DePIN and Chill? 🧊

January 23rd, 2026

Author

DePIN Digest
January 23, 2026

GM, happy Friday! Matt here, slingin’ the cold-snap edition of the digest while preppin’ for an ice storm.

Don’t worry, though: Acurast lit a fire by launching its long-awaited mainnet and TGE, with its $ACU token now listed on major exchanges. 🔥

Meanwhile, Aethir stoked the flames with its 2025 numbers, bringing in $127.8M in revenue and delivering 1.5 billion compute hours.

XMAQUINA’s portfolio is looking cozy after BOT-09 passed, having recently initiated a $1.75m position in NEURA Robotics in accordance with the DAO’s vote.

Peaq provided fireside chat topics on tokenized robotics as part of its 2026 plans announcement, including a long-term master plan and a focus on Machines and AI Agents.

Feeling warm yet?

💻 Cryogenic Compute

Distributed computing is certainly sweating after this week’s heavy lifting. But, before we dive in, be sure to follow Acurast’s migration guide from Canarynet to Mainnet to ensure you’re getting properly rewarded.

With that PSA out of the way, let’s cold plunge into some numbers: Aethir highlighted an impressive 86% cost reduction for a customer, Titan Network hit 100,000 online nodes, and NodeOps reported explosive network metrics, including $4.56m in revenue.

Ar.io, meanwhile, refreshed its brand and website. Hivello announced managed node rentals, and PinLink introduced its Hashrate Bank for self-repaying capital. 

Speaking of capital, Exabits partnered with D. Boral ARC Acquisition I Corp ahead of a NASDAQ listing. AIOZ plugged in AURK AI for scalable object storage for AI Agents, and DoubleZero launched a new 10 Gbps link between Oslo and London. Exciting developments across the industry, but the best part? There’s more.

DeepLink announced pay-per-minute gaming, the Filecoin Foundation introduced the Constellation Program for governance reform, and Render Network highlighted Octane 2026 along with new merch.

Shooting for the quantum stars, Dynex appointed Prof. Dr. Kathrin Gabriele Kind as its Chief of Quantum-Driven Solutions.

💎 Cold Hard Cash Tokens

An integral part of our industry’s approach to solving problems and bootstrapping networks, let’s review this past week’s token happenings:

📡 Cool Comms & Real Robots 🤖

We’re picking up the pace as my feet get chilly.

We got some noise out of Chirp this week as they launched subscriptions for connectivity, device management, and data services. Dabba also generated buzz, reporting 5,000 TB of data consumed in just 5 days as demand continues to soar.

Linking us up, Uplink announced its Testnet and router registrations, so stay tuned for more in the coming weeks. Keeping things private, ANyONe registered 1500 “.anyone” domains and achieved a record bandwidth and more exit relays than any other onion network.

Over in mapping, 375edge went live in Los Angeles, the NYC Metro, and nice, warm Miami. LayerDrone shared weekly leaderboards with over 40 flight hours from top pilots, and Wingbits tracked the Stratolaunch ROCC01 launch live. On the subject of pilots, Qualoo postponed its TGE to finalize its client pilots and lock in strategic equity. 

Delysium expanded its LucyOSAI capabilities for real-time social analysis and automated risk auditing, Teneo activated live x402 payments, and iGAM3 announced a major upcoming update for its AI infrastructure on Peaq.

What a jam-packed week of development updates.

📋 Updates & Reports

Let’s cap it all off with some weekend reading:

It’s a bright road ahead for DePIN.

👋 See Ya Soon!

Thanks for checking in. We’re here to keep you updated, so be sure to get the full value by following Matt, Will, and the Digest on X and keeping an eye out for future founder interviews and broadcasts.