DePIN After Helium: The Future of Smartphones and EV Charging

Key Takeaways

• The phrase DePIN emerged in 2022; however, the technology itself goes back further.
• Helium has been one of the most successful DePINs to date.
• Future directions for the concept include smartphone-based networks and electric vehicle charging.

The phrase decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) points to an emerging technology trend that has gained significant traction in 2024. But the idea behind the term goes back much further.

Today’s DePINS, which center on digital resources like 5G and processing power, are only the beginning. 

The Birth of DePIN

According to Google Trends data , searches for DePIN rose significantly in 2023, with a large spike at the end of the year.

The term’s popularization can be attributed to Messari, who ran an X poll in November 2022 to decide the best name for Web3 physical infrastructures. A few months later, when the company started publishing reports on the topic, a diverse group of projects that hadn’t previously been categorized together started to be described as DePINs.

One of those reports proposed a relevant distinction, dividing DePINs into digital and physical resource networks. 

Making a similar distinction, Álvaro Gracia, a partner at Borderless Capital’s DePIN fund, said: “Filecoin and Helium were probably the first two projects to apply token incentives for physical infrastructures.”

Whereas Filecoin’s decentralized storage provided “a virtual resource,” Helium’s network of 5G routers was the first “pure DePIN project” consisting of a specific hardware network, he observed. 

Launched in 2014 and 2018, respectively, Filecoin and Helium adhere to Messari’s distinction between physical and virtual resource networks and demonstrate how modern DePINs emerged from earlier blockchain projects that continue to underpin their economic aspects. 

Offering an alternative view on the first DePIN, Minima Co-Founder and CEO Hugo Feiler told CCN that Bitcoin is a perfect example of the technology, relying on a physical network of miners to effectively “bootstrap” a monetary system.

“The concept of DePIN has been around since the beginning of blockchain,” he said, “but it wasn’t until it had a phrase that it became something that people talk about.”

How Helium Made DePIN Mainstream

While people may disagree on what exactly the first DePIN was, Gracia isn’t alone in citing Helium, which is also among the most widely adopted decentralized infrastructures.   

Today, the network consists of over 996,000 routers, and the HNT token has a market cap of over $1 billion.  

Helium is especially compelling because it demonstrates the value of decentralization beyond crypto natives’ emphasis on network security and censorship resistance. 

After all, millions of people use iCloud every day without ever thinking about the risks of centralized cloud storage. 

But because it extends 5G coverage at a much more local level than traditional, tower-based telecommunications infrastructures, Helium meets a real, everyday need that centralized providers don’t. 

Future Directions for DePIN

One of Helium’s co-founders and former CTO, Sean Carey, has since joined Gracia at Borderless. 

Gracia and Carey like to categorize DePINs in another way: either “bespoke” networks like Helium that require specific hardware or “commodity” networks that are hardware agnostic. 

“I think commodity has more ability to disrupt because anybody can run it,” Carey observed, noting that DePINs can consist of everyday devices like smartphones. 

He gave the example of NATIX, which lets anyone with a smartphone camera provide geospatial data in exchange for tokens. 

Another commodity DePIN Borderless has invested in is Wingbits, a decentralized ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) network in which flight-tracking enthusiasts can generate income by providing data. 

As Carey observed, leading platforms like Flight Radar already rely on hobbyists to provide ADS-B data, but incentives are currently limited to perks like free memberships. 

However, by providing a monetizable alternative, Wingbits DePIN incentive model “could completely own the market” for flight tracking data, he stressed.

Electric Vehicle Charging

Another area where DePINs have enormous transformative potential is electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, EV adoption is outpacing the rate at which new public charging stations are being built. However, several projects hope to connect EV owners with unused private chargers.

Some of these, like PowerPod, use a Helium-style token incentive to reward participants. But just because the infrastructure is decentralized doesn’t mean payments must be crypto-based.

One project actively exploring this idea is Minima, a lightweight blockchain designed to support smartphones and other small devices as full nodes.

As Feiler told CCN, Minima’s approach to EV charging doesn’t view tokens as a form of payment but simply as a way of controlling access. Meanwhile, users can pay, and charger providers can be paid in fiat.