Key Points

This month, Solana's DePIN ecosystem welcomes two new major players. The ROAM project, based on shared WiFi, launched on major exchanges like Bybit and Kucoin on March 6, reaching the fourth position in the DePIN sector in terms of node count, with hardware devices achieving the top rank across the network. Austin Federa, former strategic director of the Solana Foundation, leads a funding round of 28 million USD with Solana co-founders and top VCs like Dragonfly and Multicoin for the distributed bandwidth project DoubleZero, aiming to create a communication highway for web3 based on web2 infrastructure, potentially addressing the network latency issues currently faced by web3.
Additionally, as of March 14, 2025, we observe significant growth in the Solana-based DePIN ecosystem, with a market capitalization exceeding 25 billion USD and approximately 78 DePIN projects covering various subfields such as wireless communication (e.g., Helium), computing resources (e.g., Render Network), geolocation (e.g., Hivemapper), and cloud storage (e.g., GenesysGo SHDWDrive).
Solana is becoming the preferred platform for DePIN projects due to its high throughput, low transaction costs, mature developer ecosystem, and a large number of users, indicating that a DePIN empire ecosystem is being nurtured on Solana.

1. Analysis of Important Projects in the DePIN Sector

1. DoubleZero------Building a Highway for Web3 on Solana

On March 10, amidst a sluggish overall crypto market, another DePIN dark horse project, DoubleZero Foundation, secured a massive investment of 28 million USD from top VCs.
What exactly is DoubleZero Foundation, and how was it able to secure such a significant investment in a sluggish market?
I summarize the core points as follows:
++（1）The founding team has extensive experience in blockchain projects and has achieved success, in addition to having many resources in the industry and a luxurious ecosystem.++
The founder of DoubleZero, Austin Federa, was previously the Head of Strategy at the Solana Foundation and can be considered one of the key drivers behind the early rise of the Solana ecosystem. During his time at the Solana Foundation, he was responsible for global market strategy and directly participated in several key projects, such as promoting the integration of USDC and USDT on Solana, and even deeply involved in ecosystem collaborations during the FTX era.
At the same time, Austin Federa has a close relationship with the Solana core team (including Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal), which allowed DoubleZero to gain resource support and market recognition from the Solana ecosystem early on.
++（2）The investment team is impressive, with Solana founders collectively investing, clearly supporting Solana's DePIN strategic layout.++
The following image shows the investor team of DoubleZero. If you are familiar with the investment landscape in the crypto space, you will know the significant influence of Dragonfly and Multicoin. They are not only long-term supporters of the Solana ecosystem but have also played important roles in several key projects (e.g., Multicoin's early bet on Solana, Dragonfly's participation in Serum).

Moreover, besides top VCs, the funding power within the Solana ecosystem also played a core role in this round of financing, with Solana Ventures and co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal participating as angel investors.
From a somewhat irrational perspective, this is almost equivalent to announcing to others that this is my beloved child.
It is worth noting that the investment in DoubleZero came right after the Solana Foundation announced its DePIN ecosystem strategy, making it the first project to receive clear investment.
Thus, we believe that the Solana official support is significant; Austin is not acting alone but is bringing the entire Solana resource pool into play, representing a comprehensive tilt of funds, technology, and market resources. For the entire DePIN sector, this is undoubtedly an important signal: the Solana ecosystem is actively laying out a physical infrastructure network, and DoubleZero may be the "vanguard" leading the charge.
++（3）Leading technical solutions, building a highway for web3, allowing web3 projects to operate as smoothly as web2;++
We know that the Web3 sector currently faces many issues, particularly at the infrastructure level, where limitations of public internet bandwidth and non-deterministic routing often prevent Web3 projects from operating as smoothly as Web2. Even if the issues of public bandwidth limitations and non-deterministic routing are resolved, if the latency issues between validators cannot be addressed, Web3 projects will still not operate as smoothly as Web2.
DoubleZero was created to solve these infrastructure-level issues in Web3.

From the architecture shown in the image, we can see DoubleZero's unique Two-Ring Architecture. The Outer Ring connects to the public internet, using hardware (such as FPGA) for attack protection, signature verification, and transaction filtering, while the Inner Ring processes the filtered traffic through dedicated bandwidth lines and builds consensus.
First, the Outer Ring connects to the public internet, using hardware (such as FPGA) for attack protection, signature verification, and transaction filtering;
The benefit of this is that it pre-filters incoming junk and duplicate transactions using dedicated hardware, reducing the burden on validators and allowing the blockchain to share filtering resources without requiring each validator to provide them individually.
Second, the Inner Ring processes the filtered traffic through dedicated bandwidth lines and builds consensus. It can improve communication efficiency through explicit message routing, tracking, and priority management.
In terms of the specific technical processing flow, the official disclosed information states:
（1）The Outer Ring serves as the first line of defense, primarily responsible for filtering out junk transactions, DDoS attacks, and invalid traffic from malicious contract calls. It utilizes an adaptive traffic filtering mechanism, leveraging machine learning and heuristic rules to analyze transaction patterns in real-time, accurately identifying and intercepting malicious traffic, ensuring that only valid transactions can enter the blockchain mainnet.
At the same time, the Outer Ring relies on decentralized zero-permission fiber contributions from independent contributors in the network to provide physical infrastructure, further ensuring the authenticity and priority of data packets. All transactions must undergo basic validity screening by the Outer Ring before entering the Inner Ring, reducing invalid transactions from entering the core network and enhancing overall processing efficiency.
（2）Transactions entering the Inner Ring have undergone strict screening, allowing it to focus on efficient transaction processing. The Inner Ring adopts a high-performance architecture similar to Solana, supporting ultra-high TPS (transactions per second) and ensuring extremely short transaction confirmation times to meet the demand for a large volume of transactions.
To further enhance network smoothness, DoubleZero also employs a stateless validation mode, which, compared to the traditional blockchain state storage model, allows the entire network to operate more smoothly and efficiently.

2. Roam------A Web3 Version of Starlink Built on Solana

On March 6, another decentralized wireless network project based on the Solana blockchain, Roam, launched on Kucoin and Bybit, with a circulating market value exceeding 60 million USD, adding another strong player to the DePIN sector.
（1）What kind of project is Roam?
ROAM is a decentralized wireless network project based on the Solana blockchain, aiming to provide seamless, secure WiFi and eSIM connectivity globally, with the goal of building an open wireless network worldwide. It utilizes blockchain technology to achieve automatic network switching and secure connections, supporting individuals, smart devices, and AI agents.
Currently, it has over 2.3 million users and 2 million WiFi nodes, covering more than 190 countries, ranking high in the DePIN field.
The token $ROAM has a total supply of 1 billion, with 600 million allocated for mining and community activities, allowing users to earn tokens by providing WiFi or validating the network.
According to Messari's 2024 report, ROAM ranks fourth among DePIN projects with over 1 million active nodes, and it ranks first in terms of hardware node count. Competitors include Helium and DIMO, but ROAM's global coverage and user scale provide it with an advantage.
If Elon Musk's Starlink has built a communication system based on outer space, I would like to call Roam a web3 version of the Starlink system based on ground communication networks.
（2）Technical Advantages
ROAM utilizes OpenRoaming™ WiFi and eSIM technology, allowing users to access WiFi or share network performance data while ensuring that there is no risk of data leakage during WiFi sharing and usage through decentralized identity (DID) and verifiable credentials (VC), ensuring privacy and security.
The specific technical architecture and functions are as follows:

• OpenRoaming™ Wi-Fi: Adhering to Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) standards, it supports seamless switching between different WiFi networks, ensuring continuous connectivity.
• eSIM Services: Providing smart eSIM services in over 160 countries, allowing users to access data networks without traditional SIM cards.
• Blockchain Incentive Mechanism: Utilizing a Proof-of-Service mining algorithm, users earn ROAM tokens by providing WiFi services or validating network performance.
• Decentralized Identity (DID) and Verifiable Credentials (VC): Using blockchain technology to protect user privacy, eliminating reliance on centralized validators, enhancing security and decentralization.

In this system design, OpenRoaming™ Wi-Fi addresses the link protocol issues of communication systems in different countries and regions, while eSIM resolves the lack of SIM services in many areas, helping to create communication conditions in impoverished regions. The DID and VC technologies address data security and privacy issues during communication, introducing a web3 economic system that can quickly stimulate early network construction issues.
The reason ROAM has rapidly grown to become a leading player in the DePIN sector after its 2024 rebranding is not only due to the siphoning effect of the Solana ecosystem but also its own accumulation in technology and the sector.
（3）Operational Advantages
The project team has been deeply involved in the web3 sector for many years, well-versed in web3 project strategies, and has quickly accumulated network effects and early users through web3's hanging and sharing incentives.
ROAM encourages users to participate in network construction through a mobile application, such as adding WiFi nodes, daily check-ins, or inviting friends to earn Roam Points, which can be exchanged for ROAM tokens after the token generation event (TGE).
From the project team's background, we can see that although the ROAM project officially started on April 2, 2024, it was previously named MetaBlox. We found that MetaBlox was established as early as 2018, but after years of silence, it did not truly emerge until 2024, when it rebranded to ROAM and migrated to the Solana mainnet. This indicates that the success of any project is the result of years of deep cultivation in the sector, so even though the market is currently in a downturn, we believe that good projects can still transcend the cycles of time and bloom the roses of time.
In summary, ROAM provides an excellent wireless network sharing project and has already formed a good network effect. Currently, its circulating market value is only about 15 million USD, far from Grass's 360 million USD. If we can see more users participating in the ROAM network, we may witness the project's rise and emergence in the next bull market.

2. Ecosystem Observation

As of March 14, 2025, we observe that the Solana-based DePIN ecosystem has significantly developed, with a market capitalization exceeding 25 billion USD, far surpassing the scale of DePIN projects in other ecosystems. We are witnessing a DePIN empire ecosystem being nurtured on Solana.
According to public data, there are approximately 78 DePIN projects on Solana (data referenced from Messari and DePIN Scan statistics as of 2024), covering various subfields such as wireless communication (e.g., Helium), computing resources (e.g., Render Network), geolocation (e.g., Hivemapper), and cloud storage (e.g., GenesysGo SHDWDrive). Solana's high throughput (theoretically up to 50,000 TPS), low transaction costs (about 0.00025 USD per transaction), and mature developer ecosystem make it the preferred platform for DePIN projects.
Currently, representative DePIN projects on Solana include:

• Helium: The world's largest decentralized wireless network, which has deployed nearly 1 million hotspots covering 192 countries and providing IoT and 5G services after migrating to Solana.
• Render Network: A decentralized GPU computing platform that migrated from Ethereum to Solana, processing tens of millions of frames of image data, supporting AI and media rendering.
• Hivemapper: A decentralized digital mapping network that challenges Google Maps through user-contributed dashcam data, covering multiple cities.
• GenesysGo SHDWDrive: A decentralized cloud storage solution attempting to fill the storage gap in the Solana ecosystem.
• Dabba Network (emerging project): Focusing on the Indian broadband market, enhancing network coverage through decentralization.

The total market value of Solana's DePIN projects reached approximately 25.6 billion USD in June 2024 (DePIN Scan data), and it may fluctuate in 2025 due to market volatility and project growth. Leading projects like Helium, Render, and Hivemapper have fully diluted valuations (FDV) exceeding 10 billion USD.

From the above table, it is evident that Solana has a significant advantage in the DePIN sector compared to other public chains:

• In terms of technical performance and cost advantages, Solana's high performance and low cost, especially its low gas fees, are particularly friendly to DePIN projects (such as micropayment incentives) that require frequent transactions compared to public chains like Ethereum.
• Proof of History (PoH) and parallel processing capabilities enable it to handle a large amount of real-time data for DePIN projects (such as IoT device communication, map data uploads), allowing DePIN projects to operate smoothly and comfortably like web2 projects.
• Within the public chain ecosystem, the Solana Foundation actively promotes the development of DePIN projects through funding and hackathons (such as collaborations with Multicoin Capital). Recently, a special Solana DePIN fund was established to help Solana nurture more high-quality projects, with the first project being DoubleZero, currently one of the most well-known.

Therefore, we are optimistic that Solana is not merely a Memecoin public chain; its journey to this point is not solely due to its MEME effect but rather its solid ecological foundation and technological advocacy, as well as strong support for the community and projects. We are optimistic that the next DePIN empire ecosystem may be born on Solana.

3. Recent Important Events in the DePIN Sector

1. On February 1, IoTeX, a DePIN and AI fully-chain compatible modular infrastructure, released its 2025 development roadmap, focusing on the DePIN + AI ecosystem:

• DePIN Empowered Physical Perception AI

IoTeX has launched an open-source framework called QuickSilver that combines large language models (LLMs) with DePIN network data to create high-level AI applications, planning to launch the QuickSilver testnet in the first quarter, allowing developers to connect the existing DePIN world with the emerging AI world, creating a wave of new "perceptible AI applications."

• Establishing a DePIN + AI Strategic Reserve

IoTeX will create an initial BTC-based DePIN + AI asset strategic reserve for IOTX holders. This reserve will serve as a "vault" for long-term quality tokens and assets, safeguarding the interests of IOTX holders.

• Community First

A comprehensive community empowerment plan, combined with a DAO-based governance model, allows the community to directly participate in the development of IoTeX.
2. On March 3, during the ETHDenver 2025, a forward-looking dialogue on the regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and DePIN + AI was held at the DePIN + AI R3al World Summit, featuring Salah, the policy director of the Blockchain Association, and Larry, the head of the IoTeX ecosystem, sparking deep reflections in the industry on the integration of technology and policy direction.
Salah emphasized: "Current U.S. regulatory agencies are accelerating the exploration of how to incorporate innovative technologies like DePIN, which merge the physical and digital worlds, into the national strategic framework. Future regulatory frameworks must balance technological innovation with public interest, and the transparency of DePIN and the explainability of AI may become key to solving regulatory challenges."
Larry shared IoTeX's practical experience: "From compliance collaborations with Grayscale and Coinbase to co-chairing the Blockchain Association's DePIN working group, we have always centered on 'verifiable physical data' to align DePIN + AI with the demands of the real economy."
3. On March 6, the Solana Foundation and the Solana Chinese community Solar will hold a DePIN Day event in Shenzhen, the hardware capital, on March 8.
Emerging DePIN projects in the Solana ecosystem, including Cudis, Starpower, Geodnet, Roam, Aethir, Gradient, and DeGlass, will attend and share their presentations on-site.

4. Recent Industry Financing Events

1. On February 27, the Solana ecosystem DePIN project Shaga completed a 4 million USD seed round financing, led by IOSG Ventures, with participation from Everyrealm, Amber Group, and several angel investors.
Shaga aims to reshape the gaming industry by breaking hardware limitations and bringing ultra-low latency, aiming to make high-performance gaming accessible.
BlockBeats previously reported that on June 25, 2024, Shaga completed a 1 million USD angel round financing, led by Arca, with participation from MARIN DIGITAL VENTURES, Skybridge20 Ventures, Aurory, Quotient Ventures, and angel investors including Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Helium founder Amir Haleem.
2. On February 25, the DePIN project Geodnet completed an 8 million USD token financing, led by Multicoin.
Geodnet provides financial incentives to startups, encouraging ordinary people to host physical infrastructure. Due to strong demand for Geodnet's services, the project's tokens (its incentive mechanism) have more than doubled in the past 12 months.
In April of last year, the GEODNET Foundation announced it had completed over 2 million USD in strategic financing, with CoinFund, Pantera Capital, VanEck, and Santiago R. Santos participating. The additional funds raised will support the foundation in achieving its short-term goals, including decentralization and developer usability.
3. On February 5, the DePIN gaming infrastructure platform Beamable completed a 13.5 million USD Series A financing, led by Bitkraft Ventures.
Beamable Network aims to change the way game backend infrastructure is built and operated.
4. The DoubleZero Foundation announced it has secured 28 million USD in investment led by Dragonfly and Multicoin Capital.
DoubleZero is a project based on the DePIN sector that allows anyone to contribute independent fiber links without permission, essentially paving the "information highway" for the Web3 world. The project's biggest highlight is its hardware-driven nature, directly targeting the infrastructure layer. DoubleZero's goal is simple: to increase bandwidth and reduce latency for all high-performance blockchains.