DePIN in Crypto: A Historical Overview & Key Projects Featuring Sela Network
Explore the history of DePIN in crypto, its evolution from energy grids to real-world data access, and key projects like Helium and Sela Network shaping decentralized infrastructure.
Nov 18, 2025
History of DePIN in Crypto (and the Rise of Sela Network)
The world of cryptocurrency is a dynamic ecosystem of innovation — and few ideas have evolved as significantly as DePIN, or Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks. What started as a theoretical application of blockchain has now become a diverse movement reshaping how we manage everything from energy to wireless networks — and now, thanks to projects like Sela Network, even the data layer of the internet.
This article explores the history of DePIN in crypto, tracing its evolution from early concepts to real-world deployments — and how Sela is carrying this legacy into new frontiers like agent-powered data access and post-login intelligence.
DePIN's roots lie in the broader decentralization movement — a core principle of blockchain technology. Initially focused on digital currencies like Bitcoin, blockchain soon revealed its potential to distribute control, reduce reliance on intermediaries, and increase transparency in more than just financial systems.
This realization sparked interest in applying decentralization to physical infrastructure — from energy grids to communication networks. The guiding question became: What if the same trustless, distributed principles used in crypto could run real-world systems?
From Theory to Early Pilots
The early phase of DePIN was largely theoretical. Developers and researchers envisioned how blockchain could overlay physical systems, bringing transparency, automation, and resilience to aging infrastructure.
Projects during this phase focused on pilot programs — small-scale demonstrations that proved blockchain could support decentralized energy trading, IoT integration, and peer-to-peer connectivity. These pilots created the foundation for projects like Helium, Filecoin, and later Sela Network — each solving a different infrastructure problem.
Projects like Power Ledger pioneered decentralized energy networks, letting consumers trade excess power directly. These systems proved that blockchain could manage physical resource allocation and pricing in real time.
Smart Cities & IoT Integration
DePIN expanded into smart cities through IoT-enabled sensors and blockchain-based data coordination. These applications enhanced urban systems — from traffic to waste management — by combining real-time data with decentralized control.
Helium broke new ground with its decentralized wireless network, rewarding users for providing connectivity. It became one of the first large-scale DePIN success stories — unlocking global coverage through a crowdsourced infrastructure model.
While early DePIN projects focused on infrastructure hardware, Sela Network introduces a new DePIN frontier: real-world data access.
Sela connects distributed Agent Nodes to clients like AI models, dashboards, and research platforms, enabling them to access behavioral and contextual data from post-login digital environments (like X, Instagram, LinkedIn). This data is not stored centrally — instead, it’s streamed directly from nodes using client-driven APIs.
Sela embodies the same DePIN values — transparency, decentralization, rewards for contributors — but applies them to a new category of infrastructure: data.
Technological Shifts That Enabled DePIN Growth
IoT + Blockchain
The integration of IoT devices with blockchain allowed DePIN networks to gather and act on real-time physical data. For Sela, this means enabling dynamic data routing from live social feeds to requesting agents — without centralized APIs or intermediaries.
Smart Contracts and Automation
Smart contracts unlocked automated, rule-based coordination. Sela uses them to validate node activity, confirm data requests, and automate rewards — all without needing a central authority to mediate interactions.
Scalability Breakthroughs
Early DePINs struggled with throughput. Today, solutions like Monad (used by Sela) allow DePIN projects to process high-frequency interactions with low latency and high finality — making decentralized data access feasible for AI and real-time applications.
- Scalability: Managing infrastructure at scale is complex. Sela answers this with fast finality and parallel execution on Monad.
- Security & Data Integrity: Sela employs cryptographic verification and tamper-proof logs to ensure trust in data flows.
- Regulation: Many early projects ran into legal ambiguity. Sela avoids this by focusing on publicly accessible or user-consented data, rather than sensitive or stored private content.
Sela is among the first to build a Data-to-Agent (D2A) layer — designed for a world where intelligent agents outnumber humans. This will be essential as LLMs, bots, and autonomous apps require real-time, context-rich data streams.
Global Interoperability
As with early DePIN networks, interoperability is key. Sela is building toward composable data flows, allowing agents to mix Sela data with compute (e.g., Golem) and storage (e.g., Arweave) services.
User Incentives & Governance
Sela follows the DePIN tradition of rewarding contributors. By running a Sela Node, users can earn for serving verified data — just as Helium users earn for providing network coverage.
Conclusion: From Power Grids to Data Streams — Sela and the DePIN Continuum
From blockchain’s earliest days to today’s decentralized infrastructure networks, DePIN has shown how distributed systems can power real-world services. What began with energy and connectivity is now expanding to data itself, thanks to projects like Sela Network.
Sela represents the next step in DePIN's evolution — a scalable, regulation-minimized, AI-ready infrastructure for real-time data. Where earlier projects brought decentralization to wires and waves, Sela brings it to information itself.
As the ecosystem matures, expect DePIN projects — old and new — to collaborate, interoperate, and reshape the physical and digital landscapes we rely on every day.
Explore Sela Network:
Download your Sela node: https://www.selanetwork.io/
Sela Network on X: https://x.com/SelaNetwork
Sela Network Telegram: https://t.me/SelaNetwork
Sela Network Discord: https://discord.gg/2fcEwdChrm
Docs: https://docs.selanetwork.io
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