DePIN Day Denver Recap: Scaling Decentralized Compute, Data and Storage

Our first DePIN Day was in Denver a year ago, and now we’re back! DePIN Day Denver brought together the brightest minds in decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN). 

We’ve pulled together all the key highlights from DePIN Day Denver showcasing the latest insights and developments in how DePIN is reshaping real-world systems.

The most recent edition of DePIN Day took place at ETH Denver on 26th February. It was hosted by Fluence in partnership with Polygon, Beamable, Assisterr, Spexi, Impossible Cloud Network, NodeOps, Akave, Parasail, Geodnet, Swan Chain, Mawari, Grid, Filecoin Foundation, Huddle01, Exabits and XYO. The event provided a platform for insightful panel discussions and networking opportunities. To access all the talks, visit our YouTube channel. 

TLDR:

• Building the 3D Internet: How DePIN Powers AI-Driven Immersive Experiences (Mawari Network)
•  Building the Future Why DePIN is the Next Big Crypto Revolution (Fluence) 
• How AI Agents Will Outgrow SaaS & Reshape Web3 (Assiterr)
• Panel Discussion - DePIN x AI: Building the Future of Intelligent Infrastructure
• DePIN Compute Revolution: No Hardware, No Limits (NodeOps)
• Spexi’s Decentralized Drone Network for Geospatial Intelligence  (Spexi)
• Panel Discussion - DePIN Tokenomics: Designing Incentives for Sustainable Growth 
• Revolutionizing Real-Time Connectivity (Huddle01)
• Fireside Chat with Guy Wollet (a16z)
• Panel Discussion - Backing the Future: How Investors Are Shaping the DePIN Landscape 
• Decentralized Gaming: A New Era for Developers (Beamable)
• Revolutionizing Solar with DePIN (Glow)
• Panel Discussion - The Backbone of DePIN: Building Scalable &  Modular Infrastructure 
• Building Trustless AI & DePIN Infrastructure for Mass Adoption (Parasail)
• Panel Discussion - DePIN & The Cloud: Scaling Decentralized Compute, Data and Storage

Building the 3D Internet: How DePIN Powers AI-Driven Immersive Experiences (Mawari Network)

Japan is one of the countries that is well in line with DePIN innovations and philosophies. Mawari started in 2017, with media coming from 2D to 3D in the future. Luis Ramirez, CEO & co-founder of Mawari, introduced Mawari and how DePIN powers AI-Driven immersive experiences. 

In the future, humans will be able to interact seamlessly with digital beings. Mawari created a real-time rendering and streaming technology for 3D content natively, focusing on consumer use cases. One of the exciting use cases is the collaboration with T-Mobile, where Mawari is enabling real-time communication. 

We take access to high-quality content for granted, and it took us more than 25 years to build the infrastructure to get to this level of scale. XR will expand in the future with holographic communication, AI-driven experiences, and scaling beyond the limitation of delivering consumer-grade XR content using XR mobile devices.

Building the Future: Why DePIN is the Next Big Crypto Revolution (Keynote Speech)

GEOD from Geodnet is currently the only coin that has recently made an all-time high, with no other coin outside Bitcoin hitting its ATH in the last month. Tom Trowbridge, co-founder of Fluence, gave an exciting presentation on how DePIN wins with a deep dive into tokenomics and Fluence.

For Geodnet, the contributory factors for the ATH and high value are traction and good token economics. Certain projects like Filecoin with a good amount of traction, like 2EiB stored, though a tiny fraction of data to be stored, provide a sense of scale. Well-designed projects link traction to token scarcity, which drives revenue by buy/burn mechanism, and if the project runs with a marketplace model, users need to stake. 

In the buy/burn mechanism, project revenue is used to purchase the token. The project becomes the source of the token demand, and there is no need for a new universe of buyers. In scaling, DePIN projects need to be able to accept revenue in fiat, fiat-based pricing because large users of DePIN services are web2 businesses, and customers can’t budget with a volatile token needing predictability. 

How AI Agents Will Outgrow SaaS & Reshape Web3 (Assister)

Assisterr just recently launched a campaign of data providers and collaborated with various companies, especially robotic companies, to create full-size humanoid robots that use cloud, SLMs (Small Language Models) as a brain system for their hardware.

Nick Havrilyak, CEO and co-founder of Assisterr, shared a unique perspective into how AI agents will outgrow SaaS and Reshape Web3. Assisterr has three components: an AI lab where you can create in up to 10 minutes; the entry barrier is relatively low. The team designed an AI store to monetize agents, and over 17,000 agents are deployed on Assisterr. 

Assiterr has deployed 2.5 million users with 1M+ in the last 30 days. Crypto is good for DeFi, payments, yield farming, and stablecoins as they quickly get product-market fit. “The AI market is predicted to be $15.7 trillion added value by 2030, and this market should be tokenized,” explained Nick.

Building the Future of Intelligent Infrastructure

The panel discussion brought together an impressive lineup of co-founders, engineers, and product builders, including Evgeny Ponomarev (Fluence), Jeffrey Amico (Gensyn), Stefaan Vervaet (Akave), Jarrod Barnes (NEAR), moderated by Sebastian Pfeiffer (ICN). Together they discussed the topic of building the future of intelligent infrastructure, intersection of DePIN and AI.

The questions began with what the unique advantages DePIN brings to traditional clouds and how projects and protocols can contribute to solving the demand problem. Evgeny explained that aggregating GPUs to provide it as computing power to train AI models and first generations of DePIN started doing this with more use cases on data collection yet to be fully explored. 

From data layer perspective, the data problem in AI to train LLMs to the next level and challenge is the data is not collective yet and sitting behind firewalls customers are reluctant to share these data sets in a secure way. “Decentralized networks allows you train new types of models previously not possible, decnetralizd model architecture are only possible when you aggregate devices that are distributed,” explained Jeffrey. 

The panelist emphasized on the role of DePIN and how it solves, security, transparency and trustworthiness. This is similar to the benefit of the blockchain in providing the base layer that is trasnparent, trustless, interoperable and programmatic. Consumer and local hardwares will get better in the future opening new use-cases on orchestrating communication around that hardware opens the opportunity for a brighter intelligent infrastructure. 

DePIN Compute Revolution: No Hardware, No Limits (NodeOps)

NodeOps started by focusing purely on providing one of the most simplified Infrastructure-as-a-Service for node operators. Naman Kabra, co-founder and CEO at NodeOps, shared insights into building an orchestration layer for DePIN, allowing anyone to sign up and deploy nodes in a one-click manner. 

NodeOps handles everything from technical complexities, with no need for hardware nor expertise in maintaining, monitoring or managing the nodes. NodeOps has 60+ protocols with 60,000+ nodes under management and generated $2.5M revenue in 2024. NodeOps is a premier infrastructure marketplace for web3 with exciting offerings like seamless console, permissionless DePIN marketplace and decentralized infrastructure orchestration. 

The intent is to leverage reliable compute providers that have been in the ecosystem for over 20 years, utilizing their service for any kind of deployment; NodeOps orchestrates this by automating the process, making it easier to onboard. NodeOps Network is powered by AVS from EigenLayer with cryptoeconomic security of Ethereum to the compute network.

The NodeOps team observed the current challenges with compute: creating a reliable and secure commute network is hard, the trustworthiness of infrastructure providers is key, and the state of fragmented infrastructure tooling. 

Spexi’s Decentralized Drone Network for Geospatial Intelligence (Spexi)

Spexi's expertise is in empowering humanity to make better decisions about our changing planet, and that is the DePIN model represented in Spexi’s design. Peter Szymczak, co-founder at Spexi, shared his insight into decentralized drone networks for Geospatial intelligence. 

The traditional GIS (Geographic Information System) ecosystem is currently serviced by fixed-wing airplanes and satellites. However, satellite data is very coarse, has low resolutions, and is infrequently updated.  

Spexi is solving the problem by using DePIN to build the first network for ultra-high resolution and standardized imagery at scale. Spexi is an expert at drones with a latent supply of drones capable of producing large amounts of data with millions of pilots in demand who can participate in the network with the correct incentive. 

Spexi meets the demands of customers, including cooperative networks, integrators, AI, Computer vision, metaverse builders, and the whole GIS ecosystem. Spexi divides the earth into hexagonal zones called Spexigons, each of which contains automated flight parameters so the drones know exactly where to fly and capture imagery. 

DePIN Tokenomics: Designing Incentives for Sustainable Growth (Panel Discussion)

The panel discussion brought together a distinguished group of technologists and experts, including Tom Trowbridge (Fluence), Dylan Bane (Messari), and Robert Koching (1kx) moderated by Connor Lovely (Proof of Coverage). They explored the topic of designing incentives for sustainable growth. 

The conversation opened with a focus on how DePIN tokenomics differs from tokenomics in other verticals of crypto, like DeFI or AI. DePIN generates revenue, which, when architected with appropriate token economics, is directly attributed to the token. 

“There has always been a debate in crypto as to how success and traction manifest in a token. There is not a clear specific link with increase activity on a token as compared to its price,” explained Tom. In DePIN, with specific token mechanisms integrated like Buy/Burn, it is easier to translate activity to the price of the token. 

Robert from ikx highlighted tools and strategies employed in monitoring how tokens will flow in a token economy. DePIN is physical infrastructure with real world cost and revenue, determining how we incentivize supply, revenue anticipated and python agent based modelling techniques. 

Revolutionizing Real-Time Connectivity (Huddle01)

Huddle01 has an AI agent built into room calls and provides real-time translation of users' words for other meeting participants, breaking the language communication barrier. Ayush Ranjan, co-founder and CEO at Huddle01, shared insights on building DePIN for real-time connectivity. 

Huddle01 is focused on building to meet both the demand and the supply sides and how to remodel it and place a balance between the two variables. The DePIN bandwidth landscape contains positioning projects, CDNs, Entertainment, Mapping, Edge AI, and Environmental data, and we are solving high latency problems.

“On the supply side, sometimes the supply is not so great because supply is either free or incentive system are modelled resulting in Ghost Networks,” explained Ayush. Huddle 01 began with media nodes that utilized unused internet bandwidth, reducing reliance on expensive data centers. This model significantly cuts costs and improves efficiency. 

Fireside Chat with Guy Wollet (a16z) and Tom Trowbridge (Fluence)

DePIN today means a protocol creates a token and then gives that token to customers to drive a behavioural change, and that is an excellent use case for crypto. 

The following Fireside chat was with Guy Wuollet, an investor at a16z Crypto focused on infrastructure and application layer investment, and Tom Trowbridge from Fluence. Guy shared his perspective on the actual definition of DePIN and how AI inference projects rely on the DePIN approach to establish consensus through random sampling. 

“Almost all DePIN projects take a very similar verification approach; they don’t use classical consensus or succinct or zkproofs because they are often too inefficient,” Guy explained. 

Guy touched on what investors look out for when investing in a DePIN project. Mastery in the DePIN domain and crypto-native qualities are some of the main pointers for founders looking for investors' money in their projects. Telecommunication, Energy, and transportation are very striking sectors, and founders from here have the technical knowledge but cannot build a crypto project. 

Guy also shared an important insight on how difficult it is to teach a new founder protocol design, especially if they are coming from non-crypto backgrounds, and it is very inspiring. Improving crypto user experience is making wallets faster and better, and the other is easy integration of crypto architecture into their already existing model without much overhead implication. 

Backing the Future: How Investors are Shaping the DePIN Landscape

The panel discussion brought together a distinguished group of venture capitalists and decision-makers, including Rob Schmuits (Blockchange Ventures), Mahesh Ramakrishnan (EV3), Anna Bertha (DCG), and SJ Baek (Hashed), moderated by Dimi Chatzianagnostou (Outlier Ventures). They delved into the topic of backing the future: how investors are shaping the DePIN Landscape and why DePIN is excellent as an investment opportunity.

The question began with the opportunity the panelists look for in investing in DePIN, the common challenges, and how to access sustainability. DePIN has an interesting challenge as they have real-world metrics, they have to build the demand and supply side and cannot rely on a story of what the future holds without delivering immediate value. 

“There is so many different things that you have to get right to make a DePIN project work and may not grow as fast as a typical crypto L1. The progress has to be linear for these types of networks,” explained Mahesh.  DePIN founders have the biggest proposition because they have little room for mistakes because capital is at stake. Creating a good product in the earlier stages will mean creating a business that finances itself forever, eliminating reliance on investors' money.

The panelist expressed their view on the need for investors to agree on the timeline with DePIN companies, it usually takes a lot of time and energy to build a very successful network. Metrics to look in when looking for a DePIN project to invest in are believing in the story evaluate the ability to build the demand and supply side. These metrics differ from project to project depending on the nature of the product and the resources needed at the moment.  

Decentralized Gaming: A New Era for Developers (Beamable)

In the Web3 gaming market, game developers face many challenges, with various gaming companies spending billions on game infrastructure technology. Jon Radoff, CEO at Beamable, shared valuable insights on decentralized gaming infrastructure, challenges, and how Beamable is building a service that supports all kinds of gaming service models. 

The gaming business is a $200 billion-per-year media business, with Web2 having most of the demand, though there is a growing Web3 gaming market. From DePINs' perspective, Beamable is supporting both Web2 and Web3 users, with over 80+ games launched and 100 in the pipeline. 

“DePIN isn’t all about provisioning infrastructure, once you started standardizing at how you get at that infrastructure you can actually build interoperable standards around the components,” explained Jon. 

The gaming industry's infrastructure needs cost about $35 billion, most of which goes to hyperscalers like Amazon, Azure, and GCP. There are thousands of live games, and the gaming world is quite disorganized, with many components, scaling servers, and rules. 

Revolutionizing Solar with DePIN (Glow)

Glow started at a very difficult time in crypto during the FTX crash and strongly believes in the notion that innovation must happen in the real world. David Voric, co-founder at Glow, shared insights and lessons learned from building Glow and transitioning to Glow V2. 

Glow has been live for 14 months with no major issues but with a lot of surprises. “People like tokens, investors were really skeptical about the possibility of anyone building a solar farm just to receive tokens,” explained David. The reality now is people build solar farms purely for tokens, and this has really helped scale the adoption of Glow in its early days.

In the Bitcoin world, all the power was in engineering (GPUs & CPUs), and it was the real bottleneck, but in the solar world, the main bottleneck was financing. Each order of magnitude of scale in the solar world dominates the previous order of magnitude. The biggest solar farm on Glow is 16MW, and a 100MW solar farm might win everything, but everyone gets token rewards when bigger solar farms arrive, tokens get more valuable. 

Glow V1 is exclusively a carbon credit centric protocol and the team choose this path because of the profitability and how much impact in avoiding the scams that is in the carbon industry. Solar farms create guilt-free energy with amazing use-cases like AI and household power supply. 

The Backbone of DePIN: Building Scalable & Modular Infrastructure

The following panel featured Chase Allred (Arbitrum), Brandon Curtis (EigenLayer), Clements Wan (Infura), and Harishkarthik Gunalan (GRID), moderated by Scott Foo (peaq). The discussion kicked off with a deep dive into the challenges involved in building scalable, reliable infrastructure for DePIN.

Chase highlighted the throughput requirement while keeping low transaction costs and high speed with Arbitrium to proliferate node sales on the network, further decentralizing other DePIN networks. With the Arbitrium stack, builders can launch their own chain and get incentivized to use the nodes, which can be used to validate the chain. 

“It can be difficult to operate a high-performance service; modularity allows you to focus on that one thing that you are trying to do while leveraging services built by other builders also focused on a particular stack,” explained Brandon.

Infura has that Saas model and is continuously decentralizing the business model by providing traffic to other providers and negotiating deals. The focus should be on creating value and work rather than on the token value. 

Harishkarthik highlighted reliability as a key factor that makes DePIN projects successful and how users are also incentivized to focus on running the hardware to keep up to the standard set by web2 cooperations.

Building Trustless AI & DePIN Infrastructure for Mass Adoption (Parasail Network)

Parasail provides staking pools for Fluence and other projects. They provide so much value to the DePIN community by allowing users to stake any amount across a variety of nodes. 

Sylvan Zhang, founder of Parasail, shared insights into building trustless DeAI Infrastructure for mass adoption. He highlighted the gaps that DePIN needs to cover to gain additional adoption and how Parasail is trying to address these challenges. 

“The biggest gap is about trust and it has become a bottleneck to adoption. Most of transaction of a DePIN company is being made on chain and you have to also trust the off-chain component of that DePIN, ” explained Zhang. 

Filecoin, for instance, uses upfront token collaterals as in proof-of-stake protocols, proportional to the storage hardware committed. This limits the potential for an exploit as the attacker has to both acquire and meet hardware requirements as well as a large quantity of the token. 

Scaling Decentralized Compute, Data and Storage (Panel Discussion)

DePIN has matured a lot with the second wave of DePINs that have successfully built out networks with great monetisation and growing demand and supply. 

The last, but not certainly not least, a panel discussion titled DePIN & The Cloud: Scaling Decentralized Compute, Data, and Storage, featuring builders, developers, and founders including Bernhard Borges (Fluence), Mike Horton (Geodnet), Kai Wawrzinek (ICN), Charles Cao (Swan Chain) moderated by Adam Wozney (Akash Network). 

Adam began the questions with where the DePIN space stands now compared to last year. Mike, Project Creator at Geodnet, shared that there will definitely be big innovations in DePIN yet to come with web2 audiences using DePIN products for enterprise applications. 

“Significant advances have been made on how the base infrastructure is completed, moving from experimentation at the base level to packaging and developing features that actually service customers,” explained Bernhard. 

Charles pointed out that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) present a significant challenge for many providers, as the level of commitment can vary. To ensure consistent quality of service, one approach is to implement a collateral-slashing mechanism or to formalize agreements through legally binding contracts. 

Kai from ICN emphasized the need to have security, durability, availability, compliance, and performance, especially for enterprise customers. There is a need for easy integration, a good user interface, and experience to take away blockchain complexities. 

Final Thoughts 

DePIN Day Denver brought together builders for a day of groundbreaking discussions, major product reveals, and thought-provoking conversations on how AI is accelerating the future of decentralized physical infrastructure.

We would like to thank all our partners: Polygon, Beamable, Assisterr, Spexi, Impossible Cloud Network, NodeOps, Akave, Parasail, Geodnet, Swan Chain, Mawari, Grid, Filecoin Foundation, Huddle01, Exabits, and XYO. Our Community partners DePIN Hub, Myosin, and Meta School. 

Our media partners: ​Messari, Proof of Coverage, Blockchain Reporter, BeInCrypto, The Crypto Updates, The Coin Republic, The Market Periodical, Blocmates, Coinspeaker, Blockmedia, Altcoin Buzz, UToday, ZEXPR, WireDigital Journal, TechBullion, Cryptopolitan, and Altcoin Buzz for helping us to make this event a success. 

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