DePIN is moving from narrative infrastructure to measurable infrastructure: nodes are expanding, but 2026 will reward demand, revenue and reliability.
Industry research identifies DePIN as a category that could reach $3.5 trillion by 2028, and there are already more than 13 million devices contributing daily via DePIN networks. At the same time, you will see write-ups claiming massive growth in sector revenues and number of projects.
The bigger point is that DePIN is no longer just a story. These networks already operate globally, and their services are increasingly tied to real-world constraints, from distributed power balancing and connectivity scaling to providing computing power for AI workloads.
Here are six DePIN projects likely to shape physical infrastructure in 2026, chosen for one simple reason: real deployment and the tangible problems they solve now.
1. Transmission: wireless network
Traditional carriers can pump millions into towers and still lose the internal battle. Then there’s the last mile: once you add backhaul and maintenance, rural coverage often stops making business sense.
Uplink offers an alternative approach: a DePIN-based connectivity marketplace that turns existing Wi-Fi and LAN networks into usable infrastructure. Instead of carriers and enterprises building coverage from scratch, they can offload traffic onto the real capacity already deployed.
For participants, the barrier to entry is low: there is no need to purchase new hardware to get started. People can register compatible routers and sites and earn revenue in exchange for providing a measurable and verifiable connection. In the long run, any compatible Wi-Fi router will likely become part of the network.
Uplink’s role is to track contributions in a transparent dashboard and manage authentication, access control, payments, and quality of service across thousands of independent nodes.
What’s new is the scale. In its 2025 CEO letter, Uplink says it has surpassed more than 5 million registered routers worldwide. Its dashboard also displays 15 thousand verified routers that are directly connected and actively contributing. Collaborating with a global Fortune 500 company, Uplink recorded a 23% increase in customers, an 82% increase in data transactions, and a 48% growth in connected devices year-over-year.
Uplink also raised $10 million in April 2024, which helps explain how the project was able to move from a growth narrative to a scale-up phase.
In 2026, the focus moves to the next level: how good is that network that is validated, activated by real traffic, and supported by paying customers.
The reason Uplink stands out in 2026 is simple: setup is easy. Uplink highlighted OpenRoaming and said it was the first Wi-Fi DePIN project to receive both IDP and ADP certifications. Separately, it was also the first DePIN to launch on Avalanche.
OpenRoaming is also important because according to the Wireless Broadband Alliance, the consortium has grown to more than 3M access points worldwide. In fact, it is a massive distribution surface that reduces on-board friction and accelerates expansion through standard roving.
So 2026 is about execution, not hype. The metrics are clear: Verified Coverage, Verified Usage, and Enterprise/Telecom Customers. The token launch (TGE) should reinforce this shift from counting nodes to proving performance and revenue at scale.
2. Daylight: Power grid coordinator
If you strip away the romance, today’s grid problem is not simply “not enough power.” Rooftop solar, home batteries, and electric vehicle chargers add capacity, but they also make the grid more difficult to predict and manage in real time.
This is where Daylight stands out because it builds a practical network that connects home energy devices (solar, batteries, and electric vehicle chargers) so utilities can use its flexibility to balance the grid in real time. Homeowners share data, adjust usage when needed, and get paid for the capacity and responsiveness they provide.
Most importantly, Daylight is being funded as a project that aims to expand beyond experimental talk. It raised a $9 million Series A in July 2024 and later announced $75 million in financing in October 2025, including $15 million in equity and a $60 million venture development facility.
Daylight argues that the biggest bottleneck in residential solar isn’t the hardware: it’s the go-to-market machine. In its own materials, the company claims that more than 60% of residential solar costs come from marketing and customer acquisition, and positions the subscription and financing model as a way to reduce that friction.
In terms of revenue, Daylight describes two primary streams: monthly subscription payments from homeowners and market-based compensation, which is earned by returning stored battery power to the grid during peak demand events (with revenue shared with participants).
The company also said it is currently financing subscriptions in Illinois and Massachusetts, a practical detail that suggests it is trying to make the model work in specific, regulated markets, and not just in theory.
3. DIMO: Vehicle data for owners
Valuable vehicle data remains locked in silos controlled by manufacturers.
DIMO allows vehicle owners to connect cars via device or app, generating data that developers can access through APIs to create mobility applications. To date, the platform has connected more than 425,000 vehicles.
The real test for 2026 is whether insurers and fleet operators will pay for the data and whether the platform can prevent counterfeits and deliver reliable and accurate telemetry at scale.
4. Filecoin: decentralized storage
Centralized storage operates on trust, which often turns into vendor lock-in. Filecoin flips this model by making storage verifiable: Proof of Redundancy and Proof of Spacetime mechanisms are designed to prove that data is actually stored over time, not just promised on paper.
On the supply side, the network is often described as operating at scale, often referred to as more than 1.5 exabytes of capacity with 3K+ storage providers.
In Q3 2025, Filecoin reported nearly 3.0 EiB of allocated capacity (storage pledged by service providers that can be cryptographically proven), and usage rose to about 36%, up from about 32% in the previous quarter, a small but meaningful sign that demand is catching up.
Another sign on the demand side: By the end of Q3, Filecoin counted 2 thousand merged datasets, including 925 very large datasets (over 1000 terabytes each).
In economics, the network recorded around $792,000 in fees for the quarter, the important nuance being that most of these fees were related to sanctions, underscoring how stringent reliability requirements are at this scale. In other words, Filecoin is increasingly less concerned with “how much capacity is there” and more about whether providers can provide storage as a reliable service.
The next phase for Filecoin hinges on implementation: fast and reliable recovery, deeper enterprise integration, and accommodating critical workloads, not just long-term backups.
5.io.net: Affordable AI GPUs
The AI boom is driving demand for GPUs faster than traditional cloud supply can comfortably keep up, and this pressure is showing up in both availability and cost. DePIN-style computing networks attempt to alleviate this bottleneck by collecting unused GPUs from many places: data centers, gaming rigs, even former mining farms, and then assembling them into a single market from which developers can actually buy.
This is the pitch behind io.net. The project claims access to over 30,000 GPUs and markets itself as a lower-cost alternative to major cloud providers. One important nuance: While some third-party articles state “up to 90% cheaper,” io.net’s own materials more commonly describe the savings as “up to 70%” compared to providers like AWS, and this is the safest number to repeat if you want to stay consistent with the project’s official messaging.
The real test for 2026 is reliability. To compete with centralized clouds, io.net must deliver GPU provisioning as a reliable service: meet SLAs, maintain consistent availability, meet compliance requirements for serious customers, and pay rewards only for verified compute that is actually delivered, not for idle hardware sitting in standby mode.
6. CureDAO: Health Data Infrastructure
Healthcare is the most difficult sector for DePIN because it comes with strict regulation, high accountability, and zero tolerance for sloppy privacy. CureDAO attempts to turn health data into usable infrastructure: a unified health API and plug-in marketplace where incentives encourage clinics and patients to contribute data, while privacy is positioned as a built-in feature through cryptographic and operational guarantees.
CureDAO’s offering is based on volume and measurable production. The project references more than 10 million data points donated from more than 10,000 participants, focusing largely on symptoms and factors that may affect them. The most significant claim is what comes next: CureDAO says its citizen science pipeline has produced nearly 90,000 studies, framing success not on “how many nodes are there,” but on whether the data can generate real research work.
However, in healthcare, raw volume is not enough. CureDAO’s success will depend on delivering verifiable research results, maintaining privacy by design in practice (not just in messaging), meeting regulatory expectations, and, most importantly, building partnerships with clinics and insurance companies that can verify that the data is medically useful.
What comes next for DePIN
Mass adoption has begun. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the focus shifts from node count to business fundamentals: revenue, SLA performance, compliance, and seamless integration with legacy systems. The winning projects won’t be the loudest ones, but the projects that solve real problems for real customers.
The question is not whether DePIN will reshape the infrastructure. It’s about whether leading networks are able to maintain quality, move between systems, and generate economies that hold up at scale.
