In a world increasingly reliant on infrastructure—from energy grids and data centers to wireless and telecommunications networks—centralized systems are struggling to keep up. Enter DePIN: Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks. These onchain networks use token incentives and distributed ownership to build, operate, and manage infrastructure collectively.

Instead of being controlled by a single entity, DePINs are owned and operated by participants who contribute resources such as energy, bandwidth, or storage. In return, they programmatically earn token rewards that ensure fairness, transparency, and growth. The physical layer—energy devices, wireless routers, IoT sensors—are built and installed by a global, decentralized community.

DePINs represent a fundamental shift in how we think about infrastructure, replacing traditional systems with scalable, resilient, and community-driven networks. And within this category, one of the most transformative opportunities lies at the intersection of crypto and energy.

Crypto x Energy: Unlocking the Grid’s Potential

The global energy system is facing unprecedented challenges:

1. The aging electric grid, with fragmented regional operations managed by outdated control architectures.

2. The growing demand for AI compute and the reshoring of US manufacturing further exacerbates the grid’s limitations.

3. The inherently variable supply of renewable energy (wind and solar), essential for satisfying climate goals, adds volatility to an already fragile grid.

These challenges are compounded by the rapid growth of distributed energy resources (DERs) like home solar panels, batteries, and EV chargers. The traditional grid model—centralized power plants distributing electricity to passive consumers—is already giving way to a new era where every homeowner can become a power producer, highlighting the need for a more resilient, decentralized approach to energy infrastructure.

Crypto-powered Energy DePINs offer elegant solutions to these pain points. By redistributing CapEx and leveraging blockchain incentives, DePINs can address inefficiencies in energy production, distribution, and financing while enabling powerful new business models such as:

• Decentralized Energy Storage and Distribution: Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) allow individuals to store and sell energy, balancing supply and demand in real-time.

• Accelerating Renewable Energy Buildout: Platforms unlock innovative financing methods and incentivize solar, wind, and battery deployments.

• Improving Grid Efficiency: Localized, distributed nodes reduce latency, optimize resource allocation, and alleviate congestion.

Builders Tackling the Energy Transition

The transition to decentralized energy is already underway. Some notable projects leveraging DePIN principles include:

Plural Energy
Plural Energy is a blockchain-enabled platform that democratizes access to renewable energy investments, allowing anyone to invest in high-yielding clean energy projects with full transparency and liquidity. Traditionally, renewable infrastructure deals have been complex, capital-intensive, and limited to large investment banks or high-net-worth individuals. Plural democratizes access to this "missing middle" of renewable energy investments, enabling anyone to invest in high-yield, consistent, and previously inaccessible clean energy projects. Plural utilizes smart contracts to provide full transparency, real-time project performance data, predictable yields, and liquidity through the ability to buy, sell, or trade investments at any time. Plural has active portfolios live today.

Daylight
Daylight is building the world’s largest decentralized energy network, enabling households to generate, store, and contribute clean energy while earning rewards. By connecting smart energy devices like solar panels, batteries, EV chargers, and thermostats, Daylight transforms homes into decentralized power nodes that strengthen the grid and reduce reliance on centralized infrastructure. Its marketplace simplifies the adoption of energy upgrades—solar, heat pumps, and more—while its protocol coordinates energy contributions and rewards participants with its native energy-backed token. By combining blockchain technology with real-world energy solutions, Daylight provides a sustainable, cost-effective alternative to traditional grids, accelerating the global transition to clean energy.

Power Ledger
Power Ledger is a decentralized platform that enables peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading and facilitates access to environmental commodities markets like carbon credits and renewable energy certificates. Its core pillars include energy trading and traceability, which allow users to track and trade excess energy seamlessly, and commodities trading, providing markets for energy derivatives and environmental assets. By empowering individuals to trade energy directly and connect distributed energy resources (DERs) with energy companies, Power Ledger offers a solution to inefficiencies in grid energy management and carbon markets.

Sourceful 
Sourceful Energy is building a global coordination layer for the $1T+ decentralized energy market, connecting and managing distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar panels, batteries, and EV chargers. By integrating real-time optimization, Sourceful enables DER owners to participate in Virtual Power Plants (VPPs), earn revenue for grid stabilization, and monetize energy data, all tied to their Solana wallets. Unlike single-device solutions, Sourceful Energy’s open-source firmware and hardware-agnostic approach ensure compatibility across brands, driving fast scalability and compounding network effects.

StarPower
Like Daylight and Sourceful, StarPower is a decentralized energy network that connects and optimizes energy devices like air conditioners, water heaters, EVs, and home storage batteries to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs. Positioned as the “Uber for energy,” Starpower aggregates these devices under one platform, enabling smarter operations and creating Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) to stabilize grids.

Users can connect their devices through Starplug, a real-time monitoring and control solution that optimizes energy use while rewarding participants with $STAR tokens based on their electricity data and responsiveness. In addition to the Starplug, Starpower offers the Starbattery, a home energy storage system that manages excess energy, provides backup power, and reduces peak consumption costs, as well as the Starcharger, which optimizes EV charging during off-peak hours to alleviate grid strain.

Arkeen
Arkeen is a DePIN that integrates small-scale renewable energy producers into a decentralized, carbon-neutral grid. It uses a unique, IoT-based Proof of Physical Work (PoPW) system to validate individual participants’ environmentally-friendly actions like household solar power generation, energy-efficient home air conditioning, and the use of electric vehicles. These actions are rewarded with AKRE tokens, creating an incentive-driven system for renewable energy adoption. Additionally, Arkeen has a GreenBTC Club initiative that ties renewable energy to Bitcoin mining, addressing the carbon footprint of one of the most energy-intensive blockchain applications.

DeCharge
DeCharge is a decentralized, community-powered EV charging network that leverages DePIN architecture, blockchain, and OCPP standards to create reliable, tokenized EV infrastructure. By enabling homeowners, businesses, and cafes to host charging stations and earn passive income, DeCharge accelerates the adoption of sustainable energy and transportation solutions.

Glow
Glow is a blockchain-powered platform designed to accelerate the deployment of solar farms by addressing inefficiencies in renewable energy incentives. Its unique model requires participating solar farms to contribute 100% of their gross electricity revenue to a USDC-based incentive pool, ensuring that rewards and carbon credits go to the most efficient and impactful projects. Glow operates a dual-token system: GLW tokens for rewards distribution and GCC tokens representing verified carbon credits, with off-chain audits handled by Glow Certification Agents (GCAs) for transparency. Glow tackles the challenges of carbon credit volatility and underinvestment in renewable infrastructure by aligning incentives with efficiency and impact, driving meaningful progress in clean energy adoption.

But amidst all this innovation, there’s still a massive white space: Crypto x Energy Storage. Batteries are central to solving grid challenges and enabling renewables because they address the inherent intermittency of wind and solar—storing excess energy when the sun shines or the wind blows and redistributing it when demand peaks or generation drops. Without effective energy storage, renewable power remains unreliable and difficult to scale.

Crazy to think that if solar PV and battery efficiency both compound at 7-10% per year for 30-50 years, the world could be powered entirely by sunlight, and carbon emissions would collapse. 🌞 Batteries, when broadly distributed and integrated, can unlock this future, and DePIN could play a critical role in incentivizing adoption and driving innovation.

Here’s 5 startup ideas to stimulate discussion and innovation in the space:

1. Battery Health & Data Monetization
A DePIN where users contribute real-time battery performance and health data (e.g., EVs, home storage) to a shared database. Devices would use edge computing to process and format the data before securely sending it to the network, ensuring privacy and reducing unnecessary data load. Researchers, manufacturers, and grid operators can purchase this data to optimize battery design and grid integration, while contributors earn tokens for sharing verified insights.

2. Incentivized Battery Recycling & Second-Life Usage
A DePIN network that tracks batteries through their lifecycle and incentivizes proper recycling or repurposing. Tokens are awarded to recycling centers, logistics providers, and individuals for verifiable recycling efforts, ensuring batteries are reused in energy storage systems or other applications. Note: with the rise of EVs, home storage systems, and portable batteries, battery recycling is a significant and growing challenge.

A potential GTM strategy could start with initial partnerships with recycling centers to provide token incentives for battery collection. You’d then work with EV and battery manufacturers to integrate digital IDs into batteries for lifecycle tracking and create consumer incentives by offering rewards for returning end-of-life batteries via a user-friendly app with drop-off locations.

3. Battery Swapping Networks
A DePIN that connects EV users with battery-swapping stations. These stations can be hosted by individuals, businesses, or communities, creating a distributed network. Battery swapping helps address long charging times and inconsistent energy availability for EVs. Instead of waiting for a battery to charge, EV owners can swap depleted batteries for fully charged ones at swapping stations. Participants earn rewards for operating or contributing to the network, while EV owners benefit from faster, more efficient energy access. This helps reduce EV downtime, alleviates grid stress during peak hours, and ensures more widespread adoption of electric mobility.

4. Grid Resilience via Decentralized Battery Networks
A DePIN which connects batteries (home storage systems, EV batteries, or portable power units) to create microgrids that stabilize the local energy supply. During periods of grid stress, outages, or failures, these batteries can autonomously redistribute surplus energy to homes and businesses within the network, ensuring a stable local power supply. The DePIN protocol uses smart contracts to coordinate energy flow and optimize contributions in real-time, rewarding users with tokens for sharing their stored energy when it’s most needed.

5. Dynamic Pricing for Battery Charging
A decentralized protocol that uses real-time market data to optimize battery charging schedules based on grid prices and demand. Contributors who shift their energy consumption to off-peak hours are rewarded with tokens, improving grid stability.

Batteries are critical to our clean energy future, and Crypto x Battery DePINs represent one of the most exciting, untapped opportunities to unlock that potential. If you’re building—or thinking of building—in this space, I’d love to hear from you