Is DePIN Dead? 💀

January 30th, 2026

Author

DePIN Digest
January 30, 2026

GM, happy Friday! Matt here, combating the latest crypto-twitter FUD.

Messari wrapped up 2025 in DePIN, answering the question on everyone’s mind since the October 10th crash: “Is DePIN Dead?”

According to them, the days of building networks without demand are gone. The landscape has clearly shifted to favor revenue-driven token models, prioritizing revenue before token launches.

Honestly, they’re right.

Helium paves the way, reaching 2.5 million DAUs (Daily Active Users) and now burns $11M of $HNT from carrier offload.

Silencio, meanwhile, is moving at the speed of sound, with 1.5 million users across 180+ countries and well on its way to achieving product-market fit (PMF).

Dabba Network is in a similar position, having deferred its TGE, but made 100,000 connections across India as demand for its low-cost connectivity surges.

This is where the rubber meets the road for DePIN.

📋 Healthy Reports; Wellness Updates

Before that, let’s jumpstart the heart with a few health-related DePIN updates and project reports:

Always keep a finger on the pulse of your favorite projects!

🗺️ The Path Ahead

Clear-cut value props are vital; just ask OVR the Reality, which released its 2026 roadmap with city-scale 3D mapping, or Onocoy, on track to generate $1.3m in revenue this year from GNSS correction data.

More in mapping: NATIX collected 5,000 hours of driving data in 30 days using VX360 devices; ROVR began shipping LightCone devices to early stakers; and Wingbits continues to track air freight using its live monitoring interface.

We love broadcasting the signal, and so do DePIN Telecoms like Chirp, which recently introduced SMS notifications for automation alerts.

What’s more, World Mobile, which has sold 100,000 AirNodes, now has 3 million DAUs.

These users are now connected via a common network, much like how DePIN partnerships are formed:

 🤝 Crust Network x Xcavate - Decentralized Storage via Xcavate 2.0
 🤝 NATIX x Valeo - World Model for Physical AI
 🔌 DoubleZero x Allnodes - Solana-optimized Infrastructure
 🔌 Render Network x VIVOBAREFOOT - Immersive 18k Worlds

On the subject, have you seen the incredible displays made possible by DePIN? If not, you’re missing out.

💻 Cloudy With a Chance of Updates

Speaking of displays, we’ve been monitoring the cloud compute & storage sectors, and the projects there have made some gains this week.

AIOZ Network launched an Image Optimization feature along with its Vision Paper V2, detailing its decentralized solutions. Flux, meanwhile, shipped a Deploy with Git feature, Titan Network released a beginner’s guide to DePIN ownership, and YOM kicked off its Founder Edition NANO node sale. Ionet also added several new models and updates.

Livepeer gave us a glimpse into the future of security with its Protocol R&D SPE and the restart of treasury rewards at 10%. They also initiated a Cloud SPE to ensure clear, transparent network observability.

For hard stats, NodeOps proudly reported $4.5m in revenue and 25,749 total deployments. Elsewhere, Acurast provided an update on its network stats, reporting 593m on-chain transactions across 171,787 devices.

Auki’s latest community call came with a new Cactus AR UI update and client details, while XMAQUINA launched a DAO vote on RCM Protocol funding. Theta Network launched an MCP server for AI model access, and Teneo capped off the week by adding Binance Wallet support to its Agent Console.

💎 Token Talks

Tokens remain a big part of healthy DePIN networks, as Teneo knows. Here’s the quick rundown of token talks from the past week:

It’s the end of January, and many DePINs are showing off their visions for the rest of 2026. We’ve got plans of our own, so stay tuned.

👋 Thanks for Stopping By

Or better yet, thanks for having us (in your inbox). Be sure to follow Matt, Will, and the Digest on X to get the full scoop and join us on X spaces to talk shop.

Stay warm and upbeat, and we’ll catch you in the next issue of the Digest.