To understand where DePIN is today, and where it might be going, we need to take a deeper look at its roots, the current wave of projects building in the space, and the challenges these efforts are facing in the wild. We also need to confront the broader questions about sustainability, governance, and mainstream adoption. This is not about simply swapping one set of technical tools for another. It is about rethinking how we build, who gets to participate, and how value is distributed in the physical systems that support modern infrastructures.

The Roots and Goals of DePIN

The foundational question DePIN is trying to answer is this: How can we build physical infrastructure that is more democratic, more efficient, and more resilient than what traditional models have delivered? Infrastructure today is highly centralized, often opaque, and deeply shaped by legacy financial models. Whether it is the deployment of 5G towers, renewable energy projects, cloud compute centers, or environmental data networks, the power to decide where, when, and how these systems are deployed tends to be held by large institutions. Access and participation are limited. Profits and data are consolidated. And even public infrastructure often ends up managed through public-private partnerships that are hard to audit and slow to adapt.

DePIN emerges as a response to this model, by using blockchain-based coordination tools, cryptographic identity, and community-governed protocols.  Instead of a centralized provider building and operating a network, individuals or small operators contribute physical resources through hardware, bandwidth, energy, and data, where they are compensated for their contributions directly through programmable rewards. These networks can emerge organically wherever there is demand, expanding dynamically rather than top-down. They are transparent by design, and they create new forms of economic participation for people who have historically been excluded from infrastructure ownership.

This vision is not entirely new, as we have seen early versions of it in mesh networks, community solar co-ops, citizen science initiatives, and even decentralized file-sharing protocols. What is different now is the infrastructure layer for coordination, through the use of smart contracts, token incentives, decentralized governance, and open ledgers.  Finally, there is a credible way to build these systems at scale. That is what sets DePIN apart from its predecessors, as it is not just a community effort, but an economic protocol for building the physical layer of future infrastructure.

The Emerging Landscape of DePIN Projects

A growing number of projects are building real-world infrastructure systems using decentralized methods, and their diversity is one of the space's biggest strengths. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most visible and innovative examples.

Helium is perhaps the earliest and most well-known DePIN project. Originally launched as a decentralized wireless network for low-power devices using LoRaWAN, Helium allowed anyone to purchase and deploy a small hotspot that provided network coverage and earn tokens in return. The Helium network rapidly scaled to over 900,000 nodes globally, building one of the largest public IoT networks in the world. Helium has since expanded into cellular networks with its 5G offering, using similar models to incentivize coverage and bandwidth availability. While the project has faced criticism over tokenomics, governance, and demand generation, it remains one of the clearest proofs that community-owned infrastructure networks can scale quickly with the right incentive design.

Hivemapper is another compelling example. It aims to create a decentralized mapping network that challenges the dominance of platforms like Google Maps. Drivers can install a specialized dashcam and earn tokens for collecting street-level imagery as they go about their daily lives. The images are then stitched into a global map that is permissionless and collectively maintained. As of early 2025, Hivemapper had over 25,000 contributors and had mapped more than 1.2 million kilometers of road. The advantage here is twofold. First, it dramatically lowers the cost of gathering map data. Second, it decentralizes control over that data and rewards contributors directly rather than extracting value from them.

WeatherXM is building a decentralized network of weather stations that aim to fill gaps in existing meteorological data. By incentivizing individuals to deploy weather hardware in under-monitored areas, especially in rural and Global South regions, WeatherXM offers a new model for generating climate data that is open, auditable, and far more geographically diverse than traditional systems. In early trials, the project demonstrated significant improvements in local weather modeling and storm forecasting. Their open data portal is already being used by climate researchers, agricultural planners, and even insurance companies seeking more granular insights into regional weather trends.

Akash Network and Render Network are both focused on decentralized compute power. Akash allows anyone to contribute idle compute capacity to a decentralized cloud marketplace. This offers an alternative to hyperscale cloud providers like AWS or Google Cloud, with the goal of reducing costs and increasing resilience through distributed supply. Render takes a similar approach but focuses specifically on GPU rendering, catering to industries like film, animation, and AI. These networks have seen early adoption among indie studios and developers who are priced out of traditional cloud solutions. Render, in particular, has facilitated large-scale rendering tasks for major film projects by tapping into thousands of individual GPU nodes across the world.

DIMO is a mobility data network that enables drivers to collect and monetize telemetry data from their vehicles. Participants plug a device into their car’s diagnostic port and share anonymized driving data with applications, insurers, or city planners. In return, they earn tokens and gain access to insights about vehicle performance and usage. This stands in stark contrast to how mobility data is typically harvested, which is silently and without consent by ride-share companies, automakers, and app developers. DIMO makes that data explicit, user-owned, and portable.

There are also early-stage DePIN projects in energy, including Sunified and PowerPod, which are exploring decentralized energy networks built around peer-to-peer solar sharing and microgrid coordination. While still experimental, these models could eventually allow neighborhoods or rural communities to manage and monetize their own energy flows without relying entirely on utilities. Elsewhere, Grass is building a decentralized network for users to share their unused internet bandwidth with verified organizations in return for rewards. 

These projects vary in maturity and scale, but they all share a commitment to a different kind of infrastructure logic. One that is not simply more distributed, but more inclusive, more composable, and more transparent.

The Growing Influence and Early Impact of DePIN

While the ecosystem is still emerging, DePIN is already having a measurable impact. The Helium network provides sensor connectivity in areas where commercial providers saw no economic incentive to deploy. Hivemapper has contributed map data in countries where mapping services were outdated or unavailable. WeatherXM has improved storm warnings in rural Greece and supported agricultural planning in parts of Latin America. Akash has helped developers in emerging markets reduce cloud computing costs by up to fifty percent in early tests. Render has shaved days off animation timelines for small studios. These are not just conceptual wins. They are real, operational improvements to critical systems.

DePIN also challenges the funding model for public infrastructure. Traditionally, infrastructure projects are financed through public debt, private investment, or complex multi-stakeholder partnerships. DePIN offers a different path. It treats infrastructure as a network good that can be bootstrapped by users and maintained with crypto economic incentives. That does not mean public funding becomes obsolete, but it does suggest new ways to allocate resources, onboard contributors, and adapt to demand in real time.

For instance, the use of quadratic funding or staking mechanisms can help identify which areas of the network are under-served or where demand is strongest. When mapped transparently, this data can inform decision-makers in ways that are much faster and cheaper than traditional planning processes. The feedback loops between users, contributors, and network operators become tighter, more responsive, and more accountable.

Challenges Ahead

Despite these gains, DePIN is not without serious challenges. One of the biggest is economic sustainability. Token rewards can bootstrap a network, but they cannot carry it forever. Projects must eventually generate real demand for their services, and that demand must translate into fees or alternative revenue models that can support contributors without endless inflation. Otherwise, the system collapses under its own weight.

This was one of the key criticisms of Helium during its initial boom. While the network grew rapidly, actual usage of the connectivity layer lagged behind. That led to a disconnect between token rewards and real economic value, creating a feedback loop that was ultimately unsustainable. The Helium team responded by pivoting to new use cases, partnering with telecom providers, and moving their infrastructure onto the Solana blockchain to reduce costs. Whether those moves will be enough to stabilize the network remains to be seen, but the experience is instructive for the entire DePIN ecosystem.

Governance is another major hurdle. Managing a decentralized infrastructure network is not easy. Decisions about protocol upgrades, resource allocation, dispute resolution, and security must be made in ways that are inclusive, efficient, and legally sound. DAOs offer a potential model, but many are still experimenting with how to balance transparency with agility, and decentralization with effectiveness. Token-based governance introduces risks of capture, apathy, and low voter participation. More nuanced governance models that blend onchain decision-making with offchain deliberation may be needed as these networks mature.

Finally, adoption beyond the crypto world is still a barrier. For DePIN to scale meaningfully, it must offer real value to users who do not care about blockchains or tokens. That means building user interfaces that abstract away complexity, offer clear documentation, integrate with existing tools, and establish partnerships with cities, companies, and communities that see DePIN as a means to solve real problems, and not just view it as a speculative playground.

Where DePIN Goes From Here

The promise of DePIN is not simply that we can build infrastructure differently, but that we can build it better. Infrastructure can now be locally informed, community-owned, and more transparent than ever. The road ahead is steep, but the tools are improving as modular protocol stacks, middleware, and interoperability frameworks are making it easier to launch and maintain DePIN systems. Cross-chain bridges and reputation systems are helping to coordinate contributions across networks. Real-world adoption will depend not just on better technology, but on better narratives and stronger institutions.

The next chapter of DePIN will be shaped by experimentation, policy engagement, and the ability to learn from both success and failure. Projects will need to adapt to local legal realities, partner with municipalities, embed resilience, and build toward long-term usage rather than short-term hype. There is no guarantee of success, but the possibility of an infrastructure system built by and for the people who rely on it is a vision worth pursuing. If DePIN gets even part of that right, the impact will be massive.

The future of infrastructure may not come from a government blueprint or a corporate balance sheet, but rather from thousands of contributors plugging in devices, sharing data, running code, and coordinating in ways that are open, fair, and responsive. That is the invitation DePIN extends, and it couldn’t come at a better time.

Join this Conversation within the Token Engineering Commons Forum.  If you are interested in writing for the publication, giving your thoughts on an article, or wanting to engage in the future of real-world blockchain initiatives, please introduce yourself in the forum, or reach out to us independently.

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This leaves us with a nagging question: Must profit and purpose always be at odds?

In the most recent TEC Talk, Joshua from Azos Finance presented a pragmatic and powerful new perspective. He shared the story and strategy behind Azos, a DeFi protocol that isn’t asking for donations or appealing to altruism. Instead, it’s building a financial engine designed to harness the raw, speculative energy of DeFi and channel it toward assets that can actually make the world a better place.

The Disillusionment that Sparked an Idea

To understand Azos, you first have to understand the frustration it grew from. Joshua’s journey into Web3 was fueled by his experience at Lyft, where he witnessed the company’s IPO firsthand. He saw how the very people who created the network's value—the tens of thousands of drivers and millions of passengers—were almost entirely excluded from owning a piece of it. The wealth was vacuumed up and sent to VCs and executives in San Francisco, leaving local communities with little to show for it.

"Ethereum was created to prevent literally this," Joshua recalled thinking. This core conviction—that the people who create value should own, govern, and benefit from their networks—is part of the philosophical bedrock upon which Azos is built.

The Problem: Good Assets That Just Sit There

The regenerative space is full of "impact assets"—things like carbon credits, renewable energy certificates, and green bonds. These assets represent a positive real-world impact, but they face a major problem: they are often illiquid. They sit idly in a wallet, unable to be used as a productive financial tool.

Furthermore, the projects that create these assets often rely on grants or tokenomics that lead to constant sell pressure, making it difficult to build a sustainable treasury. This is the "ReFi problem": when people hear the term, they think of a donation, not an investment. "I'm never gonna make money from this," is the common sentiment, Joshua explained.

The Solution: A DeFi Engine for Impact

Azos Finance tackles this problem head-on by refusing to brand itself as ReFi. "It's DeFi, it's just DeFi," Joshua stated. Azos is a Collateralized Debt Position (CDP) platform, much like the original MakerDAO that powers DAI.

Here’s how it works, in simple terms:

1. The Digital Vault: An owner of an approved impact asset (like the Glo Dollar or KLMA) can deposit it into a personal "safe" within the Azos protocol.

2. The Loan: Against that collateral, they can borrow AZUSD, the platform's native stablecoin. This gives their once-idle asset immediate liquidity and utility.

3. The Freedom: They can take that AZUSD and use it anywhere in DeFi—to provide liquidity, make payments, or even loop it to compound their position.

4. The Return: To get their original assets back, they simply repay the AZUSD loan plus a small stability fee.

This isn't a handout; it’s a powerful financial tool. It gives impact projects a "permissionless line of credit" against their own assets, helping to reduce sell pressure and create a sustainable economic flywheel.

The Master Stroke: Channeling Speculation for Good

Herein lies the genius of the Azos model. It doesn't try to change human behaviour; it leans into it. The platform is designed to be a compelling game for DeFi natives who are driven by yield and clever financial mechanics.

"We don't need them to [care about preserving the earth]," Joshua admitted. "They're going to see the yield and be like, 'Oh, this is a game I want to play because it's about yield'".

The ultimate goal is to shift the object of speculation itself. Rather than having people gamble with dog tokens, Joshua mused, "maybe they start gambling with like carbon credits, which would be great". By creating a robust, yield-generating DeFi ecosystem around these assets, Azos aims to attract the massive pools of capital that have so far remained on the sidelines of the regenerative movement.

The Vision for a More Regenerative Future

Looking forward, the vision for Azos is to become a foundational piece of infrastructure. Joshua imagines a world where AZUSD acts as a reserve currency for the entire regenerative ecosystem, unifying disparate projects under a common medium of exchange. He envisions protocol revenue being funneled back into real-world projects, like buying up land for conservation in Brazil or helping to clean rivers and oceans.

This is a vision built not on idealism alone, but on a pragmatic understanding of what it takes to build sustainable, self-reinforcing systems in the world of decentralized finance. It’s a compelling argument that perhaps a more effective way to do good is to build a system where doing good is also a profitable and engaging game to play.

To dive deeper into Joshua's insights on Azos Finance and the future of impact assets, you can watch the full presentation from the TEC Talk event here.

DeSci is best understood as a response to the misalignments that have crept into how science is done.  It takes its inspiration from open science but extends it by embedding scientific collaboration into the foundational technologies of Web3.  The vision is to make science more transparent, accessible, interoperable, and resistant to gatekeeping.  That means exploring new ways to fund research that don’t rely on long, exclusionary grant cycles.  It means publishing models that don’t restrict access behind paywalls or favor incumbents based on institutional reputation.  It also means creating new systems for evaluating and crediting work that go beyond citations and journal impact factors. 

Many DeSci advocates propose the use of smart-contracts to automate the flow of funds, incentivize peer-review, and track contributions with greater granularity.  Scientific outputs like code, data, or experimental results can be timestamped on public chains or stored using distributed file systems.  These records are immutable and openly accessible, allowing the broader community to verify claims, build on previous work, and trace provenance.  DAO’s are another key piece of the puzzle, as they provide a structure for researchers to self-organize, vote on proposals, and collectively steward resources.  Instead of relying on institutional gatekeepers, the community itself becomes the decision-maker. 

While this may sound idealistic, it’s not without precedent.  In fact, the groundwork for DeSci has been laid over the past two decades by the open-access and open-data movements.  Initiatives like arXiv, bioRxiv, PubMed Central, and even controversial platforms like Sci-Hub have exposed both the appetite and the urgency for more open systems of knowledge sharing.  

It’s important to note that DeSci is not just about tools or tokens, but about changing the culture and incentives around knowledge creation.  In traditional academia, the incentives often push people toward narrow specializations, conservative hypotheses, and a ‘publish-or-perish’ mentality.  DeSci opens up the possibility of designing new reward systems that reflect real impact, foster collaboration, and encourage the exploration of ideas that don’t neatly fit into existing disciplines.  Whether or not these systems will be adopted widely remains uncertain, but the vision is clear: science should serve the many, not the few, and it should be accessible to anyone with curiosity and rigor, regardless of geography, credentials, or affiliation.


What DeSci seeks to Disrupt

If DeSci feels like a bold departure from tradition, it is because it aims to confront the entrenched practices that limit the pace, inclusiveness, and transparency of research.  One of the most cited targets is the academic publishing industry.  A handful of corporations dominate the space, profiting from research that is often publicly funded.  They charge researchers to publish and charge readers to access that same work.  Despite years of advocacy for open access, many journals remain paywalled, and even when research is freely available, the underlying data or methods are not.  DeSci projects propose new ways to share findings directly with the public, leveraging timestamping and peer validation on open networks.  These alternatives may not yet carry the same prestige as legacy journals, but they offer us more open, auditable, and speedy processes for scientific engagement.

Beyond publishing, DeSci challenges how science is funded.  Grant-making is slow, competitive, and often conservative.  Researchers can spend months preparing proposals, only to have them rejected for not fitting within predefined categories.  Innovative ideas, particularly those from early career researchers or marginalized communities, can struggle to find support.  DeSci explores new experimental funding models, where communities can surface public interest and community alignment around research and fund efforts that have the greatest potential for public impact. 

Another core issue DeSci seeks to address is the broken system of academic incentives.  In many institutions, what matters most is where you publish, who cites you, and what your h-index says.  This skews priorities toward metrics rather than substance and often excludes valuable contributions like mentoring, replication, or interdisciplinary work.  DeSci’s emphasis on transparent, onchain contribution tracking creates a path for recognizing work that doesn’t fit neatly into traditional outputs.  It opens the door for citizen scientists, independent researchers, and collaborative teams to earn recognition and support.

Data silos and reproducibility failures round out the list of challenges.  In fields like medicine and psychology, reproducibility crises have raised serious concerns about the integrity of published results.  Datasets are often incomplete, inconsistently formatted, or not available at all.  DeSci aims to foster a culture of radical openness, where data and protocols are shared and verified in public.  Whether this leads to better science will depend on how these systems are governed, how quality is maintained, and whether privacy and ethical considerations can be addressed responsibly.


Current state of DeSci

The DeSci space is still early, but the ecosystem is growing.  A number of projects are already building tools, funding research, and onboarding scientists.  VitaDAO is perhaps the most visible, and pioneering example.  It focuses on longevity research and uses a DAO structure to fund studies, license IP, and collectively govern its research agenda.  The DAO holds equity in startups and manages intellectual property generated by the research it supports.  It represents an experiment in collective scientific ownership and decentralized biotech development.

Molecule, closely aligned with VitaDAO, offers infrastructure for tokenizing research outcomes through what it calls IP-NFT’s.  These tokens represent claims on future intellectual property and can be used to raise funds or signal support for specific projects.  While the legal frameworks for these arrangements are still evolving, the intent is to make scientific innovation more liquid, transparent, and participatory. 

Other projects take different approaches.  CerebrumDAO is building decentralized infrastructure that seeks to find solutions for Alzheimers, allowing scientists to share their findings and provide funding for more experimental approaches that advance brain health which are not currently prioritized by traditional medicine.  Research Hub, founded by Brian Armstrong, is designed to function like Github for science.  Researchers can upload papers, review each other’s work, and earn tokens for meaningful contributions.  There are also efforts like HairDAO and AthenaDAO, which focus respectively on hair loss and women’s health.  A growing number of aggregators, educational platforms, and working groups are helping coordinate these efforts, share learnings, and onboard new participants.  

That said, adoption is still limited.  Most scientists remain in traditional institutions, where DeSci credentials are not yet recognized and where incentives to explore alternative models are weak.  The reputational systems that ground academia have not yet translated into decentralized settings.  Peer-review onchain may be transparent, but it is not currently considered a substitute for publication in a high impact journal.  Additionally, DeSci projects are navigating significant legal and regulatory ambiguity, especially around tokenized IP and data privacy.  Still, the experiments are active, and the ambition is clear.


The Challenge Ahead

For all its promise, DeSci faces significant obstacles.  Many of them are not technical but institutional or cultural.  The academic system is built around long standing norms, metrics, and incentive structures.  Most researchers are evaluated based on where they publish and how often their work is cited.  Until DeSci contributions can be recognized within these systems or until new recognition systems gain legitimacy, most scientists will have limited incentives to participate.  

Reputation is another hard problem, as within academia, reputation is encoded through affiliations, grants, and publication histories.  These signals are deeply embedded in hiring, funding, and peer networks.  Onchain credentials or tokens may carry value in DeSci circles, but they do not hold weight in academic contexts.  Bridging these two worlds will require new frameworks that can validate decentralized contributions in a way that institutions trust and understand.

There are also unresolved questions around legality and ethics.  Tokenized research outputs may raise securities issues just as the shared IP across DAOs introduces complications around ownership, enforcement, and licensing.  Data sharing, especially in fields like genomics or clinical trials, must be carefully designed to comply with privacy laws and ethical standards.  Radical openness is not always appropriate, and DeSci will need to develop nuanced approaches to consent, data protection, and responsible governance.  

Fragmentation is another challenge as many projects are building in parallel, without common standards for metadata, identity, or licensing.  Without it, DeSci could become a set of disconnected experiments rather than a cohesive ecosystem.  Interoperability is essential, and DeSci will need shared protocols for how research is recorded, attributed, and governed.


Where DeSci is Going

Despite the challenges, the momentum behind DeSci is very much real.  It has catalyzed new conversations about what science could look like in a more open, and digital future.  For DeSci to move from possibility to practice, it will need to build bridges, not just alternatives.  That means meeting scientists where they are, developing dual-publishing models, linking DeSci identities with ORCID or GitHub, and creating paths for DeSci contributions to be recognized in traditional review processes. 

It also means building better reputation systems.  This will likely involve combining onchain contribution records with social validation mechanisms that reflect both expertise and impact.  Designing systems that are difficult to game but easy to verify is no small task.  It will require ongoing experimentation, community governance, and clear norms about what constitutes credible work.

Standards and interoperability are equally important.  Whether it’s protocols for peer-review, templates for metadata, or modular DAO tooling, the DeSci ecosystem will be stronger if its parts can speak to one another.  Shared infrastructure will make it easier for researchers to move between platforms, for funders to evaluate proposals, and for the public to access and understand scientific knowledge. 

Finally, inclusion must be a core design principle.  Science has historically excluded vast swaths of humanity.  DeSci has the opportunity to expand access to knowledge production, not just consumption.  That means creating accessible tools, multilingual resources, and funding pathways that support researchers in the Global South, early career scientists, and communities doing work outside of elite institutions.


A New Scientific Imagination

DeSci is not a panacea, but it offers a new set of tools and a new way of thinking.  It invites us to reimagine how knowledge is created, valued, and shared. The focus shouldn’t be whether or not DeSci will replace academia…that is the wrong frame.  The focus should be on whether or not DeSci can evolve the infrastructure of science to better reflect our specific values, remain open to those who hold passion and curiosity, encourage collaboration instead of competitive exclusion, and reward those who approach science with rigor and trust.

What DeSci offers is a kind of working hypothesis which says that science might work better if it were more open, more programmable, and more accountable to the people it serves.  It says that knowledge is a public good, and that we should build systems that reflect that.  Whether or not that hypothesis holds true will depend not just on smart-contracts and token designs, but on the communities that build, test, and iterate on these new processes.

DeSci, like other verticals in this industry, is also in its early stages.  There are currently more questions than answers, and honestly, that's what makes it so exciting. Because if we get this right…even just a little bit right, we might just unlock new forms of discovery and collaboration that will drive new and innovative pathways for how we understand the world together.   

Join this Conversation within the Token Engineering Commons Forum.  If you are interested in writing for the publication, giving your thoughts on an article, or wanting to engage in the future of real-world blockchain initiatives, please introduce yourself in the forum, or reach out to us independently.

Follow us on X, subscribe to our newsletter, or reach out if you’re exploring similar topics in your work. Let’s build what comes next, together.

But what if there’s a more effective path? During a recent insightful session at the Token Engineering Commons (TEC) Research Hub, Daniel Ospina from RnDAO peeled back the layers on these challenges and introduced a compelling alternative: polycentric collaboration, embodied in a concept he calls "swarms".

This isn't just another buzzword. It's a thoughtful approach to building and innovating together, aiming to capture the best of both worlds – the resources and reach of larger systems, with the speed and passion of small, dedicated teams.

The Old Crossroads: Why We Need a New Map

For years, we've seen the narrative play out. Big companies and governments, despite their resources, often become slow and resistant to change, struggling to keep pace with rapid technological development. On the other hand, the Web3 world’s push for decentralization, while revolutionary, has had its own set of growing pains. Many early Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), fueled by a romantic vision of leaderless collaboration, found themselves grappling with power vacuums, a lack of clear accountability, and the sheer difficulty of getting things done effectively. The result? Many promising projects fizzled out, and some DAOs even began to revert to more traditional, centralized structures out of frustration.

The data isn't kind either. Daniel highlighted sobering statistics: 75% of hackathon winners abandon their projects , nine out of ten startups in accelerators still fail , and a staggering 94% or more of grantee projects in Web3 ecosystems deliver no lasting value after initial funding runs out. Clearly, our current ways of fostering innovation are incredibly wasteful.

Enter the Swarm: A More Natural Way to Build

So, if the extremes of centralization and pure decentralization are often falling short, where do we turn? Daniel proposes we look to polycentric collaboration – a system with multiple centers of power and action, working in a coordinated fashion. This is the heart of the "swarm" model.

Imagine not a monolithic giant, nor a scattered collection of disconnected individuals, but a network of agile, entrepreneurial teams. These teams are independent yet interconnected, building solutions that can integrate and collaborate, much like Lego blocks forming a complex structure. The goal is to achieve economies of scale without sacrificing speed to bureaucracy.

The Five Pillars of a Thriving Swarm

Daniel didn't just offer a theory; he laid out a practical blueprint based on five key components that make a swarm effective:

1. Niche Focus: Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, swarms thrive when they concentrate on a specific industry or problem. Think of specialized VC funds that outperform larger, generalist ones because they have deep expertise and networks within a particular community. This focus allows teams within the swarm to genuinely support each other because they share relevant customers, talent pools, and investor networks. It’s about depth over breadth, leading to more meaningful collaboration.
   
   

2. The Venture Studio Model: This is like a "startup assembly line" in the best sense. Venture studios systematically build companies using repeatable processes and shared resources. Instead of each new team reinventing the wheel for common tasks (like roadmap construction or sales outreach), they can leverage proven methods from the studio. The studio often provides dedicated staff who act as fractional co-founders, embedding expertise directly into the startups. This hands-on, systematic approach is showing impressive results, with venture studio startups reportedly achieving double the internal rate of return compared to traditional startups, and maturing significantly faster.
   
   

3. Interdependence of Units: This is where the "network" effect truly kicks in. Teams within the swarm aren't just loosely affiliated; they are financially and operationally incentivized to support each other. In RnDAO’s model, for example, successful startups become co-owners of the umbrella organization, which in turn holds a stake in each startup. This creates a powerful dynamic where every team has a vested interest in the success of others, leading to organic sharing of research, customer introductions, compatible technology, and talent. It’s about creating an "elite club" where collaboration is not just encouraged but economically sensible.
   
   

4. Flexible Investment Contracts: The startup journey is rarely a straight line. Some ventures are best suited for VC funding and equity growth, others might thrive with a token launch, while some can bootstrap through early revenue. Traditional funding models, especially in VC, often lock startups into a single path. Swarms, Daniel argues, need flexible contractual relationships that can accommodate these different trajectories while ensuring that value flows back to the swarm to support future ventures. This adaptability is key to building a regenerative and resilient ecosystem.
   
   

5. Sweat Equity: Ideas need more than just capital; they need dedicated human effort. The swarm model champions "sweat equity," where individuals and teams earn ownership based on their contributions of work, not just financial investment. This democratizes participation, allowing talented individuals to contribute to and co-own the ventures they help build, even if they don't have capital to invest upfront. It’s about rallying communities of "true believers" around good ideas.

A Glimpse of Swarms in Action: The RnDAO Story

Daniel’s own organization, RnDAO, serves as a living laboratory for these ideas. It began informally with a small core team and a vision. Today, it's a growing swarm with multiple ventures, fostering collaboration through a central venture support team, peer-to-peer support, and an emerging "guild" system for knowledge sharing in areas like growth or development. RnDAO’s focus has been on providing mentorship, expertise, and processes, rather than just capital, empowering teams to build sustainable value.

Why This Matters for All of Us Building in Web3 (and Beyond)

The swarm model offers a compelling vision for anyone frustrated with the current limitations of building and collaborating. For crypto enthusiasts and Web3 builders, it presents a way to:

• Move beyond the "Kumbaya" phase of early DAOs where good intentions didn't always translate into results.

• Create more sustainable and impactful projects by reducing the incredibly high failure rates.

• Foster genuine collaboration and shared success, rather than isolated efforts.

• Leverage diverse forms of capital – including the invaluable capital of human talent and dedication.

This isn't just about Web3, though. The principles Daniel discussed – niche focus, systematic support, interdependence, flexibility, and valuing diverse contributions – have broad applicability to any industry looking to innovate more effectively.

Building the Future, Together and Smarter

The journey to perfect the swarm model is ongoing, as Daniel himself acknowledged. It takes time to cultivate these complex, interconnected ecosystems. But the potential is undeniable: a shift towards more resilient, adaptive, and ultimately more successful ways of bringing ideas to life.

It’s a reminder that the future of innovation likely lies not in rigid hierarchies or unstructured free-for-alls, but in carefully designed ecosystems that empower individuals and teams to achieve more together than they ever could alone.

Watch the full presentation here: DAO Swarms - TEC Research Hub: Daniel Ospina

The talk was rich, layered, and deeply grounded—literally. It showed how blockchain isn’t just for high-speed finance or digital art, but can be used to build better systems from the soil up.

Here’s what we learned.

From Crypto User to Web3 Builder

Wasabi’s journey began as a typical crypto user—curious about the tech, but unaware of the deeper cultural and systemic dimensions of Web3. That changed when he began researching DAOs, token design, and governance. What started as an exploration turned into a mission: to support real-world communities left behind by traditional systems.

Enter the Kokonut Network, a DAO-powered project based in the Dominican Republic, tackling a fundamental issue: how to finance, organize, and sustain regenerative agriculture at the community level.

Why Regenerative Agriculture?

Regeneration, as Wasabi frames it, is about using resources in a way that creates more value over time—without exploitation. In practical terms, that means:

• No chemicals or synthetic inputs.

• Aligning farming practices with natural cycles.

• Prioritizing water preservation and soil health.

• Producing long-term resilience, not short-term yield.

In this context, agriculture isn’t just farming—it’s a way to revitalize land, communities, and economies.

Three Systemic Problems, One Framework

The Kokonut Network tackles three interlinked challenges common to many local economies and development projects:

1. Data Fidelity
   Without trustworthy data, communities can’t access capital. Whether it’s funding, support, or trust, everything starts with high-quality, verifiable data.

2. Liquidity
   Many local economies generate value but can’t tap into liquidity. The Kokonut Network offers an alternative: community-owned capital flows that allow locals to co-govern and co-benefit.

3. Distribution
   Supply chains usually extract value from the bottom up. Kokonut flips this. With local-to-global distribution via DAO membership, value stays within communities, even across borders.

These three pillars—data, liquidity, and distribution—are the foundation of the Kokonut Framework, an open-source, modular playbook anyone can adapt.

The Kokonut Framework: Building Block by Block

At its core, the Kokonut Framework is:

• Modular: you don’t need to launch a token or DAO on day one.

• Practical: it adapts to different landowners, resources, and goals.

• Open-source: anyone can fork it to serve other use cases.

It starts with diagnosis—not just of the soil or weather, but the community’s needs, aspirations, and risks. From there, decisions on crop selection, infrastructure, and financial models are made intentionally.

Each farm becomes a learning loop, informing the next iteration. As of today, Kokonut operates six farms (three active, three in development), all funded by grants, with a commercial-scale farm (“Kokonut v1”) on the horizon.

Data as a New Form of Capital

The Kokonut Data Hub is a crucial piece of infrastructure. It tracks everything from crop forecasts and resource usage to expenses and operational metrics—almost 200 data points per farm.

Future stages include:

• Integrating public APIs (weather, vegetation indices)

• Adding IoT sensor data

• Evolving into an open data platform that anyone can verify or build on

The goal? For data itself to become a revenue stream—a form of intellectual and digital capital that complements the physical output of farms.

Not Just for Crypto-Natives

One of the key insights from Wasabi’s talk is the importance of language and user experience. Most local communities don’t speak in tokens or governance primitives. They speak in pain points: lack of funding, transparency, or trust.

Wasabi meets them there.

Whether in town hall meetings or on the farm, the message is simple: “We’re building co-ops where the treasury, the rules, and the decisions are public by design.”

So, What’s Next?

The Kokonut Network has big dreams:

• Grow from 6 to 12 farms by 2025

• Launch Kokonut v1, the first farm funded directly by the DAO

• Open source their tools: the Ecosystem Canvas, impact flywheels, and plug-and-play forecasting models

• Invite other communities and builders to fork, remix, and scale the model to new regions

And behind it all is a long-term vision: to show that Web3 can back real-world assets, rooted in regeneration, not speculation.

Why This Matters

If you’re a crypto builder, the Kokonut Network offers a roadmap for on-chain infrastructure with real-world impact.

If you’re working in a non-Web3 organization, this is a living example of how data, trust, and coordination can be rebuilt at the local level—with or without tokens.

And if you're simply someone who cares about regeneration, this is a call to action: let’s build systems that work for the people who work the land.

Listen to the full talk:

The Kokonut Network - Localism Highlights

In the opening talk of the TEC Research Hub series, social scientist Josey Beets shared research that flips conventional wisdom on its head. Her core message: it’s not incentives that keep people coming back—it’s identity and social connection.

From Primates to Protocols: Why Identity Matters

Josey begins with an unexpected comparison: humans and other primates. Like our evolutionary cousins, we are “hypersocial”—wired to bond, share, and cooperate at scale. In Web3, where users are often pseudonymous and geographically scattered, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity.

How do we build trust and connection without physical proximity or institutional anchors?

Her answer: through social technologies like rituals, shared narratives, gossip, and humor—many of which are already present in blockchain communities.

The Research: What Drives Loyalty in Blockchain Communities?

Josey’s team received an Optimism academic grant to study identity and group formation across several protocols including Optimism, Beets, Velodrome, and Byte Masons. They used interviews, surveys, and ethnographic methods to explore how people form emotional bonds with blockchain communities.

The results were striking. Three factors consistently predicted user loyalty and identity fusion:

1. Social Rewards

   • Having meaningful relationships

   • Feeling like your actions matter in the community

   • Enjoying time spent—even without profit

2. Positive Outlook

   • Belief the protocol will last

   • Low skepticism or “scam” concerns

3. Investment Level

   • Time and effort committed—not just tokens

Surprisingly, financial rewards were not a significant factor in long-term bonding. People aren’t staying just for the money—they’re staying for each other.

The Goldilocks Zone of Community Design

Another key finding was that communities need balance. Too much or too little of any element can hurt cohesion.

• Size: People support growth but worry it will dilute authenticity.

• Structure: While decentralization is valued, members still want visible, approachable leaders.

• Communication: Communities thrive when there's a healthy mix of serious discussion, light-hearted chat, and shared humor.

When these dynamics fall out of balance, group cohesion suffers—even if the protocol is technically sound.

Trust in a World of Bots and Agents

As automation and agents take on more decision-making in Web3, Josey raises an important question: What happens to social bonds when we delegate to machines?

While bots can improve efficiency, she argues that human connection remains irreplaceable. Parasocial relationships—like seeing lead devs on podcasts or AMAs—can help build trust. But ultimately, authentic interaction and shared identity are still key.

Lessons for DAO Builders and Community Stewards

Josey’s talk leaves us with a powerful reminder:
Without community, the protocol doesn’t exist.

So if you're designing for the long term, don’t just optimize for efficiency or token flows. Design for identity. Design for bonding. Create space for humor, ritual, and meaningful interaction.

Because in the end, it’s not code that keeps people coming back—it’s connection.

Watch the full talk:

👉 Identity and Group Formation in Blockchain | TEC Research Hub

Read the published study:

👉 Frontiers in Blockchain, March 2025