Greetings, Hotspotty subscribers!

Okay. We’re doing something big, and you are the first people on Earth to hear about it.

For months, we’ve watched a new narrative growing in the blockchain community. Builders talk about it amongst themselves. We see it covered in more and more conferences, and insiders discuss it behind closed doors. Now we’re launching a new media project about it - the first in the world to deal exclusively with this subject.  

That narrative is DePIN, and the project is DePIN Hub.  

We believe DePIN is more than the next narrative in the crypto echo chamber, it is how the entire thing goes mainstream. It will transition real world networks to community-ownership, and thus make blockchain an integral part of daily life. In other words, mass adoption doesn’t occur when the real world enters crypto - it happens when crypto enters the real world.

And the good news, dear reader, is that we are very early. Today is our launch date and you are cordially invited to join us on this leg of the journey.  

Welcome to the first issue of the:

In this issue:

1. Hotspotty Officially Enters the Era of DePIN
   • What DePIN is
   • What we'll be bringing you
   • What this is so important
2. Solana Breakpoint Recap and Hotspotty DePIN Talk

Hotspotty Officially Enters the Era of DePIN

What is DePIN?

We should probably clear this part up. DePIN stands for decentralized physical infrastructure networks, and we think it’s going to absolutely explode.  So what is it?

Well, consider Helium.  

Helium is a grassroots, community-owned network for connecting Internet of Things devices. While this service was historically offered by privately-owned companies, now users like you can buy one of their proprietary routers (also known as a “miner”), plug it in, and start offering a hotspot to anyone who needs to use the network.  The miner keeps track of your contribution and you get paid accordingly. The network belongs to all of us and we all share in the proceeds. 

Now hundreds of projects are poised to revolutionize their industries in the exact same way.  

• What if you had a router in your house that paid you when people used your Wifi?  
• What if you had an electric meter that paid you when your house sold solar energy to the grid?
• What if you had a camera in your car that paid you as it measured the amount of traffic on the road?

That is exactly what we’re describing.  

DePIN refers to tokenized networks of physical things, and it falls at the intersection of blockchain, IoT, and the sharing economy. It’s like Couchsurfing, but instead of crashing in your living room for free, people pay you to check traffic on your dashcam. It is the future of daily life, and the token rewards will be a source of continuous, on-chain cash flow for the people who participate (that’s you.)

What We’ll be bringing you

Whether you’re a token investor or someone seeking passive income opportunities, this will be the number one source of information for new developments as this narrative takes off. We’ll be rolling out a handful of different platforms over the next few weeks, so here’s what to look for:

🌎 Website

A permanent resource for keeping up to date on projects in the DePIN sector. The website features a news aggregator with updates on developments in DePIN, and hosts a database of both quantitative and qualitative data about different projects.  You can sort these by sector (energy, telecom, automotive, for example) and also by geography. That way, you can find out what’s available for you to run a node and participate in different revenue-generating networks.  

📰 Newsletter

A bi-weekly newsletter with in-depth coverage of the projects building this technology. Beyond simply research and data, we want to present the stories and visions of these projects: not just numbers and information, but context and interviews with people who create the networks. DePIN is a wide-ranging sector with overlaps in environmental data gathering, geospatial imaging, smart home design, distributed 5G networks, and many, many more applications. This stuff is changing the world, and it will really be cool to read about for its own sake. 

🎤 Podcast 

A bi-weekly podcast to introduce DePIN projects to the world one at a time. Twice a month, you’ll get to hear in-depth interviews with founders from different projects, where we’ll discuss the problems that can be solved by decentralized infrastructure and how you can join up and become a stakeholder.

Why this is so important!

This is important because DePIN will change the way our society is organized, and for once the people will get paid in the process.  

Today, we live in a world of corporations and consumers, where almost all of the profit made in society goes to a small number of stakeholders. DePIN turns this on its head by transforming individuals into active participants in our society’s infrastructure. It turns consumers into producers. There are a ton of opportunities for ordinary people to make passive income by participating in this process, but there’s still an information gap in the market - we’re so early that most people don’t know about this stuff.

That’s where we come in. We are committed to bridge this gap through a series of initiatives that are designed to make participation more accessible for everyone. When this happens, we believe that this technology will transform existing business models and create a more equitable world.  And we’re here to tell those stories as they unfold.  

Solana Breakpoint 2023

Solana Breakpoint was in full swing in Amsterdam this past Oct 30th - Nov 3rd. With $SOL pumping, as of publication, at a price of $57.41 😱, there was good reason for the electric atmosphere. 

Yet, there was one another reason for excitement at the event. A magic acronym that was buzzing around people’s mouths - DePIN. 

IoTeX’s DePIN Lead, Connor Lovely, observed it…

☝️By the way - if you’re looking for a great overview of the space, including a multi-project map explorer, check out IoTeX’s DePINScan. It’s powered by their native w3bstream, which serves as a data pipe for bringing real-world devices on-chain. Pretty cool!!!

Hotspotty’s head of growth, Michael Sothan, led the charge at Breakpoint where he spoke on how the next ‘Heliums’ of the world will serve as the gateway for mass onboarding of users into web3. 

Check it out by clicking below!

Feel free to show him some 💗on his new Twitter account: @sothaniam

Oh and Toly is on-board ;)

We’re very excited to start sharing this stuff with you, and welcome any feedback you may have.  Something you’d like to learn about in particular?  Drop us a line and we’ll see what we can do.  

Until next time, thanks for reading!  

Yours in Decentralization,
The Hotspotty Team ❤️