DEPIN is rapidly becoming one of the most talked about tracks in Web3. What is it? What is its relevance to the general public? What is the potential for future growth? The following is a compilation of interviews conducted by The Defiant Podcast with Amira Valliani, Head of DEPIN at Solana Foundation. If you want to know if DEPIN is an opportunity you should be looking at, and how to realize it, this is a must-read.
Q: Can you briefly introduce yourself and how you got into crypto and the Solana Foundation?
Amira Valliani (A): I first started following crypto in 2017, but at that time I was mainly interested in community-built news platforms, especially local news. I have always wondered whether it is possible to use blockchain to build community infrastructure, such as soft services like news writing, which can be shared and profitable.
I later turned to entrepreneurship and developed a paid podcasting platform, which had nothing to do with crypto but gave me a deep understanding of how difficult it is for content creators to collect small subscription fees. And with the concept of “community building” never lost on me, I began to seriously consider returning to the crypto world after the company was sold in 2021.
I had previously worked in politics in Washington, DC, the White House, and the State Department, and felt that this was an opportunity to combine my multiple interests. After joining Solana Foundation, I started working on policy issues, and then gradually got more involved in strategic projects and joined the Helium Foundation board, which led me to work on the Foundation’s DEPIN program.
Q: You mentioned policy matters, and Solana Foundation is active in policy making. Can you tell us more about what you do in Washington?
A: Our primary mission is really to “educate”. After all, policymakers generally don’t know much about blockchain, and we want to help them understand the real-world implications of the technology, especially how it can help their constituents.
For example, early on we invited Helium’s developers to Congress to introduce how to build a wireless grid for community sharing through blockchain. Many legislators had misconceptions about crypto, but when they saw the project in action and heard firsthand that “there’s a Helium grid in your district,” they really began to see the technology in a positive light.
Q: Your current centerpiece is DEPIN. Can you explain in layman’s terms what DEPIN is and why it is so important?
A: DEPIN is called Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks. It is a technology that turns the “fragmented resources” in our hands into services that can be packaged together for use by others, using the Web3 incentive approach.
For example, every one of us uses a navigation app every day, but the updating of map data is very slow and costly. There is a project called HiveMapper, which is a decentralized mapping project. All you have to do is install a dashcam, and when you go to and from work every day, it automatically collects map data from your route, and the system rewards you with tokens. These real map data are updated faster and cover more area than Google, but at a lower cost.
Another example is the Helium project, where you can deploy a hotspot using your own home’s extra WiFi bandwidth and contribute it to the Helium network, so that other people can connect through it and you can earn tokens. Some major telecommunication companies such as AT&T and T-Mobile are also cooperating with them, using the Helium grid to cover areas that they cannot easily enter.
Essentially, DEPIN is solving a “large-scale collaboration” problem. Previously, only giant corporations could afford to spend billions of dollars on this kind of infrastructure. Now, Web3 makes it feasible for everyone to participate.
Q: Are all physical resources suitable for DEPIN? Why haven’t traditional supply chain tracking technologies worked?
A: Good question. First of all, I don’t think supply chain tracking is a DEPIN, but the key to DEPIN is whether there is a market with both supply and demand: on the one hand, there are people who can collect data, such as those who have unused bandwidth, equipment, or location resources, and on the other hand, there are companies that need such data.
If you just put the status of an item on a chain, it is more like a B2B traceability tool, not quite a DEPIN, which is more oriented to integrating distributed resources and turning data into services that can be traded widely. Therefore, information such as map data, WiFi bandwidth, and edge strength, which can be frequently demanded and dynamically updated, are particularly suitable for DEPIN.
Q: DEPIN and AI have a strong relationship, can you tell us more about how the two are combined?
A: I think AI is one of the core strengths of DEPIN that I am most optimistic about. Nowadays, when most of us come into contact with AI, we just open up ChatGPT or Perplexity and chat a few times, and the surface of AI application is still on the computer. I think that in the next ten years, AI will enter reality and become a part of our lives. For example, automated driving, robots for delivery, robots for sweeping floors, and so on.
What do we need for this “on-the-ground” AI? The answer is real-world data. For example, an autonomous driver needs to know whether there are potholes ahead, whether the road signs have been changed, and whether the street has been worked on. It is not enough to rely on Google to drive a few cars to scan such data every year.
This is where DEPIN comes into play. HiveMapper, for example, is a decentralized mapping project that allows users to install a keylogger and collect data when they drive their cars every day in exchange for tokens. The data is updated much faster than Google’s, and it covers remote areas – a data paradise for AI.
There is also the case of Matrix Rover, where they run around the streets in high-precision camera-equipped small cars, capturing extremely clear images that are used to train the autopilot system. This data is even more detailed than traditional “street view” and is invaluable to AI.
Q: Is this data necessarily for large companies, and can the data collected by DEPIN be used to serve decentralized AI?
A: It is true that most of the AI is controlled by large corporations, such as OpenAI, Google, Meta, but in the last couple of years, the crypto field has started to see a surge of decentralized AI projects, with the goal of creating an AI grid monopolized by large corporations. Here, the real-world data provided by DEPIN is particularly important.
To add to this, not only data, but also a huge amount of GPU power is needed to train AI. But GPUs are too expensive for ordinary teams to afford, and at the same time there are countless idle GPUs around the world distributed in personal computers, workstations, and labs. …… If these GPUs could be connected through the DEPIN grid, it would be a flat version of AI supercomputing clusters. Many projects are doing this, such as io.net, Akash, Render, etc. They are building decentralized GPU grids so that small teams can train AI. The idea behind this is to liberate the two core elements of AI, namely, data and power of computation, from centralized monopoly.
Q: Will it be difficult to promote these things in reality? For example, will high interest rates, difficult financing, and complicated policies hinder the development of DEPIN?
A: What you mentioned is exactly why now is a good time for DEPIN. In traditional infrastructure, such as building a communication tower, it may cost millions of dollars, and there are also procedures, investments and approvals. But nowadays, financing is expensive, and a lot of projects can’t get off the ground.
What makes DEPIN special is that it doesn’t rely on a single large organization to invest in the project, but rather breaks the project into small pieces and allows a number of individual users to participate in the construction, such as deploying a hotspot or installing a sensor. All you have to do is to spend a hundred dollars, and the system will reward you with tokens, and you become a network builder.
So DEPIN essentially breaks down a high-stakes issue into something that anyone can participate in. This is a good solution for the current macro environment of high interest rates and high costs.
Q: You say that DEPIN will be a “trillion-dollar” industry in the future, what will it take to achieve that kind of explosive growth?
A: DEPIN may be just a few billion dollars at the moment, but it is growing very fast. I think the future explosion will come in three directions:
Workforce maturity: In the past, if you wanted to do a DEPIN project, you had to build the system from scratch and deploy the chain yourself. Now, service providers such as Solana, charting platforms, and data query tools are readily available, and the development threshold has been greatly reduced.
AI Driving Data Demand: The rapid growth of AI has made real-world data incredibly important, and DEPIN is the perfect grid for data collection. The more AI develops, the more fire DEPIN will be.
More and more “knowledgable” entrepreneurs are entering the market: Many of the founders of DEPIN are people who have worked in hardware and infrastructure and really know the industry. They are not the kind of people who “make money first and then figure out what to do,” but rather, they really use crypto to solve problems, and they see the pain points first and then choose to solve them using the Web3 method. That’s why I say that the key to the explosion of DEPIN is that a large number of founders who are “pragmatists” went into Web3, and they know how to make things happen, and that’s the centerpiece.
Q: Is it possible for an ordinary person like me to earn a living by participating in DEPIN projects?
A: Absolutely. I met a guy in Mexico whose full-time job is now running the HiveMapper team. He bought a bunch of dashcams on his own, and then found a group of grid drivers and truck drivers, set them up, and ran maps for him every day. He is responsible for back-end management, dividends, and equipment maintenance, and this has become his “personal map company”. There is also someone who specializes in the operation and maintenance of Helium hotspot, deploying the network, maintaining the nodes, and acting as a regional agent, etc. These are brand new jobs.
These are all new opportunities to work, and you don’t need to know how to write code, as long as you can use the equipment and manage the resources, you can participate in a Web3 network and start making money.
Conclusion: DEPIN may sound “technical”, but it is actually a very simple logic: take the resources in the real world that we come into contact with every day, break them down into chunks, and use incentives to get people to participate in them. It shows us that in the future, people will have the opportunity to participate in the construction of AI. If you missed out on the early days of betcoin and ethereum, this may be your chance to get in.
