DePIN Revolution: 12 Top Crypto Projects Shaping the Future of Web3

The DePIN Boom Sweeping the Crypto Market: What You Need to Know

Distributed Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) have become the hottest track in the crypto industry for 2024-2025. This is not a bubble but a genuine market signal—data shows that by the end of 2025, the total market capitalization of the entire DePIN ecosystem will exceed $32 billion, with daily trading volumes approaching $3 billion. Top venture capital firms like VanEck and Borderless Capital are entering the space, with the latter even launching a $100 million DePIN-focused fund targeting rapid expansion opportunities worldwide.

The core of this movement is simple: reconstruct ownership and revenue-sharing mechanisms of traditional infrastructure using blockchain technology. Whether it’s energy networks, wireless communication, or data storage, DePIN projects incentivize ordinary people to contribute their hardware resources through token mechanisms, building truly decentralized networks. Rather than a technological revolution, it’s a complete upheaval of economic models.

Decentralized Infrastructure: From Theory to Reality

The core logic of DePIN is straightforward—use blockchain as a trust layer and tokens as an incentive layer, enabling anyone to become an infrastructure provider rather than just a consumer. What does this mean? For example: solar-powered households can no longer only sell excess electricity to monopolistic power companies but can directly trade with neighbors on the blockchain; creative workers no longer need to rent expensive cloud servers but can purchase required services from decentralized global computing providers.

Hardware Decentralization: The Backbone of the DePIN Ecosystem

Hardware decentralization is key to DePIN’s success. Take Helium Network as an example: this project has attracted over 335,000 users to its mobile service ecosystem. By deploying home-level network nodes (hotspots), ordinary people can cover local networks while earning token rewards. Similarly, Meson Network has deployed over 59,000 contributor nodes globally, creating a decentralized bandwidth marketplace for unstable internet connections.

The beauty of this hardware dispersal model is: no single point of failure, no central controller can arbitrarily shut down services, and participants are both owners and beneficiaries. This is exactly what traditional infrastructure models lack.

How DePIN Really Works

DePIN projects operate on three pillars:

Blockchain Layer—Immutable transaction records and smart contracts that automatically execute, ensuring all participants are rewarded according to rules.

Token Incentive Mechanism—Resources contributed by participants, such as computing power, storage, and bandwidth, are exchanged for tradable digital tokens, creating real economic value.

Interoperability—DePIN projects must seamlessly integrate with other blockchain networks and traditional systems to truly mainstream.

Compared to traditional models, this design offers clear advantages: lower costs (no middlemen), higher efficiency (peer-to-peer direct connections), and greater democratization (anyone can participate).

Why Investors Are Wildly Optimistic About DePIN

The advantages demonstrated by the DePIN ecosystem are impressive:

Security Upgrades—Decentralized networks eliminate vulnerabilities of traditional infrastructure. No central data centers mean no single attack target.

Economies of Scale—Projects like Filecoin and Arweave have proven that incentivizing global nodes can build enterprise-level storage infrastructure at very low costs. In Q3 2023, Arweave processed 28 billion transactions and hosted over 130 active applications.

Cost Revolution—Platforms like U2U Network create network effects through token incentives, enabling rapid infrastructure building without huge initial investments.

Innovation Frontiers—Projects like Streamr show how real-time data exchange can operate in fully decentralized environments, unimaginable a few years ago.

By the end of 2025, the market cap of the DePIN field has reached over $32 billion, with analysts projecting this figure could swell to $3.5 trillion by 2028. What does this mean? It signifies the birth of a completely new industry.

The Top 12 DePIN Crypto Projects in the Market

1. Internet Computer (ICP) — The Dream of a Global Computer

Internet Computer is not a traditional blockchain but a grand experiment: replacing cloud service giants with a decentralized data center network. Developed by DFINITY Foundation, ICP aims to create a “world computer” that deploys network applications directly on a public blockchain.

Compared to Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, which require trust in their servers, ICP allows developers to deploy directly onto a network maintained by independent operators worldwide. This is true DePIN—ownership of infrastructure is dispersed, governance belongs to the community.

In 2024, ICP underwent three major protocol upgrades (Tokamak, Beryllium, Stellarator), significantly improving network performance and security. Most notably, its latest data shows: current price $3.03, circulating market cap $1.65 billion, down 72.89% over the past year. The story behind this figure is interesting—despite overall market downturns, ICP’s progress in technology and ecosystem has never stopped. Looking ahead to 2025, ICP’s roadmap focuses on AI integration and cross-chain interoperability with networks like Solana.

2. Bittensor (TAO) — A New Attempt at AI Democratization

If ICP is about decentralized computing infrastructure, Bittensor is about decentralized machine learning. This open-source protocol merges blockchain and AI, creating a collaborative neural network marketplace.

In Bittensor’s network, participants can contribute their ML models and computing power, earning TAO tokens based on the value of their contributions. It breaks the monopoly of AI resources by big tech companies, allowing AI developers and compute providers worldwide to participate.

In 2024, TAO launched Proof of Intelligence and a decentralized Mixture of Experts mechanism, greatly expanding the network’s AI service capacity. Latest data shows: TAO current price $222.80, market cap $2.14 billion, down 55.55% over the past year. Despite price pressures, the project’s innovation in AI remains relentless, with many mainstream exchanges actively supporting its development.

3. Render Network (RENDER) — Democratizing GPU Computing Power

3D rendering, video effects, virtual reality—these industries require massive GPU resources, often controlled by a few cloud providers. Render changes all that.

By utilizing underused GPUs worldwide, Render has created a peer-to-peer rendering marketplace. Creatives and studios can buy compute power on demand, while owners of idle GPUs earn income by providing computing resources. This is one of the most elegant applications of DePIN.

The big news in 2024 is Render’s migration from Ethereum to Solana, with the token renamed from RNDR to RENDER. This migration significantly improved transaction speed and network efficiency, with all major exchanges supporting the switch 1:1. Current RENDER price lacks real-time data (not provided), but based on past performance and market surveys, the project continues to enjoy broad support in creative and tech communities. Looking ahead to 2025, Render plans to further expand applications in film, gaming, and VR industries.

4. Filecoin (FIL) — Infrastructure for Permanent Storage

Data on the internet is hosted on servers of cloud providers; Filecoin’s mission is to change that. By creating a decentralized storage marketplace, anyone with extra disk capacity can become a storage provider, and anyone needing storage can buy directly from these providers.

In 2024, FIL launched Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM), a groundbreaking upgrade allowing deployment of Ethereum-compatible smart contracts on Filecoin. This opens new application possibilities, from on-chain payments to collateral markets. Total Value Locked (TVL) has surpassed $200 million.

However, FIL current price $1.25, market cap $913 million, down 0.71% over the past year. Despite being below the all-time high of $11.47 in March 2024, the technical progress remains impressive. The 2025 plan includes further expanding FVM’s programming capabilities, enabling developers to create and deploy their own AI agents.

5. The Graph (GRT) — The Google of Blockchain Data

If blockchain is the internet, then The Graph is the search engine indexing that internet. This decentralized indexing protocol allows developers to query blockchain data without running their own nodes.

GRT tokens incentivize participants (indexers, curators, delegators) to provide high-quality data indexing services. In 2024, The Graph continues to expand multi-chain support, now covering Ethereum, NEAR, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, Celo, Fantom, and Moonbeam.

GRT current market cap $1.93 billion, up 67% over the past year. One of the better-performing projects in the DePIN track. The 2025 roadmap is ambitious: expanding data service markets, upgrading developer tools, optimizing indexer performance, supporting composite data, and ongoing protocol evolution.

6. Theta Network (THETA) — The Decentralized Video Streaming Revolution

High costs and low efficiency of content streaming—this is what Theta aims to solve. By enabling users to share excess bandwidth and computing resources, Theta creates a cheaper, more efficient video delivery network.

The network uses a dual-token model: THETA for governance, TFUEL for transactions and participant incentives. The 2024 highlight is the launch of EdgeCloud—a next-generation solution combining cloud and edge computing, designed specifically for video, multimedia, and AI applications.

THETA current price $0.27, market cap $265.4 million, down 88.79% over the past year. This reflects the cyclical market adjustment. From a technical perspective, Theta’s EdgeCloud vision remains unchanged—building a distributed computing network operated by global community nodes. The 2025 plan includes launching EdgeCloud Phase 3, an open marketplace directly connecting clients and community-managed edge nodes.

7. Arweave (AR) — Pioneer of Permanent Data Storage

Arweave is not just simple cloud storage but a “permanent network.” It uses a unique blockweave structure (different from traditional linear blockchains), where each block links to multiple previous blocks, creating a highly redundant data network.

Its consensus mechanism, SPoRA (Succinct Proof of Random Access), requires miners to prove access to randomly selected historical data blocks, incentivizing long-term data preservation. AR tokens are used to pay for storage, creating a sustainable economic model.

In November 2024, Arweave released Protocol 2.8, introducing new packing formats that significantly improve network efficiency, scalability, and energy efficiency. AR current price $3.47, market cap $227 million, down 79.79% over the past year. This “drop” is influenced by the market bear cycle, but the project’s technological innovation remains relentless. The 2025 plan includes further ecosystem expansion, more dApp integrations, and improved developer tools.

8. Helium (HNT) — Decentralized IoT Wireless Network

Helium’s vision is simple and powerful: build a decentralized long-range wireless network for IoT devices. Anyone can buy and deploy hotspot devices to cover local areas while mining HNT tokens.

This incentive model has proven effective—over 335,000 users have joined Helium Mobile, demonstrating that decentralized wireless infrastructure can expand rapidly and reward individual contributors. Helium Network now runs on Solana blockchain, gaining better scalability and transaction speed.

In 2024, Helium continues expanding the network, focusing on integrating 5G capabilities. The introduction of subnets like IOT and MOBILE (convertible to HNT) further diversifies the ecosystem. HNT current price $1.50, market cap $279.1 million, down 79.78% over the past year. The 2025 plan includes optimizing Proof-of-Coverage and expanding global coverage.

9. Grass Network (GRASS) — Data Providers for the AI Era

Grass is an emerging project with a unique innovative model: allowing users to earn income by sharing unused internet bandwidth. These data are collected, structured, and used for AI model training.

In 2024, Grass experienced explosive growth—attracting 2 million users during testing. Its native token GRASS was airdropped in October 2024, distributed to nearly 1.5 million eligible wallets.

GRASS current price $0.30, market cap $129.4 million, down 87.62% over the past year. Despite price fluctuations, the project’s user base and market potential remain huge. The 2025 plan includes expanding infrastructure, optimizing user acquisition strategies, and establishing governance and community participation mechanisms.

10. JasmyCoin (JASMY) — The Revolution of IoT and Data Sovereignty

JasmyCoin, developed by Tokyo-based Jasmy Corporation, aims to integrate blockchain with IoT, strengthening data sovereignty and security. Founded in 2016 by former Sony executives, the project seeks to build a decentralized data marketplace where users have full control over their personal information.

Using blockchain, Jasmy enables secure data exchange among IoT devices, allowing users to manage and profit from their data without relying on central authorities. In 2024, JASMY saw remarkable growth: current price $0.01, market cap $300.1 million, down 84.35% over the past year. This decline is part of the overall market correction. JASMY previously peaked at a $1.35 billion market cap in the first half of 2024, driven by rumors of partnerships with NVIDIA and Ripple. The 2025 plan focuses on strategic alliances with IoT device manufacturers, demonstrating real data application value.

11. IoTeX (IOTX) — DePIN Operating System for Cross-Device IoT

IoTeX is a decentralized platform connecting blockchain and IoT, building a secure, scalable ecosystem for machine-to-machine communication. Its unique Roll-DPoS consensus mechanism offers high throughput and low latency, ideal for IoT applications.

Its native token IOTX is used for transactions, staking, and governance. In 2024, IoTeX launched version 2.0—a modular infrastructure supporting verifiable DePIN. This includes DePIN Infrastructure Modules (DIM) and Modular Security Pools (MSP), providing core capabilities and a unified trust layer for DePIN projects.

IOTX current price $0.01, market cap $685.3 million, down 81.42% over the past year. The ecosystem has expanded to over 230 dApps and 50 DePIN projects, making IoTeX a leading platform in DePIN. The 2025 vision is ambitious: connect 100 million devices, unlock trillions of dollars in real value, and become the foundational layer of DePIN in the entire crypto world.

The Real Challenges Facing DePIN

Despite promising prospects, DePIN still faces three major practical obstacles:

Technical Complexity—Integrating blockchain with physical infrastructure is no small feat. It requires a perfect balance of security, scalability, and compatibility. Seamless connection between decentralized networks and physical assets is critical for success.

Regulatory Maze—DePIN projects span two regulatory domains: digital and physical infrastructure. Blockchain regulations are still evolving, and rules vary greatly across jurisdictions, posing real risks for global expansion.

Market Acceptance—Traditional industries remain skeptical of DePIN. To gain mainstream adoption, DePIN must demonstrate clear advantages in cost, efficiency, and usability. Breaking through entrenched interests takes time and persistent proof.

The Big Outlook for 2025-2028

The entire DePIN space is accelerating. Market cap has grown from $25 billion a year ago to over $32 billion now, and this is just the beginning. Analysts generally predict that by 2028, the DePIN market could reach $35 trillion.

This is not wishful thinking. The driving forces come from real needs in computing, storage, and AI. As the world shifts toward decentralized infrastructure, DePIN projects will play a key role.

Final Perspective

DePIN is one of the most underestimated crypto narratives of 2024-2025. Despite the overall market setbacks, leading projects in this track are making impressive progress in technology and ecology. This is not a speculative bubble but a genuine bet on the future of infrastructure.

For investors, top DePIN crypto projects represent the intersection of technological innovation and economic paradigm disruption. Security, scalability, and decentralization—these three words define the essence of DePIN and highlight the projects worth watching. As markets mature and applications accelerate, DePIN will gradually move from geek experiments to mainstream use. The current downturn may be the best opportunity for visionary investors to position themselves.