra cents from affiliate links, I’m trying to foster adoption. My long-game benefit is that we’ll all have to pay less for better services in the future and I’ll be able to say I was early to adopt (and benefit from) this revolutionary tech.
Consider supporting these networks to make the world better for yourself and your neighbours. If you want help or more DePIN projects to explore, just ask. The space is growing by the day.
Before spending any resources (monetary or otherwise) on a project, it is imperative that you do your own research and make decisions for yourself.
Join me in building a more equitable and prosperous future for all while getting paid to do so. I’m extremely excited at the possibilities for DePIN. We now have the coordination vehicle to mobilize the masses in towards our common goals in a fair, honest and immutable way. If that doesn’t get you jacked up, I don’t know what will.