Blockchain of Choice: Solana for DePIN

The Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) projects increasingly choose Solana as their preferred blockchain platform. This shift is driven by Solana’s high throughput, low transaction costs, and growing ecosystem support for real-world asset integration.  

DePINs are open networks where users contribute resources like data storage, connectivity, sensors, or energy and, in return, earn rewards in the form of cryptocurrency tokens for a given project. Such networks are becoming alternatives to centralized infrastructure, providing standardized services to ensure transparency and fairness.  

While DePIN projects are emerging on various blockchains, Solana has seemingly amassed some of the biggest projects by market capitalization, such as The Render Network, Helium and Hivemapper. 

A part of the growth story of the Solana blockchain in 2024 has been these DePIN projects, along with the explosion of memecoins. The network currently processes 37 million daily transactions, has 1.7 million daily active addresses, and generates about $1 million in fees daily. 

The Render Network, a decentralized GPU rendering platform, was initially launched on Ethereum, but it soon faced the challenges of high transaction costs and slow transaction processing speeds. After migrating to Solana, it saw increased throughput, as it allowed for efficient processing of rendering tasks and thus significantly reduced the wait times. It further improved the cost efficiency, enabled operations to be scaled, and facilitated better developer tools and support, enabling quicker updates and integration of new features.  

Helium, a decentralized wireless network for IoT devices, also reaped substantial benefits from its migration to Solana. Originally on its custom blockchain, Helium transitioned to Solana to overcome scalability and cost challenges. This enhanced network capacity results from accommodating more devices and data transmissions, reducing operational costs, and improving the network's ability and uptime.  

Many other DePIN projects on the Solana blockchain span many applications, including decentralized computing power, connectivity, data storage, IoT integration, and supply chain management. Many of these projects have seen substantial growth in user activity and token burns after they migrated to Solana. Despite these growth trends, DePIN projects generally face challenges of maintaining sustainable token incentives, ensuring continuous community participation, and navigating regulatory complexities. 

So far, Solana has been a preferred network for large DePIN projects, but many new layer 1 blockchains specifically designed for DePINs could very well take over Solana in the coming years.