- The Upload
- Posts
- The DePIN Opportunity
The DePIN Opportunity
The Upload V30
Last week at ETHDenver, Fluence announced the upcoming mainnet launch of its Interplanetary Consensus (IPC)-powered decentralized serverless computing platform, which offers cheaper, provable, and truly decentralized computing for Web3 builders.
Fluence is just one example of a project building a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) using Filecoin, freeing computation from centralized cloud providers by offering natively decentralized, low-cost, and verifiable compute.
What is DePIN? And Why Now?
DePIN creates scalable alternatives to centralized computation, storage, and telecommunications networks by leveraging Web3 concepts such as decentralization, cryptoeconomics, open source, and transparency.
DePIN is gaining traction because of large addressable markets in these areas and the ongoing boom in generative artificial intelligence – which has created a surge in demand for related services. Meanwhile, global semiconductor shortages have made it difficult for hardware suppliers to keep up with the uptick in demand. Combined, these trends have accelerated the search for alternative ways to meet pressing infrastructure needs.
The Filecoin Opportunity
Filecoin is one of the broadest-reaching DePIN projects on the planet. Since Mainnet launch in October 2020, Filecoin has become the leading protocol for decentralized storage. More than 3,000 storage provider systems around the world contribute 7.8 exbibytes of raw storage capacity, and 2.1 exbibytes of raw data have been onboarded to the network.
The macro trend catalyzing interest around DePIN in Web3 is currently focused on data control and ownership. This trend isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it's going to continue to grow as DePIN alternatives eventually move further away from closed, proprietary infrastructure controlled by centralized tech giants and toward open ecosystems governed by cryptographic protocols and community collaboration.
The Filecoin community is uniquely positioned to empower other DePIN networks too.
Retrievals/Content Delivery Networks: Filecoin Saturn, Filecoin Station, and similar projects create decentralized mechanisms for retrieving and distributing data stored on the Filecoin network with lightning-fast data retrievals and minimal latency.
Compute: Projects like io.net allow individuals to rent out GPU capacity and cloud computing resources, while companies like Expanso are bringing decentralized compute solutions to enterprise.
Video Infrastructure: Livepeer is an open video infrastructure network for live and on-demand streaming.
Sensors: WeatherXM is a community-powered weather network that rewards weather station owners and provides accurate weather services to individuals, businesses, and research organizations. The data collected by WeatherXM stations are stored on IPFS, allowing permissionless access.
Discover more DePIN projects building on Filecoin in the Filecoin Ecosystem Explorer.
Filecoin Foundation leaned into DePIN across stages during ETHDenver. Solutions Architect Yan Bo Ng participated in an AI & DePIN panel at Fluence’s DE:PIN Day, Dev Advocate Jenks Guo spoke at DePIN Denver Web3 Coffee House, and Founding Officer Clara Tsao joined a roundtable at DePIN Summer.
Looking Ahead
The need for reliable decentralized infrastructure is becoming clearer every day. As AI continues to generate data and gobble up compute resources at an increasingly frenzied pace, DePINs like Filecoin will become an ever more important layer of the Internet. Adoption and development of these protocols are bound to continue given the level of interest in this area shown by the Web3 community right now.
Read more about Filecoin as a DePIN prototype on the Filecoin Foundation blog.
Network News
Dive into the FF and FFDW Annual Reports. The FF annual report highlights the organization’s accomplishments in 2023 – from events, network-wide initiatives, partnerships, and governance to network upgrades and core infrastructure improvements. The Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web annual report outlines the progress achieved by FFDW and its exceptional roster of project partners in creating profound and wide-reaching impact during a moment of growing interest and appreciation for decentralized values.
Inside Leto with Logan Lentz and Alex Mirran. In this week's episode of DWeb Decoded, Filecoin Foundation's Aaron Stanley talks to Alex Mirran and Logan Lentz, the duo behind Leto, about building a more resilient, user-owned internet and helping developers transition to Web3 with ease.
Build With Us
Join the ETHGlobal London Hackathon, March 15-17. There is a rapidly growing need for decentralized, secure, and efficient data storage solutions, and the Filecoin network offers groundbreaking solutions that anticipate data needs for today's world and beyond. Your challenge is to build dApps, dev tooling, storage provider tooling, or data client apps that benefit Filecoin network participants.
Push the boundaries of what's possible in Web3 at the Data Economy Hack, February 18-March 31. Don't miss out on the challenges and prizes for this six-week virtual hackathon, focused on Filecoin and IPC.
See you in Hong Kong, April 5-8! The FIL Hong Kong Network Base will feature lightning talks, workshops, and plenty of coworking space for those deep in the Filecoin ecosystem and those looking to discover the world of Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) and DePIN. We look forward to bringing together developers, storage providers, clients, and Filecoin ecosystem partners in one of the world’s emerging hubs for Web3 innovation.
Ecosystem Spotlight: Livepeer
Livepeer is an open video infrastructure network for live and on-demand streaming. Via Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM), Livepeer delivers a video archival and storage solution to developers to provide live stream recording archival at an affordable price to its universe of live stream users, which stream millions of minutes of video (representing TBs of data storage) per week. Learn about more projects building on the network with the Filecoin Ecosystem Explorer.
Governance
The timeline for nv22 Dragon has been updated and is now slated for April 2. There are four FIPs in scope for this upgrade:
How do you stay up-to-date with the insane pace of AI? Join The Rundown – the world’s fastest-growing AI newsletter with over 500,000+ readers learning how to become more productive using AI every morning.
1. Our team spends all day researching and talking with industry experts.
2. We send you updates on the latest AI news and how to apply it in 5 minutes a day.
3. You learn how to become 2x more productive by leveraging AI.