Top 10 DePIN Use Cases for 2026

Centralised infrastructure giants are facing a significant challenge from community-owned networks. Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) have moved beyond being just a narrative; they are now user-governed infrastructure solutions that are gaining real traction and generating real revenue. By Q1 2025, the sector had over 13 million devices contributing daily, signalling a shift toward a model where users build and own the networks they use.

This growth is backed by significant projections. The World Economic Forum and industry research suggest that the DePIN sector could grow to $3.5 trillion by 2028. This expansion is driven by the need for cost-effective scaling in telecommunications, energy, and AI compute. As the market matures, the focus has shifted to concrete DePIN use cases that solve tangible problems.

This article will introduce you to the fundamentals of Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks, how they function, and the top 10 DePIN use cases shaping the future of infrastructure in 2026. Let's dive in!

What Is a Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN)?

DePIN refers to networks that utilise blockchain technology and token incentives to coordinate the deployment and operation of physical infrastructure. Unlike traditional models where a single corporation owns all the assets, DePIN incentivises individuals and organisations to contribute real-world hardware—such as sensors, wireless hotspots, or GPU computing power—to a decentralised network.

The technology operates on a "DePIN Flywheel, which starts by incentivising participation through token rewards. As users deploy hardware, the network grows, improving the service's utility and coverage. This increased utility drives economic value, which in turn attracts more contributors and investment, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of growth.

This model is gaining traction because traditional infrastructure sectors like telecom and energy are capital-intensive and slow to scale. DePIN removes these high capital expenditure (CAPEX) barriers by crowdsourcing hardware from the community.

In 2026, the sector's focus has shifted strictly to fundamentals: network revenue, utilisation rates, and paying customers are now the primary metrics of success. According to CoinGecko's data, the combined DePIN market cap exceeds $10 billion as of January 28, 2026, with Solana emerging as a leading blockchain for these networks due to its high speed and low transaction costs.

What Are the Top 10 DePIN Use Cases for 2026?

DePIN is solving real-world problems across diverse sectors by leveraging distributed hardware and blockchain coordination. From powering AI to stabilising energy grids, here are the top 10 DePIN use cases driving the industry forward in 2026.

1. Telecom

DePIN is making telecommunications more efficient by allowing individuals to deploy WiFi and 5G hotspots to extend connectivity. This is particularly effective for the last mile, where traditional telecom operators struggle with profitability. A key concept here is cellular offload, where traditional carriers roam onto these decentralised networks to reduce their own infrastructure costs.

Projects like Helium (specifically Helium Mobile) and Uplink serve as real-world examples from this space. Helium has validated this model through partnerships with major carriers like Telefonica and T-Mobile, proving that decentralised coverage can complement legacy networks.

2. Energy

Decentralised energy grids and Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) are transforming how electricity is managed. Through DePIN, users with solar panels and batteries can sell excess energy back to the grid or help balance the load during peak demand times.

In practice, a project like Daylight connects home energy devices such as thermostats and batteries to the grid, while Arkreen focuses on monetising renewable energy data. This creates a more resilient and efficient energy market owned by the producers.

3. Data

This use case focuses on data scraping and bandwidth sharing, which is essential for training Large Language Models (LLMs). Users can share their unused internet bandwidth to scrape public web data, creating massive datasets required by AI companies.

Grass is a prominent example in this sector, having grown to millions of users by allowing them to monetise idle internet bandwidth for verified web data collection without compromising privacy.

4. AI

Distinct from general data collection, this use case focuses on decentralised compute and model training. The rapid growth of AI has created a shortage of expensive GPU resources.

DePIN projects aggregate idle GPUs from data centres, crypto miners, and personal devices to offer compute power at a fraction of the cost of centralised providers. Bittensor facilitates decentralised machine learning models, while io.net aggregates GPU clusters, offering costs up to 70% cheaper than AWS.

5. Transportation

DePIN mobility networks allow drivers to monetise the valuable data their vehicles generate, such as battery health, location, and traffic conditions—data that is usually locked in silos by manufacturers. DIMO is a leading project in this space, enabling users to connect a device to their car to collect and sell their own vehicle data to insurers, fleet operators, or car marketplaces, putting ownership back in the hands of the driver.

6. Healthcare

Healthcare data is often siloed and heavily regulated. DePIN addresses this by crowdsourcing health data via wearables, allowing users to own their data and monetise it for medical research anonymously.

Initiatives like CureDAO are working on unified health APIs and citizen-science pipelines. By aggregating anonymised data points from thousands of participants, these networks can produce valuable research studies while ensuring privacy and compliance.

7. Robotics

DePIN is being used to crowdsource data for robots that interact with the physical world. Training these robots requires vast amounts of data capturing humans performing tasks.

Networks in this space incentivise the capture of this data to train robotic systems. Additionally, this extends to robot-to-robot communication and payment networks, where machines can purchase real-time mapping or sensory data from one another to navigate their environments effectively.

8. Supply Chains

In supply chain management, DePIN focuses on tracking and verification. By using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, businesses can track the location, temperature, and handling of goods without relying on a centralised intermediary. IoTeX is a key player here, powering devices like the Pebble Tracker to provide verifiable logistics data. This ensures data integrity and trust between shipping partners, reducing fraud and errors.

9. Mapping and Location Data

DePIN offers a dynamic alternative to services like Google Street View by using dashcams owned by ordinary drivers to map roads in real-time. This provides fresher data, which is critical for logistics and autonomous vehicle navigation.

For example, Hivemapper rewards drivers with HONEY tokens for collecting street-level imagery. This decentralised approach has allowed Hivemapper to map a significant percentage of global roads faster and more cost-effectively than centralised competitors.

10. Cloud Computing

This DePIN use case covers general-purpose compute and storage, distinct from AI-specific tasks. It involves decentralised cloud storage, where users rent out hard drive space, and CPU rendering.

Filecoin is the industry standard for decentralised storage, having onboarded petabytes of data. At the same time, Render Network focuses on decentralised GPU rendering for 3D graphics and media, while Akash Network serves as an open marketplace for cloud compute resources.

What Are the Benefits and Risks of DePIN?

The adoption of DePIN introduces a new economic and governance model for infrastructure, which comes with its own set of advantages and challenges.

Benefits

DePIN offers multiple benefits for both users and service providers, such as:

• Cost Efficiency: By removing the overhead of centralised middlemen and leveraging crowdsourced hardware, these networks can offer services at significantly lower rates.

• Scalability: DePIN networks grow organically through community contributions rather than relying on slow corporate budget cycles to expand.

• Verifiability: Blockchain technology ensures that services, such as wireless coverage or data storage, are actually provided and proven on-chain.

• Democratised Ownership: It allows everyday participants to own a piece of the network and earn from the infrastructure they help build.

Risks

Despite the benefits, the DePIN sector also faces potential risks. Some of these may include:

• Regulatory Uncertainty: The classification of reward tokens differs by jurisdiction, creating potential legal hurdles for projects and participants.

• Technical Complexity: Installing specialised hardware, such as antennas or sensors, can be a barrier to entry for non-technical users.

• Token Volatility: If the price of a reward token crashes, the financial incentive to maintain the infrastructure may disappear, threatening network stability.

• Cold Start Problem: Innovative projects often struggle to balance supply (hardware) and demand (users) during the early stages of network growth.

The Evolution of Physical Infrastructure

DePIN has evolved from a small niche into a technology that could provide great value to multiple real-world market sectors. Driven by the high demand for AI compute and the necessity for cost-effective connectivity, these networks are proving that decentralised models can be as viable as centralised monopolies. That said, DePIN is still a new technology, and many projects in the sector are still in their early stages.

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