With cycles we constantly see ups and downs depending on market conditions. That being said we can look back just a few years ago at the the metaverse and what a hyped up mess that turned into. While there was some customer base there it quickly evaporated once the lockdowns ended and people just got sick and tired of it all.

Now we are seeing a new trend start to be picked up by major invested which is called DePIN.

What Is DePIN ?

DePIN mainly stands for Blockchain based physical hardware infrastructure that is made up in a digital way. By hardware think of things like mining equipment or other equipment you have running in your home.

I think the biggest case people would know about for this would be Helium which is a network powered by people running hardware and broadcasting it from a area. It's geared to build a decentralized wireless infrastructure.

IDK about you but where I live even though it's a newer development it has crap for internet and a lot of people around here are starting to use Helium hotspots which is actully really cool to see growing.

Expanding Helium

Helium works in a decentralized manner by people running hot spots in their area. This coverage per hot spot if rather small but combined with others allow for great coverage in a area.

It's a direct decentralized competition to the likes of AT&T, Verizon etc. But the question is if it will pick up enough interest. I'll admit when I was paying $75 a month for a cell phone that I hardly used it kind of ticked me off until I moved to Mint and I have to say if you don't use your phone for many calls and mainly just texting etc then it's a solid very low cost option. I now save myself $720 a year by making that switch.

It makes me think I should run another Helium network or something like it with that saved money and use it.

Helium rewards hot spot users via their native token called HNT which I have to be honest with you has done ok in terms of price.

Helium also now runs on Solana blockchain instead of their own which is also showing us increased options in terms of blockchains piggy backing off of other blockchains.

It also shows us that we are still lightyears away from a truly decentralized system but things don't happen over night.

VCs

Ah yes the good old VCs otherwise known as venture capital. They have been investing pretty heavily into this sector as of late. However one things that that VCs are currently missing is that the userbase simply is not there to use the platforms which is creating very little in terms of revenue.

The question really comes down to now if there will ever bee enough demand for these types of products or are we doomed by the system created to always rely on centralized systems to get things done be it government or company.

Posted Using InLeo Alpha