Macauley Peterson

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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