5 DePIN Projects That Are Putting the Cloud in the Shade
If there’s one attribute that crypto never gets enough credit for, it’s its ability to reinvent itself. GPUs, once the preserve of Ethereum miners, don’t do much mining no more. But they haven’t been sent out to pasture. Rather, they’ve been directed elsewhere, to fuel the world’s insatiable demand for AI compute.
It turns out that the same technology allowing miners to pool resources to find blocks can also be used to build virtual supercomputers, chaining GPUs together to enable image rendering, model training, and all the other tasks that can’t be done on an enterprise mainframe.
The surge in demand for AI and high-performance computing has proven the perfect storm for decentralized physical infrastructure networks – yes DePINs – to flourish and they’re not letting the opportunity go to waste. Several of the DePIN projects that were first out the gates have onboarded an impressive number of partners and in the process achieved multi-billion-dollar valuations for their token economies.
While DePIN now does a lot of things, it’s synonymous with distributed compute, powering decentralized marketplaces where GPU power can be leased for everything from AI training to rendering digital content. This shift away from cloud providers is making GPU resources more affordable while incentivizing GPU owners to monetize their hardware.
As AI and high-fidelity content creation become more integral to how we work and play, these DePIN projects offer a glimpse into a future where compute is as distributed as the internet itself. The following DePINs are pushing GPU networks to their limits, ensuring that idle computing power doesn’t go to waste.
Render (RENDER): Supercharging Content Creation
Render Network is one of the earliest and most well-known DePINs, decentralizing GPU power for digital rendering tasks. The network connects GPU providers with artists, game developers, VFX studios, and other creative agencies, allowing them to offload intensive rendering workloads to idle GPUs.
Traditionally, studios have used centralized rendering farms for high-intensity workloads – the cost of which can quickly stack up. Render upends this model by tapping into a distributed network of GPU providers who offer their idle hardware for real-time rendering tasks. Instead of relying on expensive centralized cloud providers, Render’s distributed model reduces costs and speeds up rendering times, making it ideal for industries like film and gaming.
The network is powered by the RENDER token, which serves as a medium of exchange between GPU providers and users. Render’s platform ensures that 3D artists and creative teams can harness a bank of GPUs, paying only for what they use while cutting overall rendering time. By eliminating the costs and constraints of a single data center, Render frees up resources and expedites high-end visual work.
io.net (IO): GPU Workloads for AI and ML
io.net is one of the fastest-growing decentralized GPU networks, with its primary focus on AI model training and deep learning, although its GPUs can technically be used for anything. Unlike traditional cloud services, which sporadically suffer from GPU shortages, io.net aggregates underutilized GPUs from data centers and crypto miners into a decentralized compute cloud that’s virtually unlimited in capacity.
This network allows AI researchers and companies to scale up computing power instantly, without the delays and cost constraints of centralized providers like AWS or Google Cloud. The platform uses the IO token to facilitate transactions, rewarding GPU providers while ensuring that enterprise users have a seamless way to access computing power on demand.
By aggregating GPUs from data centers and individual operators, io.net has rapidly constructed “the internet of GPUs” for AI development. Its architecture not only reduces the risk of GPU shortages but also helps researchers and data scientists scale up compute capacity on demand. With AI workloads becoming ever more resource-hungry, io.net is the go-to platform for startups who need data crunched in a hurry.
Aethir (ATH): GPU Infra for Enterprise AI
Aethir is designed to be the backbone of decentralized enterprise AI infrastructure, providing cloud-based GPU computing for AI, gaming, and scientific research. By distributing GPU workloads across a network of providers, Aethir ensures that AI companies can train models at scale without centralized bottlenecks.
What distinguishes Aethir from the other DePIN contenders is its focus on enterprise-grade solutions, ensuring high performance and reliability for businesses such as gaming studios and large-scale data processing companies. The ATH token powers the network, rewarding contributors who supply their idle GPUs to the platform. In addition to incentivizing GPU providers, it helps maintain transparent governance.
For enterprises wary of handing all their data to traditional cloud monopolies, Aethir offers an appealing solution that ensures both performance and security. As AI adoption grows exponentially, Aethir provides a viable alternative to centralized compute providers, ensuring that GPU resources are optimized and widely available. This is ideal for enterprise clients who can’t afford downtime or performance lag.
Akash Network (AKT): Open-Source DePIN for Cloud Computing
Akash Network, known as the “Airbnb for cloud compute,” is a decentralized cloud marketplace that allows individuals and businesses to rent computing power, including GPUs, directly from providers. Unlike traditional cloud providers, Akash operates as a permissionless, peer-to-peer marketplace, allowing developers to deploy workloads efficiently and at a fraction of the cost.
One of Akash’s biggest selling points is its flexibility, allowing users to run anything from AI workloads to containerized applications without relying on Big Tech cloud services. Though not exclusively focused on GPUs, Akash plays a vital role in DePIN by enabling a broad range of compute resources – GPU instances included – to be rented on a permissionless marketplace.
The AKT token is used for payments and staking, ensuring a decentralized economy where computing power is distributed fairly. This approach contrasts sharply with centralized cloud providers, which often enforce complex user agreements and drive up costs. By promoting a trustless environment, Akash reduces overhead and extends the availability of GPU resources to developers and researchers eager for scalable cloud options. With its open-source approach and competitive pricing, Akash can hold its own against the likes of Google Cloud and Azure.
Netmind (NMT): Powering Efficient AI Workloads
Rounding out our list is Netmind, a DePIN project emphasizing AI optimization across its network of GPU providers. Where io.net supplies raw AI horsepower, Netmind adds an extra layer of intelligence, using machine learning strategies to balance and allocate GPU workloads efficiently.
The platform runs on the NMT token, which rewards participants who contribute GPU resources and maintains a marketplace where users can pay for specialized computing tasks. By focusing on workload optimization, to ensure GPUs are used at near capacity without bottlenecks, Netmind makes advanced computing more affordable and efficient. This is key for real-time inference, complex model training, and countless other scenarios where performance can’t be compromised.
Netmind’s key innovation is its AI-driven resource allocation, which maximizes efficiency and reduces wasted compute cycles. It’s not just supplying the picks and shovels for AI training – it’s using them itself on the coal face of production. By ensuring that GPU resources are efficiently allocated and utilized, Netmind is pushing DePIN technology forward in AI and deep learning applications.
One Day It’ll All Be DePIN
While it may be stretching credulity to call DePIN an AWS killer, it’s clear which way the wind is blowing. For as long as decentralized compute is cheaper, more flexible, and at least as reliable as its cloud counterparts, its market share is only going to grow. In the process, it’s going to send the valuation of several of the projects profiled here into the tens of billions of dollars – and that’s just in the short-medium term.
As demand for GPUs skyrockets, DePIN projects are proving that decentralized networks can unlock vast amounts of underutilized computing power. Instead of relying on centralized cloud providers that struggle with supply chain bottlenecks and high costs, these five projects are democratizing access to AI compute and raw rendering power.
From AI model training to decentralized cloud computing, DePIN is reshaping how computing resources are allocated. As a result, high-performance computing is no longer confined to centralized data centers: it’s being built across permissionless networks, making GPUs go further than ever before.