Jack Kubinec

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Howdy!



Fun fact: Helium was one of the first projects I was assigned to write about while still a lowly intern at Blockworks, and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/where-is-the-revenue-helium-investors-inquire">one of my articles</a> from that summer earned me a couple angry DMs from Helium fans.&nbsp;



I’m tough but fair however — I also have become a Helium Mobile customer, and quite enjoy my <a href="https://x.com/whosknave/status/1811445381550535006">$0 phone bill</a>. Anyways, I’d never spoken to the CEO of the Helium Foundation until last week:



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Q&amp;A: Helium Foundation CEO on what’s next for the network</h2>



In early July, the Helium Foundation revealed in a blog <a href="https://blog.helium.com/network-of-networks-24c58012d2e9">post</a> that Helium would expand “the mission of its scope” beyond wireless to include decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN).&nbsp;



Soon after, a Helium Improvement Proposal (HIP) went live to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-energy-focused-virtual-power-plant-network">add the energy-focused startup Srcful</a> to the Helium fold. The foundation has hinted that Helium will be adding more DePINs to the mix in the future.



To hear more about this vision, and the proposed onboarding of Srcful, we called up <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/helium">Helium</a> Foundation CEO Abhay Kumar.&nbsp;



Keep reading for excerpts from Blockworks’ interview with Kumar, edited for clarity and brevity.



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Jack: What was it that led the Helium Foundation to want to expand Helium beyond wireless?&nbsp;



Abhay: We&#8217;re a US-based 501(c)(6)…One of the things that we have to do as a 501(c)(6), which is a specific kind of tax-exempt organization in the US, is we have to sort of define what our mandate is on an annual basis.&nbsp;



And so one of the things that we wanted to do is expand that mandate. We did that internally. We wanted to formally talk about that externally, and this is because we&#8217;ve been spending time with other physical infrastructure network teams and trying to understand if the things that we&#8217;re building can be useful for them as well, right?&nbsp;



We write some open-source code. Can they use it too, right? Like very simple. Otherwise, what&#8217;s the point of writing open-source code? It should be used by others. It should be formed by others. That&#8217;s a good thing.&nbsp;



That&#8217;s kind of how we were meandering around this idea, but within the Helium ecosystem itself, we needed to know that there was a credible team that was willing to build something inside of the ecosystem. And so as we&#8217;re kind of waiting for the right team and the right time to talk about our expansion of scope, and at around the same time as this, [Srcful] is proposing something.&nbsp;



Jack: Say you onboard Srcful, and you onboard other DePINs. In ten years, how does Helium look differently than it looks today?&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-depin-projects-with-real-world-utility">DePin projects have gained momentum on Solana blockchain</a>



Abhay: It&#8217;s the end state that we kind of envisioned with this idea of having multiple networks.&nbsp;



It completes the vision where you have all of these networks, some of which may even compete with each other, building towards this singular ecosystem, maybe using the same social coordination layer or economic coordination layer. Maybe it&#8217;s a technical coordination layer.



[But] 10 years is a long time in crypto, right? I don&#8217;t like talking about stuff before I ship [it] in general. It&#8217;s just my style. Like 10 years seems…forever. [Chuckles]



Jack: So, maybe to go more granular to today: What is the benefit of building subnetworks versus like perfecting the IoT thing Helium already has going on?



Abhay: I think we can do both!&nbsp;



I think on the IoT side, it&#8217;s really about specific modifications to the way that IoT devices are deployed and the way that they&#8217;re incentivized to continue to provide coverage. Making it easier to actually onboard sensors and all of that work still happens.&nbsp;



To be clear, it’s not a distraction for us. You know, it might be on a one-day, two-day kind of basis, but overall it&#8217;s not just like, “Hey, we&#8217;re going to work on two more things.”



We&#8217;re also going to staff up to be able to serve those two things, or we find an efficiency in technology to be able to work on two different things.&nbsp;



Jack: What sorts of subnetwork projects would you look for or are you interested in?&nbsp;



Abhay: We&#8217;re not the largest HNT holder by far, so we could not vote to block something even if that was a goal, so I like that position that we&#8217;re in where I think people trust our voice, but we&#8217;re pretty careful about throwing our voice against certain HIPs or for certain HIPs.&nbsp;



What do we look for? Actually the bigger thing is like, what&#8217;s successful, right?&nbsp;



I think the biggest thing for me is that there has to be some obvious overlap or advantage of telling this community that this is a new network that they should care about.&nbsp;



There&#8217;s three places where I think there can be overlap for any new network: one is technical, like using the same smart contract, using the same programs, maybe the same economics. Two is very directly economic, using HNT, tying into the HNT data credit system, being able to earn HNT from ongoing emissions of HNT because of usage on the subnetwork, and the third is social, and social is not just like ‘hey, it&#8217;s the same people.’ It&#8217;s also the same locations, right? Maybe there&#8217;s an advantage of running on the same hardware or running in the same physical location.&nbsp;



I think it&#8217;s already good if two of those three overlap. If three of those three overlap, I think it&#8217;s actually really worthwhile.&nbsp;



So in the case of [Srcful’s] proposal, there&#8217;s an economic overlap, there&#8217;s a technical overlap and a social overlap. It actually, in my mind, hits all three.&nbsp;



Jack: Is there anything that would prevent helium from doing non-wireless networks?



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-mobile-is-letting-third-parties-license-its-hardware">Lightspeed Newsletter: Helium Mobile is letting third parties license its hardware</a>



Abhay: I mean, should we be a meme launchpad? Probably not. I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any overlap.&nbsp;



Maybe there&#8217;s some social, I don&#8217;t know, but I think most people would agree that that&#8217;s a stretch.



Jack: As far as hotspot onboarding numbers, in recent days, it’s maybe a dozen or so per day. Do you think this subnetwork system would help along that process of bringing more hotspots online?



Abhay: I dropped a <a href="https://heliumgeek.com/stats/epoch/iot">link</a> for a live view of online hotspots. Over 300k live hotspots today, and that fluctuates based on a variety of things, but I don&#8217;t know if it will necessarily onboard more IoT hotspots.&nbsp;



It might onboard them in places where there isn&#8217;t IoT coverage because, ‘hey, I can buy a single piece of hardware and it can cover both IoT and energy,’ so it might do that.&nbsp;



There&#8217;s actually been some interesting questions around, would there be too much density? Like, should the Srcful team have an energy-only hotspot rather than a both IoT and energy hotspot?&nbsp;



If you look at a map of San Francisco or New York, you could argue there&#8217;s still too much density of IoT, and so these are questions that are being brought up in our community recently.



But would it drive a lot of IoT deployment? Probably only in the places where there isn&#8217;t any right now, and there are plenty of parts of the world that don&#8217;t have active IoT hotspots.&nbsp;&nbsp;



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One Good DM</h2>



A message from Jeff Newman, senior product manager at Magic Eden:


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<figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcqcR30lZjTLmR45tegfuC18DFUUY4bZlvryHO-hsB8L9BuzNih76vLSHrmN2DVWbFuwws8A3GXH8mf0Ri2VhfTr8Z5kt5PYsfRuCAg_9mxmrEM5Gu-n_eYYVyCHKL4LgIustemifn7-riHA6wdD-uRdCUU?key=pwKGwU1fpShcMBSv2iCNqA" alt=""/></figure></div>


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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter</a>.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Lightspeed Newsletter: Inside Helium’s vision for the future

Katherine Ross

David Canellis

Today, enjoy the Empire newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">T-minus: 84 days</h2>



Crypto moves fast.



The pace at which narratives evolve, explode and fade away is reflected in the conference circuit.



So, as we’re now less than 90 days away from the third iteration of Blockworks’ flagship Permissionless event, let’s look back at the first one to see how the conversation has morphed.



The first Permissionless ran in May 2022 — either the extreme end of the monstrous “DeFi summer” bull market or the early innings of the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/longest-bitcoin-bear-market-survival">longest bear market on record</a>, depending on how you look at it.



Back then, <a href="https://blockworks.co/event/permissionless/agenda">major talking points included</a> MEV, stablecoins and DeFi. Flashbots Auction, one of the earliest primary cogs in the MEV machine, had been <a href="https://medium.com/@Prestwich/mev-c417d9a5eb3d">running</a> for about 18 months leading up to the first Permissionless.&nbsp;



The cumulative payout across the entire MEV had gone <a href="https://explore.flashbots.net/">from</a> $90 million <a href="https://transparency.flashbots.net/">to</a> $633 million in that time.&nbsp;



And since the Permissionless MEV panel “Why you can’t afford to ignore MEV,” featuring Flashbots gurus Hasu and Stephane Gosselin, an additional $1.87 billion in ETH has been paid out to proposers, valued at current prices.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXehDDQ1GMTMAPl910zzoImRzG4LfhCqGoX3zxB-UaI4ymHOr-0j85QVdr7KGFwadZUUNtXOrQAUCXeT1aTbArUS-gunJ5J4zHz5qh4Ed5M3AXPQ4XacSG7HODjL1LMpg3yFJzHp6R9lgYCJMdD6CZAyOu8?key=EH3fLngzkjFuzM9Fq_jwLQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The previous Permissionless events, in Palm Beach and Austin, happened when crypto was in the doldrums</figcaption></figure>



Another panel asked whether Wall Street was coming for DeFi. It turns out it was — six months later, JPMorgan <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jpmorgan-trade-on-public-blockchain-monumental-step-for-defi">executed a live tokenized foreign exchange trade</a> on Polygon PoS alongside DBS and SBI Digital Asset.&nbsp;



The trade took place through a forked and modified version of Aave Arc, so that participating banks could set their own transaction parameters and still settle on a permissionless blockchain.



Permissionless III, which happens 29 months after the first event, will host conversations more up to the minute.



Modularity and interoperability, the intersection of AI and crypto, the potential cascading risk of restaking. Fully onchain games. Layer-2s (including for Bitcoin) and shared sequencing.&nbsp;



For what it’s worth, the market is already voting on what narratives solidify into full-blown phenomenon.&nbsp;



The market dominance of layer-2s — a metric for gauging how much of the crypto market is made up of layer-2 tokens — peaked at 1.54% in both February 2023 and 2024. It has since retraced to 0.89%, according to The Tie data. Still way up from the 0.12% market dominance recorded five years ago.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcKPN4-5CxHHKhvAJNlwqshCb9KkIKao0cQdBl5xp48FGOKWI-oZXy4uUusdJbs29vQCfp6bOCY21Vqxyk_wdRgrjVxqt3AChVwoHSUPD_25lWjANyoJiFv-D_SeJp_uFSMH_sFr-6PDvXBOO4LRWgvkR8?key=EH3fLngzkjFuzM9Fq_jwLQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Layer-2s are still somewhat hot but AI and the wider bitcoin ecosystem are trending up</figcaption></figure>



DePIN, meanwhile, really hit an all-time high for dominance in April 2021 (almost peak bull market), but it has since given up two-thirds of that ground.



(It should be said that the token price performance relative to the market has little to do with the growth of their underlying projects or protocols. Onchain DePIN activity, for instance, is generally growing, despite the dominance trend, although <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-stablecoins-depin">rising prices definitely seem to help</a>.)



Going by market makeup, AI and the Bitcoin ecosystem — projects building in Bitcoin’s orbit, but not bitcoin itself — are set to be the hottest leading into Permissionless III.



They both make up less than half a percent of the crypto market right now, according to The Tie, but the trajectory looks destined to change that.



— David Canellis



Grab your <a href="https://blockworks.co/event/permissionless-iii">ticket to Permissionless III in Salt Lake City here</a>. Prices are subject to increase.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Center</h2>



<ul>
<li>Ethereum’s <a href="https://www.validatorqueue.com/">validator</a> count is at a new all-time high: 1,034,051, up 65% since this time last year.</li>



<li>That has driven the ETH staking APR down to 3.22%, up slightly from last week but still down from 4.59% year on year.</li>



<li>Tron persists as the biggest layer-1 for fee spend, making up 50% of fees generated among the top 20 last week, per <a href="https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/bitcoin">Token Terminal</a>.</li>



<li>Most of that is due to the popularity of stablecoin tether on the network, which is <a href="https://tronscan.org/#/data/rankings/contracts">burning</a> 96% of all TRX fees right now.</li>



<li>BTC and ETH are working to extend their recoveries, both up less than 2% over the past day (BTC: $64,700; ETH: $3,450).</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Vibe check</h2>



This week is the first time this summer that there’s been a noticeable shift in sentiment. The air feels cleaner in crypto, the birds are singing and the machines whirring. It feels good.



There are a few reasons for this. No doubt getting alerts that bitcoin keeps climbing, carving out highs we haven’t seen in — *checks notes* — a month makes it feel like that bearish narrative that was creeping in is quickly being swatted away.



There’s also the Republican presidential ticket. The combination of a candidate who seems to be leaning pro-crypto and an undoubtedly pro-crypto vice presidential candidate has many in the space abuzz with possibilities.&nbsp;



2 Punks Capital general partner Jacob Martin told me he’s “pretty bullish going into the fall” given the circumstances.&nbsp;



“I think we&#8217;re about to find out over the next six months if the general market is actually ready to put real capital into crypto funds. And we&#8217;ll find that out the hard way…You know, good, bad or ugly,” Martin said.



One thing that stands out to me is not just the general vibes shift, but how that could impact the next few months, given that we might see bounceback a little earlier than previously expected. Or maybe this is all just a blip on the radar given that Mt Gox is still an overhang to account for right now.&nbsp;



We’ve previously chatted with folks like Ledn’s CIO John Glover, who told us that we should expect positive price action in the fall. But more immediately, bitcoin has climbed steadily since this past weekend.&nbsp;



Some of this makes sense if you pay attention to prediction markets like Polymarket, which now <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1721215837515">has a Trump victory at 70%</a> with Biden at 18% odds of winning.&nbsp;



“I think you&#8217;re going to see a lot of red dollars and a lot of middle dollars that weren&#8217;t sure” come into the space, Martin tells me. “I think there&#8217;s a whole new base of capital that&#8217;s going to show up not just towards the ETFs, but towards private allocation as well.”



Framework Ventures’ Michael Anderson — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-could-break-its-four-year-cycle">who I spoke to before</a> Vance was announced as Trump’s VP choice — said that one big question mark over crypto remains “how does the US receive a lot of this industry from a regulatory perspective or a legislative perspective?”



“And it&#8217;s been back and forth. It&#8217;s been partisan. It&#8217;s been nonpartisan, bipartisan. It&#8217;s been up for vote. It&#8217;s been blocked or vetoed. Like there&#8217;s just been so much back and forth, it&#8217;s hard to know exactly how that&#8217;ll play out, and that&#8217;s a huge edge factor for innovation and growth in the US, which is where a lot of the people are, I would say, in the crypto industry,” Anderson added.



Vance, per a Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/26/vance-crypto-00164859">report</a> last month, could be looking to clear up the regulatory hurdle. And we know he’s not a huge fan of SEC Chair Gary Gensler, going by a <a href="https://x.com/BillHughesDC/status/1762547166348775770?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1762547166348775770%7Ctwgr%5E73284e02f4010c9b15d7d5593a243ddb5feae4ac%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcointelegraph.com%2Fnews%2Fjd-vance-trump-vp-slams-sec-gensler-crypto-regulation">clip</a> from Consensys’ Bill Hughes.&nbsp;



From a VC vantage point, it’s looking really bullish this fall, Martin said.



“Basically, if there is a crypto fund that you can think of their name, they will raise this fall, or they&#8217;re already raising right now. And so I think we will actually see very clearly, if this thesis is correct, over the next six months,” he added.&nbsp;



And he’s not feeling bullish for just VCs, either. Martin believes “you’ll have a hard time probably finding a more bullish six months to raise, whether it’s for a fund or a startup,” because of the possibility of a clearer regulatory environment. Though it’s not yet clear whether the regulatory uncertainty will clear up anytime soon.



Looking to Bitcoin 2024 and Permissionless III — both fall events — we might also see that upbeat attitude reflected on the ground. Maybe the crypto industry won’t seem so burnt out…



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">my biggest takeaway from ethcc is that so many people are burnt out from working in crypto&mdash; sophia dew (@sodofi_) <a href="https://twitter.com/sodofi_/status/1812966777284141303?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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One thing’s for sure: It’s all about the vibes.



— Katherine Ross



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Works</h2>



<ul>
<li>Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz plan to donate to Donald Trump’s campaign, Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-16/andreessen-horowitz-latest-tech-vcs-to-throw-support-to-trump">reported</a>.</li>



<li>Deribit <a href="https://x.com/DeribitExchange/status/1813228883409273046">announced</a> that it’s launching bitcoin and ether options that will expire in early November.</li>



<li>Hong Kong’s Monetary Authority is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-17/hong-kong-regulator-plans-licensing-regime-for-stablecoin-firms">plotting</a> a licensing regime for stablecoin companies. </li>



<li>According to a <a href="https://cypherpunkholdings.com/cypherpunk-announces-corporate-update-on-current-solana-holdings-solana-staking-activity-and-solana-trading-strategy/">statement</a>, Cypherpunk upped its Solana holdings. </li>



<li>Craig Wright faces a potential perjury investigation over his claims that he created bitcoin, Wired <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/craig-wright-perjury-bitcoin-trial/">reported</a>. </li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Riff</h2>



Q: Does the Craig Wright debacle have a silver lining?



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/satoshi-emails-elaborate-bitcoin-origin">correspondence between</a> Satoshi and Martii Malmi.&nbsp;



Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s unfortunate that the back and forth between the two had to be used against Wright’s claims, but I think they offered a very unique and important look into Satoshi.



When they first dropped, the other Blockworks editors and I spent hours thumbing through each email just analyzing everything Satoshi said back in the day. We learned a lot.&nbsp;



He didn’t want to call bitcoin an investment, for example.



Wright can no longer claim to be Satoshi as <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/craig-wright-perjury-bitcoin-trial/#:~:text=A%20judge%20in%20the%20UK,Satoshi%20Nakamoto%2C%20creator%20of%20bitcoin.">ruled</a> by a UK judge, and his site now <a href="https://craigwright.net/">says</a>, “Dr. Craig Steven Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto.”



After years of Wright’s claims — and so many legal battles — we can finally put this one to rest. Unless he’s formally charged, of course.



— Katherine Ross



They say nature healed during the pandemic.&nbsp;



Dolphins frolicking through Venice canals. Mountain lions curiously explored urban outskirts, where they’re usually turned off by the buzz of pesky humans.



The boffins might <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/16/science/pandemic-nature-anthropause.html">debate</a> whether all that actually happened, or even if it did, whether the covid “anthropause” was a net positive for nature.



But the same thing can now happen to Bitcoin and blockchain development. Craig Wright was a key antagonist in the Block Size War, which ultimately diluted Bitcoin discourse, resulting in two satellite ecosystems of builders.&nbsp;



The work of those builders, particularly in Bitcoin SV world, was forever overshadowed by whatever controversy Wright was wrapped up in at any given time.



Bitcoin is different now than before the hard forks. There’s more freedom to build, even non-money use cases like Ordinals.&nbsp;



Maybe a prodigal developer out there could be the one to make a breakthrough layer-2. Who knows. At least there’s one less distraction.



— David Canellis



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter</a>.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Empire Newsletter: How the crypto conversation has evolved in 2 years

Last week, the Helium Foundation said in a somewhat-cryptic <a href="https://blog.helium.com/network-of-networks-24c58012d2e9">blog</a> post that it would be unveiling new proposals for “subnetworks” that go “beyond wireless.” Guesses as to what these subnetworks would be flooded in, ranging from proof-of-location to decentralized compute.&nbsp;



The answer became clear this week when a Swedish energy-focused project named Srcful <a href="https://github.com/helium/HIP/blob/main/0128-energy-subnetwork.md?utm_campaign=hd_newsletter_4&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsmi=314996807&amp;utm_content=314996807&amp;utm_source=hs_email">proposed</a> becoming a Helium subnetwork with its own ENERGY token. The Helium Foundation has mostly kept mum on what other future subnetworks might be.



Helium currently lets individuals run nodes in its Internet of Things (IoT) network in exchange for Solana-based IOT tokens, which can be converted into HNT tokens. The MOBILE wireless network is also under the Helium umbrella. To participate, households or businesses can drop a few hundred dollars on a Helium <a href="https://www.helium.com/mine#hotspots">hotspot</a> and plug it into the wall while hoping the token payouts exceed the energy bill.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-first-vc">Lightspeed Newsletter: A conversation with Solana’s first VC</a>



At a high level, a firmware upgrade would let existing Helium IoT hotspots also power Srcful. This would expand the network’s usefulness while also opening up another avenue for token rewards. The proposal also alludes to ENERGY-exclusive “gateways” that could work as hotspots — saying vendors would need to stake 50 million ENERGY to sell them.&nbsp;



Subject to a successful governance vote, Srcful plans to use <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/helium">Helium</a> hotspots to run a virtual power plant. Virtual power plants (or VPPs) are a new-ish <a href="https://rmi.org/clean-energy-101-virtual-power-plants/">idea</a> in the renewable energy space whereby smaller-scale distributed energy sources can be aggregated to support the energy grid.&nbsp;



In Srcful’s case, this <a href="https://github.com/helium/HIP/blob/main/0128-energy-subnetwork.md?utm_campaign=hd_newsletter_4&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsmi=314996807&amp;utm_content=314996807&amp;utm_source=hs_email">looks</a> like households offering the power from their solar panels or batteries (the kind of batteries big enough to power a house for a few hours) to build a VPP — and receiving ENERGY tokens in exchange.



Helium hotspots would be used for “reading and controlling” the solar panels and batteries, and hotspot operators would get rewarded in ENERGY tokens.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-depin-projects-with-real-world-utility">DePIN projects have gained momentum on Solana blockchain</a>



Srcful would then sell the virtual power plant energy — and potentially some accompanying energy data — to clients like energy companies or grid operators, which would hopefully bring in enough revenue to keep the lights on (pun intended).



If you feel like this is a bit convoluted, you’re not alone. Srcful’s complicated business model became a source of concern for some in the HIP’s Discord discussion.&nbsp;



“Here is the issue, I want to support everything in the Helium ecosystem. However…I can’t even fully explain it to friends of mine in the Solar business,” one user <a href="https://discord.com/channels/404106811252408320/1257917899319017553/1260678553046093836">wrote</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Srcful CEO Fredrik Ahlgren told me in an interview that he realizes “it&#8217;s very hard for people to understand” what Srcful does, but he wants to present Helium community members with a more streamlined narrative: “If you have solar or batteries, you get rewards for helping the grid.”&nbsp;



There’s also the obstacle that Srcful is yet to nail down contracts with energy-needy operations that would pay for its VPP.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-stablecoins-depin">Empire Newsletter: How ‘number-go-up’ fuels DePIN</a>



“I would say that this applies for every <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/depin">DePIN</a> project,” Ahlgren said. “You need to start somewhere. You need to believe that there is a demand side and have a product market fit.”



Helium Foundation CEO Abhay Kumar didn’t have much to add when I asked him about the future of Helium’s subnetworks. He said in a text that building a hub for all DePIN “could be a direction we go,” but added: “I don&#8217;t like to ‘ship a vision’ before shipping a product. Plenty of that out there.”



Kumar did say he expects “many such proposals” like Srcful’s to reach Helium’s governance forum.&nbsp;



As Helium looks to onboard Srcful — and presumably other new DePINs as well — I’ll be interested to see how these subnetworks resolve the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/where-is-the-revenue-helium-investors-inquire">classic Helium question of tokenomics</a>.



Helium has a complex utility score used to allocate HNT to its networks, and the tokenomics have been subject to some tinkering from the Helium community. Regardless, HNT has seen its price drop by two-thirds since February, trading at around $3.08 at time of writing.



A version of this article appeared in today’s Lightspeed newsletter, which covers all things Solana. Click <a href="https://lightspeed-4bed7b.beehiiv.com/subscribe">here</a> to subscribe.



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Helium eyes energy sector with ‘virtual power plant’ network

Jeff Albus

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Howdy!



It’s 7/11, which means free slurpees at 7-Eleven for anyone brave enough to venture out into the heat.



That certainly won’t be me, as a northeastern weakling who wilts in anything above 85 degrees. Anyways:



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Helium eyes the energy sector</h2>



Last week, the Helium Foundation said in a somewhat-cryptic <a href="https://blog.helium.com/network-of-networks-24c58012d2e9">blog</a> post that it would be unveiling new proposals for “subnetworks” that go “beyond wireless.” Guesses as to what these <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-first-vc">subnetworks would be flooded in</a>, ranging from proof-of-location to decentralized compute.&nbsp;



The answer became clear this week when a Swedish energy-focused project named Srcful <a href="https://github.com/helium/HIP/blob/main/0128-energy-subnetwork.md?utm_campaign=hd_newsletter_4&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsmi=314996807&amp;utm_content=314996807&amp;utm_source=hs_email">proposed</a> to become a Helium subnetwork with its own ENERGY token.&nbsp;



Helium currently lets individuals run nodes in its Internet of Things (IoT) network in exchange for Solana-based IOT tokens, which can be converted into HNT tokens. That looks like dropping a few hundred dollars on a Helium <a href="https://www.helium.com/mine#hotspots">hotspot</a> and plugging it into the wall, while hoping the token payouts exceed the energy bill.



At a high level, a firmware upgrade would let existing Helium IoT hotspots also power Srcful, expanding the network’s usefulness while also opening up another avenue for token rewards.



Subject to a successful governance vote, Srcful plans to use Helium hotspots to run a virtual power plant. Virtual power plants (or VPPs) are a new-ish <a href="https://rmi.org/clean-energy-101-virtual-power-plants/">idea</a> in the renewable energy space whereby smaller-scale distributed energy sources can be aggregated to support the energy grid.&nbsp;



In Srcful’s case, this <a href="https://github.com/helium/HIP/blob/main/0128-energy-subnetwork.md?utm_campaign=hd_newsletter_4&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsmi=314996807&amp;utm_content=314996807&amp;utm_source=hs_email">looks</a> like households offering the power from their solar panels or batteries (the kind of batteries big enough to power a house for a few hours) to build a VPP — and receiving ENERGY tokens in exchange.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/helium">Helium</a> hotspots would be used for “reading and controlling” the solar panels and batteries, and hotspot operators would get rewarded in ENERGY tokens.&nbsp;



Srcful would then sell the virtual power plant energy — and potentially some accompanying energy data — to clients like energy companies or grid operators, which would hopefully bring in enough revenue to keep the lights on (pun intended).



If you feel like this is a bit convoluted, you’re not alone. Srcful’s complicated business model became a source of concern for some in the HIP’s Discord discussion.&nbsp;



“Here is the issue, I want to support everything in the Helium ecosystem. However…I can’t even fully explain it to friends of mine in the Solar business,” one user <a href="https://discord.com/channels/404106811252408320/1257917899319017553/1260678553046093836">wrote</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Srcful CEO Fredrik Ahlgren told me in an interview that he realizes “it&#8217;s very hard for people to understand” what Srcful does, but he wants to present Helium community members with a more streamlined narrative: “If you have solar or batteries, you get rewards for helping the grid.”&nbsp;



There’s also the obstacle that Srcful is yet to nail down contracts with energy-needy operations that would pay for its VPP.&nbsp;



“I would say that this applies for every <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/depin">DePIN</a> project,” Ahlgren said. “You need to start somewhere. You need to believe that there is a demand side and have a product market fit.”



As Helium looks to onboard Srcful — and presumably other new DePINs as well — I’ll be interested to see how these subnetworks resolve the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/where-is-the-revenue-helium-investors-inquire">classic Helium question of tokenomics</a>.



Helium has a complex utility score used to allocate HNT to its networks, and the tokenomics have been subject to some tinkering from the foundation. Regardless, HNT has seen its price drop by two-thirds since February, trading at around $3.08 at time of writing.



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Zero In&nbsp;</h2>



Since migrating to Solana in April 2023, Helium has <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-helium-cell-coverage">added over 25,000 IoT hotspots</a> to its network.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf4E5zo3Yklc5A4u2zz1cJiGfzExfaInyyeOUWPFulLnxgbiTUIRz-FGUVRRx3uibxK7QFJzxAwCLEYsP7IQsUnWNFVyA6HVCUvQPCjE_2uav_vyV-fc9hS6gLesCpcuZxf1YcwAJb7895RUfBnyo2yvEA?key=wR7TPpQVPsc94EphRzD3oA" alt=""/></figure>



As this Helium Foundation Dune dashboard shows, however, those onboarding numbers have been slowing — from over a hundred per day between roughly December through March to scarcely more than a dozen daily onboards over the past couple weeks.&nbsp;



It will be interesting to watch whether these new Helium subnetworks will kickstart a wave of onboardings for the hotspots. The tokens’ profitability will certainly play a large role in that.



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Pulse</h2>



History is pretty important in the context of blockchain technology. The ability to organize transactions in a precise sequence is key to their immutability. Each transaction is cryptographically linked to the previous one, so altering a single transaction would require changing all subsequent ones. Without proper organization though, it becomes easier to <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4187752">manipulate</a> the integrity and trustworthiness of the network.



So, it is perhaps surprising to learn that traditional blockchains struggle with ensuring the precise timing and order of transactions. This results in delays, inefficiencies and occasionally transactions that <a href="https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1034.pdf">erroneously</a> seem to time-travel through the quantum cosmos in order to happen before they’re initiated. Spooooky.



But Solana does things <a href="https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-blockchain-cf47a61a9274">differently</a>. It uses a method called proof-of-history to timestamp all events that occur onchain in a verifiable sequence. Doing so allows the network to maintain a consistent and accurate order of transactions, forever and always.



A recent thread from user @bw_solana <a href="https://x.com/bw_solana/status/1810340011642073408">underscores</a> that there are a lot of misconceptions about PoH within the Solana community. For example, many believe PoH&#8217;s primary purpose is just time-stamping. In reality, it&#8217;s actually performing the much more complex task of <a href="https://x.com/bw_solana/status/1810340034597581116">verifying</a> that a leader schedule — which is a predefined sequence that determines which node will produce the next block — is followed, allowing block production to continue seamlessly even if a leader is delinquent.



The thread explains that PoH requires nodes to <a href="https://x.com/bw_solana/status/1810340125374853612">generate</a> a series of <a href="https://x.com/bw_solana/status/1810340148061872190">ticks</a>, proving that each has waited its turn to produce a block. This mechanism prevents leaders from <a href="https://x.com/bw_solana/status/1810340193364529372">front-running</a> high-priority transactions, ensuring a much more honest processing order compared to other chains. Though of course, some forms of transaction-ordering attacks (like sandwiching) can still occur.



It turns out it takes a good bit of technical expertise to keep things cheap, fast and fair.



— Jeffrey Albus



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One Good DM</h2>



A message from Fredrik Ahlgren, CEO of Srcful:


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcfuu1frzcqIJ9LvQHLJHwjLcYlJjjFwC5XmI-Lg4oC__9sDei9vyDpzNw7MCUNPWUo__wvICgZb73DEOxjgxA0upynyNS6XylQR242kSNiiJfJeGShPzHpTDOimTa6wVjwXgGQnsOG2qt1F8Q1glTLGNBr?key=wR7TPpQVPsc94EphRzD3oA" alt=""/></figure></div>


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Lightspeed Newsletter: Helium eyes energy sector with new solar power play

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Howdy!&nbsp;



We’re currently in the worst sports month of the year — especially with the USA knocked out of Copa America — and the situation got so dire that I started watching the Tour de France. Congrats to Mark Cavendish for breaking some kind of record. I should really go touch some grass.



Now for the story of someone who bought Solana at $0.04 per token:



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Q&amp;A: The true confessions of Solana’s first VC</h2>



Edith Yeung was investing in early stage companies at 500 Startups when she met Anatoly Yakovenko, who pitched her on the idea for a fast and cheap blockchain that would become Solana. She saw Solana’s early days unfold — and made an incredibly lucrative venture investment in the process. Read on for an excerpt from my conversation with Edith.



Comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.



Jack: How did you first meet Anatoly?



Edith: Anatoly and I actually met through a friend. His name is David. I can&#8217;t even make this shit up — David played water polo with Anatoly. I can barely swim, so the fact that somebody can play polo underwater, I think, is insane. David knew that I was very into crypto, so he said, “hey, you should meet this guy Anatoly.”&nbsp;



When he pitched me about Solana, first off, it wasn&#8217;t even called Solana. It was called Loom. He basically said proof-of-work doesn&#8217;t really work. It can never be fast. You cannot make a horse go as fast as a car. You just need to build it from scratch and I just felt like his thoughts and ideas were pretty refreshing. But at the same time, he really had nothing, not even a whitepaper. So it was purely founder trust and belief when we invested.



[After launching, the Solana team] grew from one to four to a whole bunch of people to the point that our office manager basically said: “You guys have way too many people. We need to kick you out now.”&nbsp;



[Solana co-founder Raj Gokal] basically said we need a new space. I found them the space on One Hawthorne Lane. It&#8217;s walking distance from where I am. It&#8217;s right next to the Gold Club, which is a strip club across the street. They stayed there until Covid basically, and now they are on a better street.



Jack: How did people in San Francisco think of Solana in the early days?



Edith: &nbsp;A lot of investors just sort of dismissed it, and in fact, mid-2018 to early 2019 was a bear market, so if I remember correctly, the valuation of the Solana was $15 million to $20 million. That&#8217;s it. And most people didn&#8217;t want to invest in it.&nbsp;



There are people that actually pulled out [of the first round] because it was such a bad market and they didn&#8217;t want to get involved — and that’s a lot of the people who even are active in the crypto space. They just didn’t see, “there&#8217;s going to be another Ethereum.”



Jack: What was your initial investment in Solana?



Edith: It was $250,000 at $0.04 [per SOL token], and that was the seed round. My fund was very small, it was a $10 million fund, so when the $0.04 got to $14.25, it already 7x’ed my fund.



But having said that, we waited about two years to get to the point where the token actually launched, which is common, same thing even for equity IPO-type companies. Then it started trading, and so my LPs who supported me were like, what is this thing? Because most people who supported me had no idea what crypto is.



I distributed tokens to my LPs in early 2021 and I I basically told them, “look, you may not understand what it is, but please trust me and keep it as long as you can and please don&#8217;t sell.”



After that, Solana went up to, I think, $260. Some of the LPs were like, “what the hell?” And I was just sort of like “you&#8217;re welcome.” And that was that.



Jack: A big thing that people point to with the early Solana days was when FTX came in and launched the decentralized exchange Serum. What was FTX&#8217;s involvement like in Solana pre-collapse?



Edith: Sam [Bankman-Fried] really was the one that picked Solana as the one he wanted to build Serum on. What they were looking for is, “can we find an alternative to Ethereum [for traders]?”&nbsp;



When Serum launched, it was super popular because FTX was obviously pushing it, but more importantly it was an amazing showcase for Solana to show off the fact that [it is] fast enough for DEXes. [&#8230;] The FTX team was very supportive of Solana and really put them on the map in the DeFi ecosystem early on, but of course that didn’t really last for that long.



Jack: Are you still holding onto those original tokens?



Edith: Yes, of course, and I’m very thankful.



I love investing in people, and they are really the investment of a lifetime for me.



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Zero In</h2>



Magic Eden’s Solana NFT market share keeps inching higher:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1398" height="896" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-11.png" alt="" class="wp-image-88881" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-11.png?w=1398 1398w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-11.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-11.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-11.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-11.png?w=401 401w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-11.png?w=407 407w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-11.png?w=342 342w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-11.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1398px) 100vw, 1398px" /></figure>



According to a Dune dashboard from 21co, Magic Eden has held between 90-95% of the combined trading volume between itself and rival Tensor for much of the past month. Tensor saw more than 75% of the combined volume briefly in January, but since then, Magic Eden took the lead and solidified it.



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Pulse</h2>



Helium recently <a href="https://x.com/helium/status/1807812910468776300">announced</a> it is expanding beyond its decentralized wireless mission to create a larger decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN). Traditionally, high cost centralized networks have dominated the infrastructure landscape. According to Helium, these traditional players have hampered scalability and innovation for years, especially in segments like asset tracking, cellular solutions, disaster detection, and other wireless-enabled solutions.



Helium <a href="https://blog.helium.com/network-of-networks-24c58012d2e9">outlined</a> its intention to create a more efficient and scalable infrastructure through its Network of Networks initiative. The protocol intends to leverage its global footprint and community to support new decentralized networks for compute, storage, mobility, and more.



On X, community member @hansaFL <a href="https://x.com/hansaFL/status/1807888541138977158">speculated</a> that Helium might introduce a Proof of Location (PoL) network. He highlights how Helium hotspots could <a href="https://x.com/hansaFL/status/1807888550756770178">verify</a> device locations, enhancing trust and utility in the DePIN space. <a href="https://x.com/hansaFL/status/1807888548277686624">According</a> to Hans, &#8220;Before Helium, there was no way to prove location &#8211; GPS was too easy to game.&#8221;



Community members responded with various predictions. @Sunbasher <a href="https://x.com/Sunbasher/status/1807985850351079674">suggested</a> possibilities like bandwidth or compute, while @BloodReaver <a href="https://x.com/BloodReaver/status/1807981202470850836">guessed</a> it might involve WiFi. @ke6jjj <a href="https://x.com/ke6jjj/status/1807969431362195722">clarified</a> that any new network would require community voting, emphasizing the collaborative nature of Helium&#8217;s expansion.



— Jeffrey Albus



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One Good DM</h2>



A message from Edith Yeung, an early investor in Solana:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="554" height="964" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-12.png" alt="" class="wp-image-88882" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-12.png?w=554 554w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-12.png?w=172 172w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-12.png?w=148 148w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-12.png?w=150 150w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-12.png?w=126 126w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-12.png?w=46 46w" sizes="(max-width: 554px) 100vw, 554px" /></figure>



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Lightspeed Newsletter: A conversation with Solana’s first VC

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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Cooking with flywheels</h2>



It’s not always the case that crypto prices make sense. DePIN may eventually change that.



Take Bitcoin. It’s tempting to think that its price might go up or down depending on how many people are using the network.&nbsp;



Sometimes that’s true — both 2017 and 2021 bull runs were preceded by huge growth in the number of active wallets. And the number of transacting addresses often falls almost in tandem with bitcoin’s price, usually after markets peak.



But active Bitcoin addresses <a href="https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/18588654/">grew</a> throughout most of 2022, the depths of the most recent bear market, even as prices went down. There’s an obvious simple explanation: Some of those active addresses were actively selling, pushing prices down.



All this makes predicting bitcoin prices with onchain activity rather squirrely. You never know if that “active wallet” is posturing to buy or sell on a crypto exchange.&nbsp;



DePIN is showing early signs of more reliable metrics, at least on the surface. Helium, for example, pays users crypto for setting up mobile and IoT hotspots around the world. Over the past year or so, almost 42,000 Helium devices have been <a href="https://dune.com/helium-foundation/helium-makers">deployed</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfTOUeyedB1e8qnfRyQ1WNT-rs1xZZtFfwIvW1Jm1-8Cjin4w4jVV09Yi8Qd2tLitVfBJCUO4hiMU0vfKJ6B9p53o7prFYRcdDGPQYDkhG46_aGZBoXDn_DEVN9Q8eXVdMLXvGszmkFrbkfTjOxHixjFyc?key=W_Dm-GcH-i1BjPnOk3O8Jg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Nothing seems to boost new hotspots more than rising prices</figcaption></figure>



It just so happens that the rate of new Helium hotspot deployments matches the price performance of HNT almost exactly.&nbsp;



DIMO is another. It pays vehicle owners a steady stream of tokens in return for their car-related data.&nbsp;



Almost 5,000 unique owners have opted into DIMO since December 2022, reaching close to 300 new <a href="https://dune.com/dimo_network/dimo-protocol">owners</a> per week as markets topped out earlier this year.&nbsp;



New signups have since declined, along with DIMO’s price.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcXdkBJar8IxHZkogSbqyw1p78jkTEYhL3CbUeqAbuPpY40EKiCz_KV0q2SdC8tirX4eL8JfElDwXo-SR215pCE1EDWHk_1JoCxrVgT-wfXqSEiXyi7bcGoFGt8lVqOG9fQmlprQHwnGSzaKpkma_4mF0u2?key=W_Dm-GcH-i1BjPnOk3O8Jg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Looks familiar…</figcaption></figure>



GEODNET, the Real-Time Kinematics project looking to make geo-location more precise with crypto incentives, is following a similar trend.



The project has so far <a href="https://dune.com/geodnet_console/geod-console">onboarded</a> almost 7,400 “sky miners” — small satellites on rooftops and other high places that collect real-time space weather data — over the past two years or so.&nbsp;



Aside from a major uptick in the second quarter of 2023 as GEOD’s price bottomed out, the price of its native token has risen alongside the number of new satellite miners coming online.&nbsp;



Some of the correlation can be explained by the operation <a href="https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/blogs/digital-assets/matthew-sigel-geodnet-why-were-bullish/">spending</a> 80% of its revenue on buying back GEOD and burning it, with about $500,000 removed from circulation to date (~2% of its current market cap).



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf9d7PrAlprM8zo3ahDJv3PimIH7ld1F8bBvMhfOndfQMbOscsE8CtHvHdtir2JFEy8oRQU9Paohesix5QhSL2UWsUS8EUtspMRFG7HOY7bUeEyuKZKSRbiOIA8rxnApaBfHOjNcUJIZjGqepmqXkAJKl_7?key=W_Dm-GcH-i1BjPnOk3O8Jg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">GEODNET has so far paid out nearly $8 million tokens for mining the sky</figcaption></figure>



Modeling DePIN token prices on how many users are building out the infrastructure looks promising, but frustratingly, it’s a chicken-and-egg problem.



Did rising prices drive users to add devices to the respective networks? Were new sign-ups scared off when markets corrected? We might never know.



What the correlation does suggest is that ‘number-go-up’ could still be the primary driver of infrastructure growth in DePIN, as is tradition in crypto.&nbsp;



DePIN’s ties to the physical world may only get it so far, for now.



— David Canellis



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Center</h2>



<ul>
<li>Weekly Helium <a href="https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/helium">revenues</a> have leveled out after falling for most of this year, currently sitting at about $32,000.</li>



<li>DePIN tokens overall are currently worth $26.6 billion, per <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/view/depin/">CoinMarketCap</a>, down from $40 billion in March.</li>



<li>BTC and ETH are flat on the day and up 2% in the past seven days, now $62,700 and $3,450 respectively.</li>



<li>Global stablecoin supplies have <a href="https://defillama.com/stablecoins">risen</a> over $1 billion month on month to $161.7 billion but have shed around $300 million in the last week.</li>



<li>Blast processed over 25% of all DEX derivatives <a href="https://defillama.com/derivatives/chains">volume</a> last week amid its airdrop, handling $11.24 billion. Its volumes have since normalized but are still ahead of Arbitrum.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Circling back</h2>



We’ve <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/privacy-coins-sacrificed-so-crypto-could-run">previously chatted</a> about the staggered Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) rollout over in Europe. The first part has arrived and it&#8217;s mostly focused on stablecoins.



In case you missed the hoopla leading up MiCA’s implementation, or Circle’s big announcement yesterday, the stablecoin issuer seems excited about the new rules.



CEO Jeremy Allaire said the framework legalizes stablecoins in a Monday press conference. Through this, the stablecoin issuer can now issue both USDC and EURC in the EU.&nbsp;



In a press release accompanying Circle’s announcement that it was the first EU-regulated stablecoin under the new provisions, Allaire added that the rules unlock “the enormous potential of digital assets to transform finance and commerce.”



Per Chainalysis <a href="https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/mica-stablecoin-regime-challenges-part-1/#:~:text=Transaction%20volumes%20show%20that%20stablecoins,Regulation%20(MiCA)%20takes%20effect.">data</a>, onchain transaction volume reached $10 trillion last year. Stablecoins made up 60% of that volume. Clearly that’s no small sum, and points to how widely used and accepted stablecoins have become. To put that number further into perspective, bitcoin only represented 10% of onchain volume in 2023.



(I want to quickly note that I’m focusing on the big stablecoin issuers, but other European-specific issuers have also become MiCA compliant.)



With that being said, let’s take a look at Tether. CEO Paolo Ardoino seems a tad more hesitant about the new regulations, at least in comparison to Allaire. However, there’s no doubt that such regulations do encourage growth, he noted.



“Tether commends EU regulators for their efforts in establishing a framework for crypto assets. While the effects of these new regulations will take time to manifest, there remain important aspects of the regulation which we continue to believe could render the job of a stablecoin issuer extremely complex but also make EU-licensed stablecoins vulnerable and riskier to operate,” Ardoino told me.&nbsp;



His point is a valid one, though. Chainalysis highlighted that regulation emphasizes the need for issuers to really pay attention to onchain analytics, so they can better understand the use cases for their stablecoins.



“This sort of data can provide insights into holders, balances, and transactional behavior, offering a degree of transparency on the usage of particular tokens on an aggregate-basis, as well as at the transaction-level,” the firm wrote.&nbsp;



“This allows issuers to have a real-time view of active wallets holding their tokens, including holder behavior (i.e. exchange vs. personal wallets, duration of holdings), overall transaction volume across multiple blockchains, and alerts for transactions involving sanctioned entities or jurisdictions.”



Ardoino said more discussions are warranted to better understand and implement the technical aspects of this regulation.&nbsp;



“While Tether is optimistic about MiCA’s long term implementation, it remains crucial that stablecoin regulatory policies enacted are balanced, protect consumers, and nurture growth in our emerging industry,” he said.&nbsp;



Change is hard, but here’s to hoping that MiCA is able to succeed in uniting regulators across the EU. And perhaps the US could learn a lesson or two.



— Katherine Ross



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Works</h2>



<ul>
<li>Bitcoin miner Northern Data is mulling an IPO for its AI and data center business segment, Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-01/northern-data-weighs-ai-unit-us-ipo-at-up-to-16-billion-value">reported</a>.</li>



<li>Binance.US is “confident” in its legal battle against the SEC, the company <a href="https://x.com/BinanceUS/status/1807905912231022593">said</a> on X.</li>



<li>The Bahamas is prepping regulations requiring commercial banks to provide access to its CBDC, Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/bahamas-regulate-banks-offer-cbank-digital-currency-2024-07-01/">reported</a>.</li>



<li>The SEC <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-sues-silvergate-bank-for-misleading-public">filed</a> a suit against and a settlement with FTX-linked (and now defunct) Silvergate Bank.</li>



<li>The German government continues to send millions in bitcoin to exchanges, per Arkham <a href="https://platform.arkhamintelligence.com/explorer/entity/germany">data</a>.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Riff</h2>



Q: Are stablecoins still crypto&#8217;s killer app?



Probably.



I’m not one to say definitively one way or another because there are so many unknowns in this world (can you tell I went to Las Vegas and didn’t spend a dime gambling?) but I think the use cases for stablecoins are strong. I mean, just scroll up and look at the Chainalysis data I mentioned above.



There’s always going to be something sexier and unique in crypto that people hail as the next killer app, but if we’re just looking at utility and overall use, then I think stablecoins have this race locked down.&nbsp;



— Katherine Ross



The maxi suppressed inside of me would say Bitcoin is the ultimate crypto app: uncensorable digital money.



Can’t say the same for tether and USDC. Their respective issuers can freeze whatever balances they like, which they regularly do upon request from law enforcement.



Luckily, crypto has DAI, which doesn’t have that problem. That also makes it uncensorable digital money. So yes, stablecoins are crypto’s killer app…if you don’t count the original.



— David Canellis



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Empire Newsletter: How ‘number-go-up’ fuels DePIN

Frank Mathis

Remember the buzz around DAOs in the last crypto cycle?&nbsp;



Decentralized autonomous organizations were supposed to revolutionize governance. Instead, countless projects misused the term, labeling themselves as DAOs without embodying the core principles of decentralization, autonomy or even functioning as an organization. As the hype grew, the definition became muddled, leaving many investors and enthusiasts with a skewed understanding of what DAOs truly represent.



We’re witnessing a similar trend with DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure networks). The term has rapidly gained traction, with experts projecting the DePIN market to reach a <a href="https://messari.io/report/the-depin-sector-map">$1 trillion valuation </a>within the next decade.&nbsp;



Every day, new projects claim to be part of this transformative wave. But just as with DAOs, many of these projects are misappropriating the label and failing to deliver on the fundamental aspects of DePIN.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">DePIN&#8217;s emergence and slow burn&nbsp;</h2>



DePIN didn’t emerge overnight. Its roots can be traced back to early decentralized networks like BitTorrent and the Tor network, which demonstrated the power of decentralized systems to distribute data and enhance privacy. These pioneering projects laid the groundwork for what we now recognize as DePIN.



Fast forward to today, and DePIN has evolved into a distinct vertical within the blockchain space.&nbsp;



Investors are taking note, pouring significant capital into ventures like decentralized wireless networks and storage solutions. For instance, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-cell-plan-goes-nationwide">Helium</a> has over 995,000 hotspots deployed globally, while the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-fundraising-capital-allocation">Render Network</a> leverages decentralized GPU power to transform 2D and 3D computer models into lifelike images. As of now, the Render Network has <a href="https://stats.renderfoundation.com/">onboarded</a> around 5,600 nodes and completed over 33 million frames rendered.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Call out: Your dapp probably isn’t DePin</h2>



To qualify as truly DePIN, the project must be in the business of providing physical infrastructure — and the network formed by that physical infrastructure must be governed purely by the consensus voting of the network&#8217;s hardware in a manner that incentivizes network operators for their participation.&nbsp;



These elements ensure the network operates without central control, utilizes physical assets and fairly rewards contributors.



But there are numerous projects claiming to be part of the DePIN ecosystem without meeting the essential criteria.&nbsp;



Some of these projects focus on providing off-chain computation or integrating AI services, which, while decentralized, do not involve the creation or management of physical infrastructure.&nbsp;Others within various blockchain ecosystems enhance decentralized computing or offer financial services, but lack the physical infrastructure component necessary for true DePIN projects.&nbsp;



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/big-tech-data-depin">Don’t give your life to Big Tech for free</a>



The term DePIN has become a buzzword, and many projects are misusing it to attract attention, despite not adhering to the foundational principles of managing decentralized physical infrastructure. This misuse can mislead investors and stakeholders, diluting the term’s meaning and undermining the integrity of genuine DePIN initiatives. Clear definitions are essential to preserve the promise and potential of DePIN to revolutionize physical infrastructure management.



By understanding and recognizing the core principles that define true DePIN projects — direct linkage to physical infrastructure and governance purely by the consensus voting of the network&#8217;s hardware — we can better distinguish between innovative projects and those merely riding the hype wave.&nbsp;



Understanding what is and isn’t DePIN is vital for the industry&#8217;s health and growth.&nbsp;



DePIN has the potential to democratize access to essential infrastructure, reduce costs and enhance resilience by eliminating single points of failure. It can revolutionize how we interact with technology and resources, from energy grids to internet access.



The core vision of DePIN is to empower individuals and communities to create a more equitable and sustainable future. For this vision to be realized, we must maintain clarity and integrity in defining what constitutes a DePIN project.



If you’re building or investing in a DePIN project, ensure it meets the foundational criteria of decentralization, physical infrastructure and proper incentivization.&nbsp;



Let’s preserve the promise of DePIN and drive genuine innovation in decentralized infrastructure.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Frank has a diverse career that spans creative writing, day trading, and a 12-year stint in financial planning. After experimenting with blockchain and being an early adapter to the Solana ecosystem, Mathis co-founded GenesysGo in 2021 to create a faster, more reliable and more secure decentralized data storage protocol. Their flagship product, shdwDrive is built on Solana and aims to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and traditional business infrastructure. GenesysGo is powered by a new type of decentralized data storage consensus mechanism, built from the ground up by the GenesysGo team.</div>


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Hot take: Your dapp probably isn’t DePIN

Casey Wagner

Crypto startup funding hit $2.4 billion during the first quarter of 2024, a report from PitchBook published Monday showed. This represents a 40% increase in invested capital from the last quarter of 2023.&nbsp;



“With positive investor sentiment returning to crypto and barring any major market downturns, we expect the volume and pace of investments to continue increasing throughout the year,” PitchBook analysts wrote in the report.&nbsp;



Big deals this week include Web3 social media platform Farcaster raising $150 million in a Series A round led by Paradigm. Other investors include a16z crypto, Haun Ventures, Variant and Standard Crypto.&nbsp;



&#8220;Since going permissionless last October, Farcaster has seen 350,000 paid sign-ups and a 50x increase in network activity,” Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero said in a <a href="https://danromero.org/farcaster-update/">statement</a> Tuesday.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/farcaster-fundraise-user-growth-developer-tools">Farcaster secures $150M to grow users, add tools for decentralized social media protocol</a>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/farcaster">Farcaster</a>, the protocol behind the much-talked-about social network Warpcast, has gained significant attention in the crypto sphere this year. The company launched its Frames feature, which incorporates <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/identity">identity</a> and payment rails, in February.&nbsp;



Also this week: EVM layer-2 Plume announced a $10 million seed funding round led by Haun Ventures. Other investors include Galaxy Ventures, Superscrypt and Portal Ventures.&nbsp;



Plume, built to bring <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/real-world-assets">real-world assets</a> on-chain, currently has more than 80 RWA and DeFi projects building on its private testnet, the company said. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/what-are-real-world-assets-defis-newest-yield">RWAs include collectibles</a>, alternative assets, synthetics, luxury goods and real estate.&nbsp;



“While many are attempting to solve <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tokenization">tokenization</a> through permissioned environments, Plume stands out by prioritizing a crypto-first approach,” Chris Yin, CEO and co-founder of Plume, said in a statement. “We operate as a permissionless chain, offering seamless compliance tooling as a notable feature.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Other notable funding news</h2>



<ul>
<li>Blockless, a decentralized physical infrastructure network (<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/depin">DePIN</a>) project, raised $8 million in pre-seed and seed funding at an undisclosed valuation. </li>



<li>Fantom Foundation on Friday announced a $10 million strategic funding round led by Korean fund Hashed. </li>



<li>Crypto firm New Form Capital is back on the scene and looking to raise a $100 million fund in the midst of the recent crypto fundraising boom, the Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/crypto-venture-firm-new-form-aims-to-raise-100-million-fund-eb03c940">reported</a> Monday.</li>
</ul>



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Funding Wrap: Crypto startup funding rises for second straight quarter 

Howdy!&nbsp;



Welcome to Lightspeed, the newest addition to the Blockworks newsletter suite. We are Solana news, analysis and culture, all the time. If that sounds like you, we’re psyched to have you on board. Let’s get into it!



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Which Solana startups are up next?</h2>



Colosseum is a new Solana startup accelerator, as well as hackathon platform and venture fund, that runs project-building contests and chooses cohorts from among the winners. 



The accelerator then makes seed investments in each of the accelerator participants in exchange for equity and potential future tokens. The Solana Foundation, a non-profit developing <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a>, is a limited partner in Colosseum’s venture fund and contracts with the group to run hackathons, a Colosseum spokesperson told Blockworks. The initial hackathon counted both Solana co-founders and a raft of Solana founders as judges.&nbsp;



Picture Gladiator, but instead of Russell Crowe with a sword, it’s nerds with laptops.&nbsp;



Matty Taylor, one of the project’s co-founders, started up and ran the Solana Foundation’s hackathon program until founding Colosseum, he told me in a text.&nbsp;



Given the judges’ Solana bona fides and Colosseum’s connections to the Solana Foundation, the accelerator cohort could be cast as a sort of temperature check on what kinds of projects Solana’s thought leadership is excited about.&nbsp;



The answer, it seems, is decentralized physical infrastructure, or DePIN — a category which accounted for four of the 10 cohort startups.&nbsp;



The winning DePINs included a DePIN financial derivatives platform, a 3D-mapping-meets-gaming startup, and a network for monetizing excess bandwidth.



One that caught my eye was DeCharge. The project <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WBal3ysYwnFy4H-KCSMn38Eap6em3wJou4tVfEf3OVc/edit#slide=id.p1">pitched</a> hardware and software for people to deploy their own EV charging stations that are then monetized through an app. This seems like a real potential use case as the arms race for electric vehicles <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-china-tariffs-electric-vehicles-evs-solar-2024ba735c47e04a50898a88425c5e2c">heats</a> up.&nbsp;



Colosseum believes that “projects within <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/depin">DePIN</a> are unlocking novel markets at a higher rate&nbsp; than any other category in crypto,” Taylor said.&nbsp;



Projects building AI-crypto integrations, a buzzy subject lately, were notably absent from among Colosseum’s cohort. Taylor said many teams used AI components in their submissions, but Colosseum is generally unsure about AI’s usefulness for crypto outside of GPU networks and, potentially, data labeling.&nbsp;



And of course there was the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ore-wins-50k-solana-hackathon">hackathon’s grand champion</a>, Ore — a proof-of-work currency that helped nearly <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-price-falls-ore-mining">cripple the Solana network</a> for a few days in April. The project is currently in the leadup to launching a supposedly more efficient v2.&nbsp;



Ore’s pseudonymous developer Hardhat Chad told me he thinks Colosseum is filling the need for a crypto-native startup accelerator — like the famous Y-Combinator, but for Solana.



“Everyone knows how important YC has been for the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem,” Hardhat Chad said in a text. “Unfortunately YC just doesn’t seem to ‘get’ crypto.”



&#8211; Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Zero In</h2>



It&#8217;s ups and downs for Solana&#8217;s DEXs, with top players continuing to show diverse performances, according to data from DeFiLlama.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/aW_B3lGfgcrsszICBhgYZNO_t0umMFzbtdN-kN3kAb3uPa-1zCuzPmVTdMIuecdegZZkZuuA1PB4FD1E5M-b9oInHsE6iHofzn1syXaqc5-YMdGCYhonV3sFhwroBjS8N4nytBTRubAmudmRFmgXAjE" alt=""/></figure>



Charts show:



<ul>
<li>Phoenix (red) leading with a 34.39% weekly change and a 24-hour volume of $296.34 million, representing 27.43% of the cumulative volume.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Orca (green), which has a DEX TVL of $245.7 million, saw a 29.04% weekly increase and a 24-hour volume of $284.72 million.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Lifinity (orange) experienced a 17.47% weekly increase, with a 24-hour volume of $189.45 million and a 7-day volume of $979.21 million.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Meteora (pink) recorded a 38.45% weekly increase, with a 24-hour volume of $156.7 million and a 7-day volume of $1.465 billion.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Raydium (blue), despite a 26.97% decline, maintains a DEX TVL of $969.69 million and a cumulative volume of $53.697 billion.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



Overall volumes are down, but with 10 days left in the month, significant changes could still be on the horizon. The <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eth-rallies-on-spot-ether-etf-optimism">recent jump</a> among crypto prices on ETF speculation proves that, well, anything is possible, right?



&#8211; Jeffrey Albus



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Pulse</h2>



Could this be a mobile app summer for Solana?&nbsp;



Three different projects have teased mobile app plans in recent weeks — Jupiter, <a href="https://x.com/SolanaFloor/status/1788915597234798911">MarginFi</a>, and <a href="https://x.com/SolanaFloor/status/1788865305277546789">Birdeye</a>. Jupiter, the popular Solana DEX aggregator, has <a href="https://x.com/JupiterExchange/status/1782763931292889561">said</a> its mobile app — “the most seamless place to trade in [DeFi]” — will be ready for beta in May.&nbsp;



Meanwhile, the Phantom wallet app is <a href="https://x.com/Bekahtron/status/1792599839584198732">sitting</a> on the utilities top charts for the US App Store.&nbsp;



This is all playing out as Solana Mobile is gathering preorders for the next iteration of its phone, which is slated to <a href="https://two.solanamobile.com/story">launch</a> in 2025.&nbsp;



The specifics of some of these mobile plans are mostly under wraps, though I’d expect some concrete news sooner rather than later.&nbsp;



&#8211; Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One Good DM</h2>



A message from Kellen Blumberg, a Solana data scientist at Flipside Crypto:


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/bk25DnR25fpsp-71IYSDmNKUi7JqUcJOSlHSDiYo7iguvbuAF4dTfQea5-Z-nrwpfD6TZxjfRmH6IzorL0yYs00S1pCjPFc7OAF6LrRaql9dBMYA_SXSuD1OtA8F45wxN9Eup4rJtj27D1YJgGi5EeI" alt=""/></figure></div>


Updated May 21, 2024 at 6:00 pm ET: Clarified activities of Colosseum.



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Lightspeed Newsletter: New Solana startup accelerator has a DePIN flavor

Bessie Liu

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN) project MapMetrics will leave the Solana ecosystem and migrate to peaq, a layer-1 solution designed specifically for DePIN and Machine real-world assets (RWAs).



MapMetrics is a drive-to-earn project that rewards users with tokens and NFTs for providing anonymous live traffic and map data. Similar to DePIN project <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-depin-projects-with-real-world-utility">Hivemapper</a>, the team hopes to create a decentralized global map using Web3 technology.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/drive-to-earn-app-dynamic-maps-crypto-rewards">‘Drive-to-earn’ app aims to bootstrap ‘dynamic maps’ with crypto rewards</a>



Brent van der Heiden, co-founder at MapMetrics, told Blockworks that the decision was made as peaq offered a variety of modular DePin functionality.



“Peaq ID, a decentralized multi-chain machine identity, enables the network to prioritize real machines in times of high load,” Heiden said. “The Modular Functions, such as the DePIN data verification framework, will also help us further expand our DePIN&#8217;s own features.”



Additionally, Heiden notes there are a handful of potential synergies in the wider peaq ecosystem, including with other DePINs and its enterprise partners, which may enable the team to secure new partnerships to build out demand for the project.&nbsp;



“Peaq&#8217;s community includes thousands of DePIN enthusiasts, which will help us grow, and the Machine Composability that comes with using the same identity standard across the ecosystem will help us tap into the pool of devices already on peaq,” Heiden said.



The transition process will be completed over multiple phases, beginning with smart contract deployments on peaq, followed by moving core business logic over to the layer-1. Afterwards, native token minting will also be available on peaq, and a bridging option will be available to existing holders.&nbsp;



Despite MapMetric’s decision to leave the Solana ecosystem, the blockchain remains a popular home for many DePIN projects today. 



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-depin-projects-with-real-world-utility">DePin projects have gained momentum on Solana blockchain</a>



Natix, another DePIN mapping project, <a href="https://twitter.com/NATIXNetwork/status/1783533073000288341">revealed today</a> that it will be launching its native token on the Solana blockchain, while continuing to collaborate with the peaq network.



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MapMetrics ditches Solana blockchain for peaq

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN) is utilizing blockchain technology to enable users to take ownership of their data.



Tokens incentivize users to provide services in the real world using physical infrastructure and systems. A popular example of a DePIN project today is Helium, a decentralized wireless network.



According to Scott Sigel, the chief operating officer of the Helium Foundation, anybody can buy a helium-compatible gateway — which is similar to a traditional WiFi hotspot in everyday homes — and install it around their properties or in commercial spaces.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-cell-plan-goes-nationwide">Unlimited Helium Mobile cell plan goes nationwide for $20 a month</a>



Once installed, these hotspots will enable community members to access wireless coverage in their neighborhoods or general vicinity. Those who provide the hotspot themselves will also be rewarded with tokens that they can cash out.



“The economics of building out an IoT network has been historically difficult, and a lot of centralized providers have gone bankrupt in the process,” Sigel said.&nbsp;



Sigel explains that Helium started 10 years ago and quickly realized that it was extremely expensive, from a centralized point of view, to maintain the cost of real estate and install networks while building out its IoT network.&nbsp;



“This is something that is the core to DePIN, which is how do you coordinate work in the physical world, and leverage a community to create physical infrastructure?” he said.&nbsp;



In 2019, Helium launched its decentralized wireless network and quickly grew its coverage worldwide. According to the Helium Explorer, there are <a href="https://explorer.helium.com/stats">currently</a> 392,090 hotspots around the world.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-miami-tmobile-hotspots-network-cellular">Helium hotspots go live in bid to turn Miami network profitable</a>



Sigel notes that cellular users, regardless of which network they use, are at the mercy of large telecommunications companies who determine where coverage will be deployed. With Helium, individuals and small businesses have agency to resolve the issue.&nbsp;



“My favorite example is — there’s a company in Portugal where Helium IoT coverage is very dense, and they were in talks with the city of Porto about doing early flood detection, the fact they were able to build businesses and provide a solution to the city, completely relying on the coverage that was built by the helium community and people in Porto, speaks to the success of the business running entirely on community hosted infrastructure,” Sigel said.



Helium currently runs on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a> blockchain, a decision Sigel noted was made due to the network&#8217;s performant nature, which could handle high throughput and the large developer ecosystem.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-token-holders-approve-switch-to-solana-blockchain">Helium token holders approve switch to Solana blockchain</a>



“The speed performance of Solana, coupled with their principles around intuitive frontend, were just some of the things that overlapped and made sense for us. This is something that ran through a community vote,” he said.



Apart from Helium, another DePIN project being built on Solana and is gaining interest is Hivemapper, which wants to reshape the mapping industry completely.&nbsp;



According to Gabe Nelson, the head of operations and marketing at Hivemapper, the company&#8217;s founder and CEO, Ariel Seidman, had worked in the maps industry for over 20 years. During this time, a large problem that Seidman was hoping to resolve was to look into ways to create maps in a cost-effective, scalable way.



The current process of mapping roads requires street view vehicles with sensors to drive around each and every street, which is both labor and capital-intensive, creating an enormous barrier to entry into the mapping market.



“Crypto tokens were a way to align the incentives of a big community to build something collectively and bootstrap it to the scale that it needs to reach to compete with existing infrastructure incumbents,” Nelson said. “I’m not aware of any other financial system that would offer this kind of functionality.”



According to the <a href="https://hivemapper.com/explorer">Hivemapper Explorer,</a> there are currently over 130,000 contributors across 3,253 regions. Over 11,231,955 kilometers have been mapped, marking around 19% of the total globe so far.



Updated April 25, 2024 at 12 pm ET: Clarified to emphasize that Helium is a decentralized wireless network, not a decentralized cellular network. 



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DePin projects have gained momentum on Solana blockchain

Macauley Peterson

German conglomerate Bosch, a major player in sensor manufacturing, has multiple Web3 initiatives underway. The latest is a small device capable of generating data on real world conditions such as weather, light and noise pollution, and seismic activity.



Connected to Web3 rails, it’s part of a growing segment of crypto known as Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/depin">DePIN</a>).



The new device, known as Bosch XDK110 Rapid Prototyping Kit, is a smart sensor that allows users to earn crypto rewards by providing data, without involving a centralized intermediary.



Each device is outfitted with a unique digital identity that enables it to interact with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/peaq">peaq</a>, whose &#8220;krest&#8221; network is running on Polkadot &#8220;canary network&#8221; <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/ksm">Kusama</a>. Peaq has secured a full <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polkadot-rethinks-parachain-auctions">Polkadot parachain</a> lease, which is not yet in use.



A third partner, Fetch.ai, provides autonomous AI agents that can optimize the devices&#8217; activity to maximize owner rewards, the companies say. Fetch’s DeltaV marketplace enables data consumers to connect with a network of decentralized suppliers.



Bosch is “not really focused on one blockchain or on one decentralized marketplace,” Peter Busch, product owner of the company’s distributed ledger technologies mobility team, told Blockworks.



“So in terms of data sovereignty, privacy, security, what we can accomplish with these decentralized technologies — self-sovereign identity — is really that we are using [our personal data] in a more anonymous way.”



The trio of companies showcased a proof-of-concept at a recent hackathon at the University of Applied Sciences in Saarbruecken, Germany.



Fetch has been working with Bosch for quite a while, aiming to create privacy preserving data sharing around the use of AI agents, as part of MoveID, a publicly funded project led by Bosch, which has similar goals.



“One of the key aspects is to enable self-sovereign identities in vehicles and in mobility infrastructure,” Maria Minaricova, Fetch’s business development lead, told Blockworks.



“You give the machines identity, and they can operate autonomously,” she said.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/drive-to-earn-app-dynamic-maps-crypto-rewards">‘Drive-to-earn’ app aims to bootstrap ‘dynamic maps’ with crypto rewards</a>



Taking control of privacy and monetizing user-generated data is one of the chief narratives around Web3 technologies, generally. And the EU is making a large push in this area, Busch said, even as the role of crypto is politically fraught.



“We are looking for alternative technologies apart from the classic cloud technologies from Google and Amazon,” he said. “They are in [the car] already and they take more and more parts of the car, and this is quite a dangerous situation.”



“Together with peaq, for example, we have a use-case where you can show how the car interacts with the charging [point] in a decentralized way,” Busch said, while preserving the privacy of the driver’s data.



Token incentives bootstrap the deployment of such devices and services — Helium’s wireless mobile data is one notable example.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-cell-plan-goes-nationwide">Unlimited Helium Mobile cell plan goes nationwide for $20 a month</a>



Payments can settle on different blockchains — not only on Fetch.ai, a Cosmos-based blockchain, but also peaq, on Polkadot, and even, to existing Web2 systems, through the use of APIs.



Updated Dec. 7, 2023 at 9:13 am ET: Clarified that while peaq has a Polkadot parachain, it&#8217;s not currently in use.



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Bosch DePIN device lets you share data and earn crypto

Max Thake

It’s funny, and even a little bit annoying, how a stale tech cliche can make a comeback. Just a few years ago, the mantra “data is the new oil” could give you a headache. It carried the weight of the endless strategic meetings, overly-enthusiastic sales calls and pitches, millions pumped into “data transformation” — a concept as alluring as it was vague.&nbsp;



And yet, here we are: The Big Data market is blooming, expected to blow up to more than <a href="https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/news/imarc/explosive-growth-projected-in-the-global-big-data-market-cagr-of-14-9-expected-for-2023-2028">$624 billion</a> by 2028. From <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2023/07/01/reddit-and-twitter-the-new-giants-of-anti-social-media/">walled-off APIs</a> to the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/18/23729216/twitter-microsoft-api-data-sharing-elon-musk-satya-nadella">Musk-Microsoft</a> spat and Stack Overflow’s release of <a href="https://venturebeat.com/ai/stack-overflow-jumps-into-the-generative-ai-world-with-overflow-ai/">Overflow AI</a>, a lot of the things that make the buzz in the tech world come down to one theme: data, and all the intricacies around it. Come ChatGPT and its AI kin, and the elden prophecy suddenly begins to make sense.&nbsp;



Turns out data is the new oil after all — but who’s holding the drill? Thanks to the most exciting development in years, going by the least exciting acronym in years – DePIN, the answer is you.



The DePIN model enables us to take ownership of our data and earn from it, or opt out of selling it if we so choose. It makes people stakeholders and players in the data market, not just data points to be harvested. In a sense, it takes drilling away from centralized giants and hands everyone their own personal oil rig, which is a lot fairer and more compliant.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Our robot overlords demand your seventh-grade essay</h2>



Maybe it wasn’t your best writing, but yes, SkynetGPT still wants a read. How else would it know how to impersonate a seventh-grader? And while we’re at it, it also wants to scrape every marketing blog out there, take a very close look at the latest financial forecasts, and check up on any copyright-free novels. Not that it understands anything (yet), mind you. For SkynetGPT, all these texts are nothing but data, which it processes to train itself to approximate human writing.&nbsp;



Data is the fuel powering the engine of machine learning, which produces both advanced generative AIs like ChatGPT and StableDiffusion and simpler models. And, as any fuel, it first has to be extracted and processed. Where from? Well… More often than not, from the lived human experience. Social media and forum posts, publicly-accessible texts and image archives, platforms for artists and other creatives — that’s where you drill if you need to train an AI. And those rigs better be pumping non-stop, cause you’ll need troves and troves. To put things into context, Stable Diffusion was trained on <a href="https://waxy.org/2022/08/exploring-12-million-of-the-images-used-to-train-stable-diffusions-image-generator/">2.3 billion images</a>, which is a hefty amount.&nbsp;



Almost a decade ago, Google was forced to shelf an <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/google-glass-reasonable-expectation-of-privacy/">AR glasses project</a> due to privacy outcry — where is the same outcry over Apple Vision Pro? We’ve grown used to Big Tech privacy intrusions, and the age of AI will put them on steroids. Your Reddit posts, your Instagram pictures, your Artstation displays — everything will work as the fuel for the AI engine.



And it’s not stopping there.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data makes the world go round</h2>



The truth is, the rise of generative AI didn’t magically turn data into new oil — it has been that all along. ChatGPT and other generative models are stealing the show, but data also fuels a ton of other services we are using every day, from GPS navigation, which use live traffic data to find routes with the least amount of traffic, to weather services, which obviously want to know the latest temperatures, humidity, etc, in any given city or region.



By the same account, more and more devices we use every day work as data harvesters. Take the seemingly innocent fitness trackers — their makers usually deny they sell your data without your permission, but have you really read the terms of conditions on the app when signing up? Because that data is lucrative, and they could in fact <a href="https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/preemptive-safety/fitness-tracker-privacy">be selling</a> yours. The same goes for smartphones, smart home devices, office tech and more. The more devices we use, the more data gets captured and, often, sold off to third parties, without us getting a dime or even knowing about it in the first place.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/web3-regular-people-adoption" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Web3 is for regular people, too</a>



But as we are nearing the always-connected dystopia brimming with sensors recording everything, there is a better, more democratic way of doing things. It’s called DePIN, short for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks,&nbsp; and they are the engines powering the data markets of tomorrow in a more equitable way.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Everybody gets a drill</h2>



DePINs use tokens to incentivize people and businesses to direct physical infrastructure — i.e. devices, vehicles, or machines of any kind — to provide real-world services and earn. 5G networks, weather data, car sharing, street mapping, pollution monitoring and so much more — all on the blockchain, all peer-to-peer, all crowdfunded, crowdsourced, crowdowned.&nbsp;



Under the logic of today’s user data monetization, which Shoshana Zuboff aptly called Surveillance Capitalism, a human life is an oil deposit for Big Tech to harvest. DePINs turn this model upside down, enabling anybody to set up their own rig and opt to sell their data, properly anonymized.&nbsp;



From heath tracker data to insights gathered from AI-powered cameras or weather data from across the globe, the DePIN model can deliver any sort of data. It has already <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/drive-to-earn-app-dynamic-maps-crypto-rewards" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proven its ability to scale</a> at a pace far beyond the capabilities of tech giants and deploy fast anywhere and everywhere in the world. So while the AI models that will power anything from mobility to weather prediction will require a lot of data, DePINs will surely deliver. DePINs aren’t just solving the problem at the end-user level, they’re replacing the whole system.&nbsp;



So what, let’s get drillin’?



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Max Thake is an entrepreneur, writer, and co-founder of peaq, a blockchain network powering the Economy of Things, and EoT Labs, a software development and incubation organization supporting open-source projects focused on the Economy of Things. peaq empowers people to manage and earn from vehicles and devices as they provide goods and services to people and other machines. Max has built multiple organizations, teams and brands during his years in the blockchain space. He operates at the intersection between the humanities and sciences and enjoys explaining technological complexity in simple terms and using it to solve problems.</div>


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Don’t give your life to Big Tech for free

Hardware and chip technology provider ARM Research and Web3 platform IoTeX have brought confidential computing of encrypted data to IoTeX’s DePIN stack.



DePIN, short for decentralized physical infrastructure networks, is designed so that contributors can build out decentralized infrastructure for any individual or company to use in return for financial compensation.&nbsp;



The latest functionality to join the DePIN stack will be confidential computing, allowing developers to compute encrypted data. This new framework is written in Rust.



Dr. Xinxin Fan, IoTeX co-founder and head of blockchain, told Blockworks that confidential computing is a hardware-backed security and privacy enhancing technology designed specifically for protecting data as it’s in use.



This means that a computation system will be able to derive knowledge from encrypted data without ever revealing what the information inside is. Although there are similarities between confidential computing and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/zero-knowledge-proof">zero-knowledge proofs</a>, Fan notes that there are differences.&nbsp;



“Zero-knowledge technology roots its security in mathematics, whereas confidential computing relies on specific security features of hardware,” Fan said, adding that he believes confidential computing is “much more efficient” than zk proofs.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/a16z-zkrollup-proof-system">Zero-knowledge proof systems have room for improvement, say cryptography researchers</a>



IoTeX’s indoor security camera, Ucam, will be the first physical proof of concept for this collaboration. Ucam users will not need to expose their private home information to manufacturers.&nbsp;



This is a step towards both personal privacy and privacy on a larger scale, IoTeX explained in a <a href="https://iotex.io/blog/iotex-collaborates-with-arm-research/">blog post.</a> Individuals no longer need to give unencrypted data to manufacturers or cloud service providers. Organizations, on the other hand, will be able to collect insights without exposing the private information of their clients through trusted node servers.



Using Ucams as an example, security providers will be able to share insights on home invasions with a security firm without having to show the security firm the actual images of their client&#8217;s homes, IoTeX said.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/drive-to-earn-app-dynamic-maps-crypto-rewards">‘Drive-to-earn’ app aims to bootstrap ‘dynamic maps’ with crypto rewards</a>



Another example of this would be Web3 health app Healthblocks. The company has licensed private fitness data and sent them to health researchers for analysis through private computing. This means that these researchers will be able to anonymously analyze data without knowing which client this information belongs to.



“This industry recognized Arm PSA certification establishes a solid security foundation for bringing smart devices to Web3 in a trustworthy manner, further revolutionizing the decentralized IoT industry and giving IoTeX a bigger lead within the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN),” Fan said. “It will also significantly challenge the corporations currently monopolizing the industry, such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, to mention a few.”



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IoTeX launches confidential computing hardware stack

In the trendy area of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN), a recently launched smartphone app proposes to bootstrap the creation of &#8220;dynamic maps&#8221; through token incentives.



Even though its proposed blockchain-based token economy is months away from launch, the app has already met with early success, mapping 1 million kilometers in about 2.5 months. That’s a faster pace than <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/where-are-the-web3-apps" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hivemapper</a>, a hardware dashcam and app that competes with Google Street View using token incentives, the company says.



Hivemapper and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/helium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Helium</a> are two sources of inspiration for Natix — the company behind the app — as it moves towards a crypto business model, CEO and co-founder Alireza Ghods told Blockworks.



“I come from the autonomous driving industry [where] mapping or maps are super important,”  Ghods said. “For me and you, maps are a representation of the real world. For autonomous objects, it&#8217;s their world, that&#8217;s how they operate.”



A future where autonomous agents navigate the real world takes data — lots of it.



Hamburg, Germany-based Natix has been around since 2020 building a privacy-focused computer vision platform for smartphones. But it closed a $3.5 million <a href="https://www.natix.network/blog/natix-network-raised-3-5-million-seed-round-for-development" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">seed round</a> in April in a pivot towards crypto as a means to kick-start growth of its app, called Drive&amp; — yes with the ampersand — which has launched on both Android and iOS.



So far the company has logged about 10,000 registered users, and reports around 4,000 weekly active users, a rate of growth which Ghods attributes to its smartphone strategy, leveraging hardware that users already have rather than requiring special devices.



“It’s a supercomputer you have in your pocket” and “a sensor hotel,” he said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A token economy to scale</h2>



Unlike apps that record video or images, Drive&amp; imagery never leaves the users’ devices, allaying privacy concerns. Instead, it’s processed in situ, and converted to anonymized data — that’s why it’s called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_computing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">edge computing</a>.”



Natix takes the data and converts it into maps which can provide valuable information on meatspace such as road congestion, crowd size, and available parking spots.



“Dynamic maps enable a new era of smart city and smart mobility applications ranging from crowd management to autonomous driving,” the project’s <a href="https://docs.natix.network/whitepaper/introduction" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">white paper</a> notes.



But unlocking that value requires scaling the data pool massively.



“You need a certain critical mass before you can monetize these networks,” Ghods said, “you cannot just monetize one driver, but a few hundred drivers per city — that&#8217;s where the story gets interesting.”



This is why the idea of creating a token economy makes sense, according to Leonard Dorloechter, co-founder of Peaq, which is providing the blockchain infrastructure for the planned Natix Network.



“We&#8217;re building a layer-1 specifically for DePIN providing a decentralized backend that has the functionalities which are commonly needed,” Dorloechter told Blockworks.



That includes modules for things like decentralized identity, data storage, access control and payments.



Peaq won a Polkadot parachain auction <a href="https://www.peaq.network/blog/peaq-gears-up-for-mainnet-launch-with-polkadot-auction-win" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">on July 13</a> which will give it a two-year lease beginning at the end of this month.



DePIN is a new buzzword for a concept also known as Proof of Physical Work (PoPw) and popularized by Multicoin Capital <a href="https://multicoin.capital/2022/04/05/proof-of-physical-work/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">in April 2022</a>.



“DePIN is the Frodo Baggins of crypto,” Peaq <a href="https://www.peaq.network/blog/what-are-decentralized-physical-infrastructure-networks-depin" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a> in a February blog. “Unassuming, even endearing at first glance. But with it comes the potential to unite Web3&#8217;s most promising fields; IoT/EoT, energy, telecoms, mobility, behind one term.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A ‘Web 2.5’ play</h2>



The Natix approach today is, admittedly, not using crypto, but Ghods sees that as a necessary phase to onboarding users, some of whom eventually will participate in a true Web3 economy, be active in a governance DAO, and so on.



“Do you think we&#8217;re going to onboard the next couple of billion users by giving them the same experience that we’re giving [now] — with downloading wallets and looking at transaction hashes and things?” Ghods asked.



&#8220;They don&#8217;t care about blockchain — it&#8217;s just another technology — but what they do care about is their life being easier or some utility added for them, or added value for them,&#8221; he said.



The app starts off with a points system, where the rewards are redeemable for discounts on consumer electronics. They are not transferable or exchangeable on independent marketplaces.



“If you&#8217;re asking me to connect my MetaMask and I don&#8217;t have a MetaMask, and I&#8217;m an Uber driver…you lose that guy as a user,” Ghods said.



But that’s just a stepping stone.



“We do have a chance to educate you on what crypto is, and I think if you do this right, then we have a chance to onboard you into even creating a wallet,” he said.



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