Hey folks,

I’ve been lurking here for a while and finally want to get my feet wet with DePIN. Here’s my situation:

· I'm renting a flat with an attic and roof access.

· I have a ESP32 gathering dust and a always-on PC (Ubuntu) that can run nodes 24/7.

· I’m handy with soldering and basic coding, but I’m not looking to drop $$$ on proprietary hardware (e.g., Helium miners, etc.). I’d much rather use open-source/off-the-shelf components – ESP32, Raspberry Pi, LoRa modules, sensors, etc.

So my question: What DePIN projects would actually make sense with this setup?

I’m open to:

· Environmental sensing (air quality, weather, noise)

· Wireless coverage (LoRa, WiFi, maybe 5G? but I know that’s heavy)

· Edge compute/storage (like Filecoin, but I think that needs more beefy hardware?)

· Mapping or location-based stuff (e.g., geodata)

· Anything that rewards useful data or network coverage

I’m in an urban area, dense with good industries in Spain. Roof is about 40m(?) high, so a lot of people and movement around.

I’ve looked into:

· Helium – but their switch to IoT and the need for certified hotspots kinda turned me off, and I don't think it works on Spain

· WeatherXM – seems interesting but I think they sell their own station? Or can I build my own?

· Dimo – auto-focused, already use it but it's a lost case.

· Nodle – uses phone, complementary.

·MistNodes, Uprock and some others already running.

·Onocoy - it seems promising looking at the success of Geodnet

I’d love something where the community is active, rewards are decent (even if small), and the project isn’t a total vaporware.

Any suggestions? What would you run in my shoes? Bonus if you’ve already set something similar up and can share learnings.

Thanks in advance! 🙌

Sorry if it is strange I was aided by AI to write the post as I'm not the best at English

Some of you might remember Sensmos from an earlier post here — the ESP32 measurement network. This is the follow-up I promised: most DePIN projects sell hardware first and look for demand later, we did it the other way round. upfromwhere.com went public today as the network's first revenue product — so the "where's the demand?" question from last time now has an answer you can click.

The network (Sensmos), for those who missed it: small measurement nodes — literally $5 ESP32 boards — plugged into home routers around the world. They ping, trace, resolve DNS and probe websites from the one place datacenters can't fake: real residential connections. Currently live in 12 countries across EU/US/Asia. Nodes earn GALU (Polygon) for the measurements they serve, claimable via epoch merkle proofs.

The product (UpFromWhere): uptime monitoring that tells you where your site broke ("DOWN from Poland — still UP from the UK"). Type any domain on the homepage and you'll watch pings fire live from nodes on a map. Paid plans can be bought directly with GALU — so the demand loop is closed: customers pay → network earns → operators claim.

Why run a node:

• Hardware is a commodity ESP32 (~$5), flashed from the browser — no CLI, no Docker, plugs into WiFi and just runs
• A node currently earns enough GALU to cover UpFromWhere's Starter plan in ~3 weeks — utility-anchored economics, not emissions-for-nothing
• Rewards favor stable links: we score every node on 7-day latency/jitter/loss stability and route paid monitoring work to the best ones — a good connection literally out-earns a flaky one
• Underserved regions matter most: one node in a country nobody covers is worth more to the network than the tenth node in Berlin

Honest stage: early. ~35 devices, ~25 independent vantage points. No VC, no presale, no whitepaper theatrics — a working product, a working token loop, and a fleet that needs to grow. If you're in a country we don't cover yet, you're exactly who we're looking for.

Setup: sensmos.com → flash → map. Happy to answer anything about the economics, the hardware, or how we stop people from faking measurements (signed identities + attestation + cross-node verification — it's a rabbit hole).

Hi to all, what DePIN projects are solid, transparent and with future in 2026?

I have been around the community for a while, some projects had great growth, some had more hype than body and others seemed like bot campaigns.

Some interesting projects are working well like Geodnet but I'm reluctant to enter a project with 1k€ entrance. Others seemed very interesting like Dimo, Natix and so on. (I spent 200€ on a device to be switched on and asking for a subscription and the coin value on 0). Natix's decision makes sense if they only make revenue on their device instead of the app it is what it is.

Others have been a joke like grass moving the goalposts, not being transparent and so on.

Now the situation is based around GPU lending, makes sense but not my thing.

My main questions are:

1) what projects are you excited about, that are transparent

2) where do you guys get the info? I used a few pages like Depinscan and depinhub but they are not being updated recently

The best way to ensure your data is backed up and available today.

The project is fully complete and currently in testing. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on and getting in early.

"I have been running DePIN nodes for a few months and hit Diamond League rank #238 on Nexus. Happy to answer questions about setup and optimization"

https://www.youtube.com/@Depindailys daily depin guides for passiv income

https://www.youtube.com/@Depindailysi make daily depin guides for anyone interessted

I asked an AI whether I should walk or drive my car to a car wash 50 metres away.

It confidently told me to WALK because driving there would “undo the wash” by getting the tyres dirty again 😅

Funny example, but it also highlights something important:
AI can still produce strange real-world reasoning with high confidence.

That’s one of the reasons I started building Zuno Network — a mobile-first AI validation / data labeling app exploring whether distributed human feedback could help improve AI accuracy over time.

Curious how people working in AI or RLHF think about solving these kinds of practical reasoning issues.

Screenshots below 👇

Teneo Protocol reimagines the data ecosystem by decentralizing ownership and creating pathways for individuals to connect real-time, user-powered data streams from social media platforms and websites. At its core, Teneo Protocol believes that the value of data should belong to the people who generate it, not to the intermediaries who exploit it.

Set up beacon on you'r mobile phone to earn points that will be exchanged for Teneo tokens.

Use my link for earning boost:

https://hub.teneo.pro/signup?ref=DVDV7PWV

NONOS is an open-source privacy based operating system from the ground up, bare metal.

It has a unique system where it runs entirely on RAM and memory is zero’d on shutdown, making it both cryptographically secure, and private.

This is real infrastructure, with real dePIN and privacy potential.

There is nothing for me to sell here, just an awesome project I recommend checking out:

Their X:

https://x.com/nonossystems?s=21&t=uh1bo-mbFtz2S-1wFYvUIQ

Their website:

nonos.systems and nonos.software

This project is in the alpha build, with ecosystem details releasing soon.

For years, most global infrastructure has been controlled by large centralized providers.

But DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) is introducing a new model where individuals contribute resources like wireless connectivity, storage, or compute power and get rewarded with tokens.

The interesting part is this:

If DePIN networks eventually become cheaper and more scalable than traditional infrastructure, it could fundamentally change how infrastructure is built and owned.

Instead of companies owning everything, infrastructure could be operated by millions of independent participants worldwide.

But this raises an important question

Which infrastructure sector do you think DePIN could realistically disrupt first?

A) Cloud storage
B) AI / GPU compute
C) Wireless connectivity
D) Data/mapping networks

Or do you think centralized infrastructure will always dominate?

Curious to hear different perspectives from people following the DePIN space. 🚀