DePIN projects have a marketing problem most crypto teams never face: they need two very different groups of people to show up at the same time. One group buys or runs hardware such as hotspots, dashcams or graphics cards. The other group pays to use what that hardware produces, whether that is mobile data, fresh map imagery or rendering power. If either side stalls, the network stalls with it.

At AnkhLabs we think this two-sided problem is the most useful way to understand DePIN marketing in 2026. Token incentives were enough to recruit contributors in the last cycle. They are not enough to recruit customers, and the market has stopped paying for networks that only have the first group.

What is DePIN?

DePIN stands for decentralized physical infrastructure networks. Instead of one company building cell towers, mapping cars or data centres, a DePIN project pays thousands of individuals to deploy small pieces of the network, usually with a token. It then sells the combined output to customers. The token is the incentive that builds supply before demand exists.

The sector is larger than most people assume. As of 26 October 2026, DePINscan tracks 440 projects with a combined market value of about $8.1 billion and about 36.8 million devices. The best-known names cover the main categories: Helium for wireless coverage, Hivemapper for street-level maps, Render for graphics computing, and GEODNET for precise positioning data.

What does the DePIN market look like in 2026?

The honest answer is that DePIN revenue is growing while most DePIN tokens are not. The State of DePIN 2025 report from Messari and Escape Velocity estimated about $72 million in onchain revenue for 2025 across a sector worth about $10 billion, Cointelegraph reported on 29 January 2026. Tokens from the 2018 to 2022 class were down 94% to 99% from their highs. Helium's token HNT fell 77% between December 2024 and December 2025 while its onchain revenue rose about eight times.

Prices kept sliding into 2026. A KuCoin analysis of CryptoRank data put the sector's market value at $3.46 billion on 15 July 2026, about 83% below its March 2024 peak, using a narrower list of tokens than DePINscan. Funding has not dried up, though. The Messari report counted close to $1 billion raised by DePIN projects in 2025, up from $698 million in 2024.

Put together, the numbers say investors now value DePIN networks on what customers pay, not on how many devices exist. Leading revenue-generating networks traded at about 10 to 25 times revenue, according to the same report. "The big divider is whether the network can earn money from real customers without constantly leaning on incentives," XYO co-founder Markus Levin told Cointelegraph. That shift changes what marketing is for.

Why does DePIN marketing have two audiences?

A DePIN network is a marketplace. On the supply side are contributors, the people and small businesses who buy hardware, install it and keep it online in exchange for rewards. On the demand side are customers, who pay for coverage, data or compute. Render lists the split plainly on its own site, with separate paths for artists, node operators, token holders, compute clients and agencies.

The two sides want opposite things. Contributors want high rewards and cheap hardware. Customers want low prices and reliable service. The token sits in the middle, paying contributors before customer revenue is large enough to do it alone. Marketing that only speaks to one side builds an unbalanced network. Too many contributors and rewards per device collapse. Too few customers and the token has nothing behind it.

Sources: Render Network, Helium, Bee Maps, Messari via Cointelegraph. Figures as of 26 October 2026.

How did Helium move from hotspots to carriers?

Helium is the clearest case of a DePIN network changing its main audience. Its early marketing was aimed at people who bought hotspots to earn tokens. Its later growth came from telecom companies. In April 2025 Helium announced that AT&T subscribers could connect automatically to its community-built Wi-Fi through Passpoint, a standard that lets phones join trusted Wi-Fi networks without logging in.

In June 2026 Helium went further and sold its consumer phone plan. Light Reading reported on 2 June 2026 that Noble Mobile, a T-Mobile reseller founded by Andrew Yang, had acquired Helium Mobile and agreed to use the Helium Network. According to the Blockworks Helium token holder report for the second quarter of 2026, carrier offload brought in $3.29 million of $3.35 million in total protocol revenue, or 98.4%. Carrier offload means mobile carriers paying to move their subscribers' data onto the Helium Network. The same report says the price carriers pay was cut from $0.50 to roughly $0.10 per gigabyte in early June, a move aimed at winning more carrier traffic.

As of 23 October 2026, Helium's site leads with more than 1 million daily active users, more than 49 terabytes of data a day and more than 40,000 community-deployed access points. Notice who that page is written for. It offers products for carriers, mobile resellers and large indoor venues, and the token appears only as the way contributors are rewarded.

How do Hivemapper and Bee Maps market to drivers and map buyers?

Hivemapper started by rewarding drivers in its HONEY token for mounting a dashcam that captures street imagery. Bee Maps is the company that sells the resulting map data. On the supply side, the marketing has moved steadily toward lowering the cost and risk of joining. A January 2026 FalconX research note reported that camera pricing changed from $589 upfront to $19 a month on a two-year contract.

On 16 July 2026 Bee Maps announced that USDC would become the default reward in its Bee app from August 2026, funded by Bee Maps at its sole discretion. The same post said the app would stop supporting HONEY rewards and that Bee Maps had ended its services agreement with the Hivemapper Foundation.

USDC is a dollar stablecoin, so drivers using the app now see earnings that do not swing with a token price. It is the most direct example so far of a DePIN business deciding that its contributors value predictable pay more than token upside. It also changes the recruiting pitch from "earn a token" to "get paid to drive".

On the demand side, the map data is now sold under the Bee Maps name. Its site leads with 37% global road coverage and 22 million unique kilometres mapped, which are the numbers a mapping or logistics buyer cares about. A business buying street imagery wants freshness and coverage in its regions. It does not want to hold a token.

How do you market a DePIN network to hardware contributors?

Contributor marketing is where most DePIN projects started, and where many made promises they could not keep. The approach that holds up in 2026 is closer to selling a small business than selling a token.

• Publish honest earnings maths. Show the hardware cost, typical monthly rewards by region and a realistic payback period, including the months when rewards fall. Projects that advertised best-case earnings in the last cycle left a trail of angry contributors.

• Lower the cost of joining. Monthly hardware plans and rewards in stablecoins, as Bee Maps now offers, reduce the risk a contributor takes before they earn anything.

• Recruit where coverage is needed. A network needs devices where customers want service, not where token farmers happen to live. Use coverage maps and regional bonuses to direct supply, and check for spoofed locations and duplicate devices, a problem we cover in our piece on sybil detection.

• Build a real community around the hardware. Setup guides, troubleshooting channels and local leaders keep devices online. Our guide to crypto community management covers the operating side.

• Treat incentives as a cost to be reduced. Rewards that only pay for presence attract farmers. The lessons from liquidity mining apply directly to hardware rewards.

How do you market a DePIN network to paying customers?

Customer marketing for DePIN looks like ordinary business-to-business marketing, which is exactly why crypto teams find it hard. The buyer is a telecom operator, a mapping company, a logistics fleet, an AI startup or a film studio. They compare you with established suppliers on price, quality and risk.

• Lead with the service, not the chain. Helium sells carrier offload and Bee Maps sells map data. The decentralized model is a reason the price is lower or the coverage is fresher, not the headline.

• Make reliability measurable. Customers need service metrics, coverage maps and support commitments. Publish them, and say plainly where the network is still thin.

• Win one reference customer per segment. A named pilot is worth more than any campaign. Turn each one into a case study for the next buyer in the same industry.

• Price in dollars. Most customers will not hold a volatile token. Burn-and-mint models, where customer payments in dollars are converted to tokens that are burned, let the token capture value without asking the buyer to touch it.

• Staff for sales. Enterprise deals come from people who know the industry. Our pieces on web3 lead generation and web3 product marketing cover how to build that pipeline.

What we'd tell a founder launching a DePIN network

First, write two messaging frameworks from day one, one for contributors and one for customers, and keep them apart. For Cross The Ages we built different messaging for players and for investors, and the public sale closed at $500K+ with the IDO (a token sale run on a decentralised exchange) fully allocated. DePIN needs the same discipline, because a hotspot owner and a carrier procurement team read the same sentence in opposite ways.

Second, measure demand before you scale supply. Track paying customers, revenue per device and the share of contributor rewards covered by customer revenue. Device counts look impressive in a launch post, but investors and customers now read revenue first.

Third, plan the move from token story to service story. The token will carry your early marketing. Within a year or two, the projects that last talk mostly about what customers get. Our go-to-market strategy work is built around that transition, and you can see examples in our case studies.

If you are launching or repositioning a DePIN network and want a second opinion on your plan, talk to AnkhLabs.

The bottom line

DePIN proved it can recruit hardware at scale. The open question in 2026 is whether networks can sell what that hardware produces. Helium and Bee Maps show the direction, with rewards that feel more like income, products sold under business brands and revenue that comes from customers rather than token buyers. Marketing that follows the same path will age well.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Figures are as of 26 October 2026.