2025 DePIN Annual Review: From Concept Validation to Scalable Breakthrough

From Concept Validation to Scaled Breakthroughs

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) are an innovative network architecture that combines blockchain technology with physical infrastructure. By leveraging blockchain’s token incentive mechanisms, they attract individuals and enterprises to contribute physical resources such as storage space, computing power, and network bandwidth, building a distributed shared infrastructure network. These applications broadly cover fields like distributed storage, wireless networks, and AI computing support. Unlike traditional centralized infrastructure models, DePIN offers low-cost, scalable advantages, breaking the monopoly of giants over core physical resources and forming a unique “co-construction and sharing” industry ecosystem.

The concept of DePIN has gradually taken shape alongside the penetration of blockchain technology into the real economy. The early milestone was Helium in 2013, which laid out plans and gradually launched a distributed wireless network project. This project incentivized users to deploy hotspot devices to build low-power IoT networks, providing the first practical example for the DePIN track. In its initial development phase (2019-2020), DePIN remained in concept exploration and small-scale validation, with projects mainly focusing on technical feasibility testing, limited device counts, and single application scenarios, thus not attracting widespread attention in the cryptocurrency industry.

2021 marked a turning point for DePIN, as the Web3 industry’s demand for real-world applications increased, coupled with the synergistic development of AI and IoT technologies. Capital began to flow rapidly into a batch of projects focusing on computing power, data collection and transmission, wireless communication, and sensor networks, leading to initial sector expansion. By 2024-2025, the industry completed a critical leap from concept validation to revenue-driven growth. Despite market value fluctuations, high-quality projects achieved breakthroughs through sustainable revenue, and regulatory breakthroughs further cleared obstacles, pushing DePIN from niche technology concepts toward large-scale industrial applications.

Since its emergence, the DePIN sector has experienced significant fluctuations in its landscape and scale. Early on, due to immature technology, vague business models, and lack of demand-side motivation, the sector’s size remained stagnant. In early 2023-2024, driven by the crypto market’s enthusiasm, the total market cap surged again, with project numbers skyrocketing. However, most projects relied on fundraising rather than actual revenue, showing bubble characteristics. In 2025, the market experienced a deep correction, with market cap shrinking significantly. Meanwhile, projects lacking real application value were淘汰, while those with genuine scenario needs stood out. The sector’s pattern shifted from “wild growth” to “quality and refined development,” forming an industry landscape centered on leading projects with multi-field collaboration.

(A) Industry Panorama

1.1 2025 is the pivotal year for DePIN’s transition from concept validation to revenue realization

In 2024-2025, the DePIN industry officially moved beyond the concept validation stage into a new period of scaled development driven by revenue. Although the market experienced intense valuation adjustments, with total market cap falling from around $30 billion at the start of 2025 to about $12 billion at year-end, this “wave of淘沙” volatility actually promoted healthy iteration—many projects with sustainable revenue capabilities not only survived but also achieved steady growth. During this period, the number of active projects increased from 295 to 433, network devices grew from 1.9 million to over 42 million, and the annualized revenue of top DePIN projects exceeded $57 million, confirming the sector’s commercialization feasibility.

Looking at the distribution of projects across public blockchains, Ethereum-based projects lead, followed by Solana, demonstrating strong ecological appeal. Polygon and peaq rank third and fourth. Notably, peaq, as an emerging force in the sector, has expanded its ecosystem continuously over the past year and has become an important player; Solana’s DePIN projects have consistently led the sector, with core competitiveness far surpassing industry averages in both network coverage and revenue data.

On the capital side, DePIN saw sustained investment enthusiasm in 2025, with over 40 funding rounds throughout the year. Projects like Wingbits, Beamable, Geodnet, DoubleZero, Sparkchain, GAIA, Hivemapper, 375ai, Daylight, Nubila, Metya, DePINSIM, Space Computer, Gonka, Grass, Fuse network, DAWN, and others each raised over $5 million. Well-known institutions such as Multicoin Capital, Framework Ventures, a16z Crypto, Borderless Capital, EV3, JDI Ventures, and others remained active, reflecting strong market recognition of DePIN’s value and injecting momentum into technological iteration and large-scale expansion.

1.2 The inflection point of protocol revenue

2025 marks a critical revenue inflection point for DePIN, with leading protocols showing clear, sustainable growth, driving the entire sector’s annualized revenue to over $57 million, completely shifting away from the previous “funding-dependent” development mode. Specifically, top projects performed well: Helium Network’s Q4 2024 revenue reached $3.33 million, a 255% YoY increase, with annualized revenue hitting $13.32 million; Grass demonstrated explosive growth potential, with Q2 2025 revenue at $2.75 million, Q3 rising to $4.3 million, and Q4 expected to soar to $12.8 million; Render Network’s Q3 revenue was $1.7 million, up 144% QoQ, with annualized revenue reaching $6.8 million.

Additionally, Geodnet’s Q3 revenue was $1.23 million, up 216% YoY, with annualized revenue at $5.28 million; Akash maintained steady growth, with Q3 revenue at $860,000, up 4% QoQ, and annualized revenue at $3.44 million; Hivemapper and Livepeer’s Q4 revenues were also impressive, at $138,000 and $134,000 respectively, corresponding to annualized revenues of $552,000 and $536,000, with Livepeer’s YoY growth reaching 83.6%.

Behind this revenue growth, a multi-faceted momentum matrix is forming. On one hand, the AI industry’s rigid demand for computing power and data has become a core driver, rapidly boosting protocol revenues focused on computing support like Grass and Render Network. On the other hand, Helium Mobile’s mobile service has experienced explosive user growth, surpassing 2 million registered users, contributing significantly to sector revenue. Notably, the energy and mapping fields are accelerating, with related DePIN projects advancing their technical deployment, potentially becoming the sector’s third major revenue engine after “AI infrastructure” and “mobile services.”

(# 1.3 Regulatory breakthroughs

In 2025, DePIN projects achieved breakthrough progress in US regulation, laying a solid foundation for compliant development. On April 10, the SEC dismissed lawsuits against Helium Network, explicitly ruling that its tokens HNT, MOBILE, IOT, and connected hotspot devices do not constitute securities. This ruling not only cleared obstacles for Helium but also effectively curbed similar lawsuits targeting DePIN projects, providing a key regulatory reference for the entire industry.

On July 7, Helium’s team held a special meeting with the SEC’s cryptocurrency working group, promoting clarity that digital asset issuance, trading, and consumer product sales within the DePIN ecosystem are not subject to federal securities laws. They also submitted a joint written opinion signed by multiple DePIN organizations, fostering industry consensus and regulatory refinement.

Subsequent positive signals continued: on September 29 and November 24, the SEC issued no-action letters to DoubleZero’s ) token and Fuse Energy’s ### token, confirming that under certain issuance conditions, they do not qualify as securities.

These regulatory advances mark a key shift for DePIN from “regulatory ambiguity” to “clear compliance.” By emphasizing practical utility-driven development, DePIN has shed the common speculative label in crypto, achieving positive interaction with regulators. This not only reduces enforcement risks but also accelerates institutional capital entry, laying a solid compliance foundation for sector scaling.

$OO # 1.4 DePIN hardware

According to DePINScan data, the total number of DePIN devices worldwide has surpassed 42 million. Hardware, as the core infrastructure supporting sector operation, directly impacts network stability and expansion efficiency. By analyzing hardware costs, daily revenue, and investment recovery periods across different categories, clear differentiation advantages emerge.

From the perspective of investment payback period, sensor and wireless hardware mining projects perform especially well, thanks to moderate device costs and quick revenue realization, making them mainstream advantages. Server-based mining projects show distinct characteristics: longer payback periods but lower technical barriers and flexible deployment.

Regarding the shortest payback period, the leading projects include:

![]$ENERGY https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-cb8f5275c0d79af3054cbefa0ee475fc.webp###

In terms of lowest average mining cost (prioritizing ease of use), top projects are:

(# 1.5 Industry risk management tips

In risk management, DePIN projects should be vigilant about uncertainties from founder changes and business model adjustments. For example, DIMO’s founder Andy Chatham left in April 2024, after which DIMO shifted to a subscription model where users pay for vehicle data services. While this increased revenue stability, it also raised user churn risks, requiring attention to subsequent product iterations.

io.net also faced controversy due to team changes and opaque disclosure of fundamental data, such as community trust issues regarding CEO Ahmad Shadid’s past; centralized recording of GPU counts, suspected of exaggeration; limited disclosure of actual usable capacity and utilization rates. Despite rapid narrative and volume expansion, real demand for computing power, stable customers, and continuous revenue from protocols remain limited, and heavy reliance on token incentives raises concerns about network sustainability after subsidies decline.

Moreover, regulatory risks in DePIN cannot be ignored. For instance, Hivemapper, which collects map data via vehicle-mounted cameras, triggered illegal mapping disputes in China. In October 2024, China’s Ministry of State Security reported illegal mapping activities by a foreign company. Some users operating Hivemapper devices were detained, involving cross-border data transfer and national security issues. This highlights the need for DePIN projects to strictly comply with regional laws, especially in sensitive data areas, to avoid operational disruptions due to regulatory blind spots.

) (B) JDI’s Key Project Layouts

Based on our assessment of DePIN’s current stage, we believe it has entered a phase of demand- and revenue-driven large-scale breakthroughs. Our criteria for evaluating DePIN protocols have shifted from “how many hotspots or nodes” to “how much actual share of traditional infrastructure has been replaced.” Over the past two years, centered on this core proposition, we systematically participated in and promoted nine main paths of sector substitution:

2.1 Mobile Networks: Helium Mobile

Helium Mobile is currently the only DePIN project outperforming traditional operators in real paid scenarios. In Q3 2025, it reported 540,000 paying users, a peak of 1.2 million daily active users, and a total of 115,000 hotspots (including 33,700 5G hotspots). The average monthly data consumption per user exceeds that of traditional operator plans.

More importantly, the displacement ratio: in 20 core US cities, Helium’s network accounts for over 60% of community traffic, with some areas exceeding 75%. This indicates that the incremental mobile network market is now witnessing a large-scale takeover of market share by community networks.

The traditional telecom moat built over the past three decades—“must build base stations, require huge capital expenditure”—is being dismantled by a new model of “anyone can deploy hotspots, anyone can earn money.”

In 2025, Helium Mobile’s replication outside the US is accelerating, with pilot cities in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa showing hotspots density surpassing that of the third-largest local operator. The sector’s substitution logic has shifted from “feasibility” to “actual happening.”

Meanwhile, Helium is building a value loop at the token level: since October, Helium has initiated regular buybacks, repurchasing HNT tokens worth about $30,000 daily; over the past five months, nearly 1.5% of total supply has been burned. Currently, the monthly consumption rate remains stable at 0.75%. Additionally, Helium is exploring HNT DAT business, planning to acquire HNT through both public and over-the-counter markets, further enhancing HNT’s value support through network-related revenue activities.

2.2 Centimeter-level positioning: GEODNET

GEODNET is the world’s largest decentralized RTK network. In 2025, it has 21,000 active stations across 145 countries. Q3 revenue was $1.2 million (up 27.9% QoQ), with 6 million tokens burned.

Traditional RTK costs $2,000–$8,000 annually; GEODNET reduces this to less than $100 for the same accuracy service, making it a formal choice for top agricultural and surveying equipment manufacturers like John Deere, DJI, Topcon.

In major agricultural countries like India, Brazil, and Indonesia, GEODNET is becoming the default option for centimeter-level positioning of new agricultural machinery; in Europe and North America, autonomous vehicle testing fleets are beginning to adopt it as a low-cost redundant solution.

Centimeter-level positioning is shifting from “professional equipment” to “public infrastructure.” The long-term result is that the billions of dollars annually added to the RTK market will increasingly flow directly into community networks rather than traditional suppliers.

2.3 AI data collection: Grass

Grass builds verifiable, timestamped public web datasets using users’ idle bandwidth. In 2025, MAU reaches 8.5 million, covering 190 countries, with daily crawling capacity exceeding 100TB.

Currently, Grass’s data accounts for 18%-22% of the incremental data in major open-source datasets worldwide. Some top AI labs have made it a regular supplement for training.

More importantly, it redistributes the “who has the right to crawl public web pages” from Google, Meta, Amazon back to end users globally.

In Q4 2025, Grass will launch a native iOS client and real-time retrieval API, with APY stable at 45%-55%, providing the most direct way for ordinary people to participate in AI infrastructure.

The redistribution of data collection rights has begun.

2.4 Distributed energy resource network: Fuse Energy

Fuse Energy, based in London, is a cleantech company building a decentralized renewable energy network. Using the DePIN model, it integrates various distributed energy resources, including solar PV panels, battery storage, EV charging stations, and smart meters, providing users with energy device installation, power trading, and retail services. Currently, Fuse Energy operates 18MW of renewable assets, with over 300MW of projects in development. The company has over 150,000 paying users, with annualized revenue of $300 million, and holds an energy supplier license to directly provide demand response services to the UK grid.

To incentivize user participation in grid optimization, Fuse Energy launched an ### token reward mechanism, encouraging users to adjust their electricity demand during periods of abundant green power. This model converts actual grid dispatch needs into on-chain verifiable, incentivized tasks, effectively combining energy behavior with token rewards.

Fuse Energy not only demonstrates the feasibility of large-scale operation and commercialization of distributed energy networks but also represents a future-oriented energy collaboration paradigm. With operational assets, a growing user base, and solid financial performance, it validates the huge potential of decentralized energy systems to enhance grid resilience, promote renewable energy absorption, and incentivize user participation. Its practice also reveals an important direction for DePIN: beyond building infrastructure from scratch, it can also achieve efficient coordination of existing facilities through “soft means.” DePIN is not only cutting-edge technology but also a systemic engineering involving incentives and collaboration. Fuse Energy’s success provides a replicable technical and commercial path for global energy transition.

In the energy sector, Starpower’s development is also noteworthy but reveals some potential risks. Focused on building virtual power plants (VPPs) by connecting smart plugs, EV chargers, and batteries for distributed energy management, Starpower’s mainnet launched in 2025, with thousands of sites and $4.5 million in funding (including $2.5 million led by Framework Ventures). However, its model has also sparked controversy: it reminds us that DePIN is not simply “plugging in devices”—the real value lies in transforming these devices into tradable energy assets and ensuring dispatch efficiency and carbon credit transparency via blockchain. After shifting to a subscription model, user churn increased, partly due to device compatibility issues and higher-than-expected maintenance costs, leading to lower-than-promoted dispatch efficiency.

2.5 Green energy data protocol: Arkreen

Arkreen, a leading green energy data protocol, is transitioning from “connecting data” to “creating assets.” Over the past year, Arkreen has achieved multiple breakthroughs: over 300,000 energy data nodes globally, 140 GWh of green energy tokenized and absorbed, forming a multi-million-dollar on-chain green asset circulation scale, and a total of 45 million AKRE tokens burned through protocol service fees, establishing a complete cycle from data connection to asset monetization.

Looking ahead, Arkreen plans to advance three major pilot projects, launching intensively in Q1 2026: a 300KW solar PV RWA project in Southeast Asia to connect Web3 funding with real green assets; an eCandle community shared power station project in Africa to solve off-grid power supply via on-chain payments; and a “residential solar + Bitcoin mining” pilot in Australia to convert surplus electricity into on-chain hard currency.

The three milestones in 2025 will lay a foundation for Arkreen’s long-term development: strategic investment from Dubai Nasdaq-listed Robo.ai, accelerating the exploration of intelligent open machine economy; Dr. Lin Jiali, former chairman of Hong Kong Cyberport, as strategic advisor, supporting global expansion and ESG mainstreaming; and promotion of community core builder Merlin to co-founder, emphasizing community-centric values.

Regarding token value, besides ongoing deflationary burns, Arkreen is preparing large-scale incentive activities, exploring mechanisms like RWA yield sharing and DeFi integration to guide token value back. Compared to projects like Daylight and Fuse Energy, Arkreen adopts a global, permissionless approach, building Web3 energy networks through off-grid systems and surplus power utilization, effectively “decoupling the grid.”

For the energy DePIN sector, Arkreen believes that the integration of computing power and electricity is a core trend, capable of solving global energy imbalance issues. In 2026, Arkreen aims to focus on existing strategies, successfully run three major pilots, and achieve large-scale replication, with the goal of directly monetizing “trading electricity, generating Bitcoin, and serving AI models,” advancing from green certificates to real power asset monetization. Of course, Arkreen’s global expansion faces challenges, such as project delays in some African regions due to data privacy regulations, reflecting regulatory uncertainties in emerging markets that could constrain DePIN. We look forward to pioneers like Arkreen paving smoother, more compliant paths for global DePIN deployment.

$ENERGY # 2.6 Real-time communication protocol layer: Datagram

Datagram offers a decentralized real-time communication foundation capable of supporting high-bandwidth, low-latency scenarios like audio/video calls, gaming, and AI inference streams.

By 2025, it will have over 150,000 nodes across 120 countries, with an average available bandwidth of 80-120 Mbps per node. Over 200 enterprises have completed commercial deployment, with costs 60%-80% lower than traditional solutions like AWS IVS, Agora, Twilio. Its core substitution logic is transforming real-time communication from “centralized cloud services” into “public protocols over global idle networks.”

Currently, Datagram accounts for 68% of Web3-native real-time communication traffic and is beginning to penetrate traditional gaming and video conferencing scenarios.

When latency-sensitive applications no longer need to pay premiums for bandwidth to cloud providers, the pricing power of communication infrastructure will undergo a fundamental shift.

2.7 Regional DePIN operating system: U2U Network

U2U has achieved a foundational breakthrough in Southeast Asia: turning DePIN subnets into modular products. Any team can deploy a dedicated wireless, computing, or storage network within days, compared to months or a year previously.

In 2025, user growth reached 150%, TVL exceeded $150 million, and over 40 dedicated resource networks have been built, becoming the actual underlying infrastructure for new DePIN projects in Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Its emergence reduces the barrier to “building a DePIN project” from “requiring a core development team” to “only needing business logic.” This is akin to lowering the role of Cosmos SDK from the public chain era into the DePIN era.

In traditional financial cooperation, U2U has deep collaborations with SSID (SSI Digital Ventures, the tech arm of Vietnam’s largest financial institution SSI Securities). SSID led a $13.8 million Series A funding round, jointly developing Vietnam’s first crypto exchange, expected to launch in Q1 2026. This exchange will integrate U2U subnets, support DePIN asset trading, and connect with partners like Tether and AWS, bridging traditional finance and DePIN ecosystems.

Southeast Asia is becoming one of the densest regions for DePIN projects globally, and U2U is a direct driver of this phenomenon.

2.8 Aviation data: Wingbits

Wingbits has invaded a traditionally monopolized industry with minimal hardware costs: real-time global flight tracking.

By 2025, it will have over 5,000 sites, processing 13.1 billion data points daily, covering over 90 countries, with data cooperation agreements signed with multiple airlines and regulators.

The core barriers of traditional players like FlightAware and Flightradar24—hardware deployment rights and data trustworthiness—have been thoroughly broken by community networks.

In Q4 2025, Wingbits will officially verify satellites via SpaceX Starlink, eliminating spoofing risks. The redistribution of flight tracking market share is no longer just “theoretical” but “happening.”

2.9 Space mapping: ROVR

ROVR builds a decentralized high-precision mapping network using vehicle-mounted LiDAR sensors, for autonomous driving and spatial AI. In 2025, it will have over 5,000 sites across North America and Europe, with $2.6 million in funding (led by Borderless Capital, with GEODNET and others participating). Q3 revenue reached $800,000, up 45% QoQ. Through AI-driven 3D data collection, ROVR provides real-time map updates for autonomous vehicle companies, reducing traditional surveying costs by 30%.

ROVR’s development proves that DePIN can transform vehicles from mere transportation tools into data collection nodes, though it faces challenges like data privacy and LiDAR hardware compatibility. Its datasets include several petabytes of high-precision point cloud data for training autonomous driving models and AR/VR applications, accumulating over 10PB of data, with real-time city road and environment updates contributed by the community, supporting map optimization for Tesla, Waymo, and others.

（C） Our Outlook on DePIN

In the next 3–5 years, DePIN is expected to evolve from “large-scale deployment” to “multi-field value release.” We believe its synergy with embodied intelligence, AI data collection, energy, and AI hardware presents a significant opportunity to accelerate digital collaboration in the physical world.

3.1 DePIN and Embodied Intelligence

Embodied intelligence development remains limited by insufficient real interaction data and high deployment costs. DePIN’s incentive and settlement mechanisms have the potential to enable robots to participate in real tasks at lower costs, generating environment and operation data during execution, which can feed back into model iteration. As robots gradually enter logistics, inspection, and home scenarios, a “task–incentive–iteration” closed loop may form, enabling autonomous hardware to sustain operations. Various networks are exploring robot data crowdsourcing and distributed collaboration, or offering early investment opportunities via asset tokenization, such as BitRobot, OpenMind, Auki, Robostack, XMAQUINA. If technology and regulation permit, embodied intelligence could achieve faster real-world deployment.

3.2 DePIN’s potential in AI data collection

High-quality, real-world data remains scarce. DePIN can provide open incentives for devices like cameras, vehicles, edge terminals, and wearables to continuously collect real-time data such as maps, videos, and multimodal information, addressing the lag and coverage gaps of traditional training data.

In data governance, blockchain’s trusted traceability and privacy protection can enhance data quality transparency, ensuring fair value sharing among contributors. Large-scale aggregation of multi-dimensional, real-time physical data could become a vital foundation for AI model evolution. Projects like Sapien, Vader, Rayvo are making attempts in this field.

3.3 Opportunities in energy and power

The growth of distributed energy resources makes household solar, storage, and charging devices potential network nodes. DePIN mechanisms can facilitate coordinated dispatch of distributed resources and peer-to-peer green power trading, giving users more flexible options among generation, storage, and consumption. Meanwhile, with rapidly rising computing power consumption, integrating energy-side networks with AI demands on-chain could boost the utilization of green energy in digital infrastructure. Projects like Fuse Network, Arkreen, Daylight, Glow, and Sourceful Energy are actively building in this area.

3.4 AI hardware’s reverse influence on DePIN

As costs for GPUs, NPUs, and communication modules decline, the entry barrier for DePIN participation will continue to lower. Consumers can contribute computing, storage, and network capacity via affordable hardware. The proliferation of lightweight AI chips will promote smarter nodes capable of self-adaptation and self-diagnosis, reducing manual maintenance costs. AI scheduling algorithms can dynamically allocate tasks, improving idle resource utilization, gradually evolving “point nodes” into sustainable network foundations.

Furthermore, the booming development of AI smart hardware enriches DePIN hardware diversity, enabling devices to generate revenue while maintaining practicality and entertainment value.

We look forward to synchronized progress in technology, incentives, and governance, where the integration of DePIN with AI, energy, and hardware can reshape physical infrastructure collaboration, enabling devices to develop “self-organizing” capabilities and creating new value for the industry.

As a core participant in DePIN and a long-term builder and industry leader in DePIN hardware, JDI will continue to focus on hardware innovation, enriching product forms, and expanding functional boundaries. In the future, we aim to build a more diverse and scalable hardware ecosystem, support sector growth, and share our insights and core viewpoints with industry partners to promote high-quality development.

Disclaimer and Risk Warning

This article is for general reference only and does not constitute any financial or investment advice. The content (including project analysis and market data) is based on information available at the time of publication and may be subject to timeliness issues.

Cryptocurrency and related markets are highly volatile and risky; past performance does not guarantee future returns. Readers should conduct due diligence, consult licensed advisors, and assess their own risk tolerance before making any investment decisions.

The author and publisher are not responsible for any losses or damages resulting from the use of this information or actions taken based on it. This article does not constitute an invitation to buy or sell any assets.