DePIN, short for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks, lets you earn crypto by sharing things like spare Wi-Fi, computing power, or storage. This guide covers the history of DePIN technology, hot it works, and the most promising projects including buying DePIN tokens.
DePIN, short for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks, lets you earn crypto by sharing things like spare Wi-Fi, computing power, or storage. It creates decentralized networks without the middlemen to make services cheaper and more reliable. You get tokens for helping out, and the more people join, the bigger the network grows. Think decentralized Wi-Fi or cloud storage, powered by your spare resources.
Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) refers to decentralized infrastructure networks that you can use for your different needs or contribute to and get rewarded for your efforts.
In other words, you get the opportunity to provide infrastructure – your physical devices, computing power, digital storage, etc. – through this network and receive crypto tokens in return.
Lots of people are excited to share their Wifi, computers, and other gadgets, while helping to revolutionize and decentralize our usual physical infrastructures and get rewarded for this.
Who wouldn’t be?
On the other end, when you are a user of DePIN, you get decentralized, potentially more reliable and often cheaper services. For example, decentralized WiFi, or DeWi, for short.
Larger industry consumers are also interested in DePIN for it's ability to cut costs and work directly with under utilized resources. DePIN lets you maximize the usage of resoruces from providers while removing dependencies on single providers.
DePIN technology's key components are physical infrastructure, blockchain architecture, tokenized incentives, and off-chain middleware.
Physical infrastructure is what you and other people can offer to the network. It can be your WiFi router, your computer, or other devices. This pooling of resources underpins DePIN's ability to be decentralized.
The blockchain architecture behind DePIN projects is what connects your physical infrastructure to other peers on the network. It handles payments, escrow contracts, plus any other type of relationship between the service providers and end users. The ledger is public, transparent and includes timestamps, so everyone is always on the same page, or same blockchain, to be precise.
Tokenized incentives compensates contributors in any DePIN projects. The more you provide to the network, the more you get in return. The tokens you receive, you can use to access other network resources, or simply trade on apps, such as Magic Eden Swap or Slingshot.
While the blockchain world is usually against any unnecessary middlemen, off-chain middleware allows DePIN to function properly.
While blockchain powers the structure for the network to operate, a lot of the data needs to be handled before it’s committed to the ledger, which is where off-chain middleware comes into play. The specific use case depends on each project’s aim and service, but in general, this feature serves to process, manage and interpret data from the real world.
Put simply, Decentralized Physical Infrstructure networks work by people connecting their devices to the network, and get rewarded for doing so.
Without looking into all its nitty-gritty, decentralized physical infrastructure networks work pretty simply: people just connect their devices to one network and get rewarded for doing so. To use the network, users pay for their services. A large part of the money goes to folks who help create and maintain the network, helping the DePIN flywheel spin.
The DePIN flywheel is a great way to visualize the whole DePIN process, which is actually a self-reinforcing cycle.
Just to make things more interesting, let’s look into the two main types of DePIN projects: those relying on physical resources and those offering digital services.
Physical resource networks are what we most often refer to when we talk about DePIN. These are things you can touch and that can help create more decentralized networks. For example, you can provide your antennas for creating networks, contribute solar power to local grids, etc.
Digital resource networks are sometimes considered completely separate from DePIN, although you’ll also find opinions that they’re another subtype of DePINs. They let you provide digital goods like computing power, data storage or bandwidth.
DeREN is a Decentralized Renewable Energy Network, which is specifically focused on renewable energy resources and their infrastructure. In short, not every DePIN project deals with renewable energy, but every DeREN project is some kind of DePIN.
As such, DeREN is just another subtype of DePIN projects you can add to your recentralized vocabulary.
DeREN builders create, for example, decentralized energy markets, peer-to-peer energy trading, and similar energetic stuff.
While DePINs are revolutionizing the way we build and share our precious physical infrastructure, they come with their own share of challenges as well.
While you can join and/or use many cool already live DePINs, here we’ll take a quick look at the five biggest ones by the market cap of their native token.
Bittensor is a machine-learning network that creates a P2P marketplace letting people train, share and rank different AI models. It’s run by the TAO token, which is used for incentivization, governance, staking, validating, etc. Bittensor is considered a major driver of decentralized AI.
Market cap: $3.86 billion*
Internet Computer is a public blockchain network that wants to extend the public internet with native cloud computing functionality. In short, it wants smart contracts to run just as natively and powerfully as traditional software, and provides the resources for it. The ICP token can be staked, used for voting, governance and ownership, among other things.
Market cap: $2.86 billion
Render provides a distributed GPU network, harnessing idle GPU power from all over the world to give you near-limitless rendering capacity. It’s primarily aimed at artists, but anyone who need GPU power can take advantage of what the project is offering.RENDER holders get exclusive governance rights within the ecosystem.
Market cap: $2.47 billion
Filecoin is another well-known DePIN project, offering decentralized data storage. You can either use the storage or provide what they have, but there are also possibilities for building on the network to ensure interoperability with different Web3 networks. The FIL token is used for network payments, blockchain rewards and governance.
Market cap: $1.95 billion
Theta Network is a decentralized cloud for AI, media and entertainment, all powered by decentralized GPUs. It’s made up of Theta EdgeCloud, the part providing the decentralized GPU power, and Theta Blockchain, which handles the public ledger tied to the project. THETA is the governance token of the protocol, while the project also has TFUEL as the secondary token, which is used for on-chain operations like payments to Edge Nodes, etc.
Market cap (THETA): $895.17 million
* As of May 27, 2025
You can start your DePIN journey by joining a network, using it or simply buying the tokens of the project you’re interested in. On Magic Eden, we have a lot of different DePIN tokens, including DePIN NFTs that can symbolize the level of your contribution and impact within a DePIN world. If you are new to blockchain technology, we've written guides for how to swap tokens, make cross-chain swaps, bridge assets, and how to buy NFTs.
Connect your wallet to Magic Eden now to start trading DePIN tokens and NFTs.
While we don’t have a crystal ball, it seems that DePIN has a future, as decentralized physical infrastructure networks have many benefits. It’s a great way to find alternatives to big industry players if you’re an end user, or to earn money by providing idle devices if you want to participate.
The biggest benefits of DePIN come from its accessibility and decentralization. It lets more people participate and earn by providing required infrastructure, democratizing our usual networks. Among its benefits, we also find efficiency and security, both of which stem from its decentralized nature.
DePIN and RWA are completely separate concepts: DePIN serves to connect physical infrastructure using a blockchain network, while RWA is concerned with tokenizing real-world assets (hence the abbreviation), such as physical art or real estate.
The information provided on this website is provided for general educational purposes only and is in no way financial or investment advice. Certain information may have also been provided to us or prepared by third parties; these materials are provided for convenience and are not an endorsement by Magic Eden. Magic Eden is not liable for any errors, changes or amendments to such information, including any actions taken in reliance on such information.
