A Public Good That Brings Transparency and Composability to DePIN: DePINscan (Beta) Launch

In the rapidly evolving DePIN sector, two pressing challenges have become evident: the lack of transparency and the dire need for composability. While transparency ensures that builders can iterate, investors can make informed decisions, and communities can foster trust, composability allows DePIN projects to seamlessly leverage the utility of other projects in the ecosystem to create flywheels. To fill this gap, we are launching the beta version of W3bstream’s first micro-service: DePINscan, the data aggregation and visualization tool that shines the light of transparent data on the entire Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) sector.

With DePINscan, builders will have access to an out-of-the-box custom dashboard tool that will scale with their dApp, providing invaluable data-driven insights to their team, investors, and community. DePINscan data, which is verifiably transmitted from DePIN devices through W3bstream, will be distributed via API and linked to third-party sites like wechart and, ultimately CoinGecko and DappRadar, boosting the reliability and visibility of application data across DePIN.

More importantly, DePINscan illuminates potential collaboration opportunities within the DePIN ecosystem, fostering composability through shared data layers. This not only amplifies network effects by ensuring projects leverage collective insights but also pinpoints existing DePIN utilities for teams. For example, a weather station project like WeatherFlow or WeatherXM could use DePINscan to find regions where decentralized Lora or WiFi networks have already been set up by DePIN providers like Helium. This is particularly useful in rural parts of the world, where centralized utility providers are less reliable or may not offer coverage at all.

DePINscan’s Map and Discover features create a full picture of the projects that make up this sector and its connected devices. DePINscan strives to be a public good for the entire DePIN sector and its builders to access information in real-time to make informed decisions and enrich their involvement in the space.

Using DePINscan Today

DePINscan provides both a bird's eye view of the sector for DePIN projects as well as a comprehensive, granular insight tool for developers to understand their applications on a deeper level. Developers can access the DePINscan tool and API from the devnet portal, which supports SQL. Data collected from device networks is securely verified and processed by W3bstream and then served to DePINscan. Device metrics include all registered and active devices as well as information on each data message received by a project.

Why DePINscan is important for W3bstream-integrated projects

On-chain transparency is one of crypto’s greatest strengths, but ironically, incomplete industry disclosures have made it difficult for builders and VCs to assess risk before deploying capital. Thanks to IoTeX infrastructure like W3bstream and now DePINscan, the DePIN sector is entering a new paradigm of transparency that aligns with the ultimate promise of crypto to provide a trustless and decentralized source of truth.

DePINscan accelerates project market fit by helping teams identify where devices are being deployed, enabling teams to direct marketing and product spending to demographics and geographies with the greatest affinity for their applications. DePINscan also reveals potentially complimentary utilities offered by other DePIN networks operating in given regions, encouraging collaboration between networks that can enhance the utility of both projects.

We built DePINscan so founders could access comprehensive visualization from launch. Because of its serverless architecture, DePINscan automatically scales alongside device networks. A key benefit of automatic device metrics is that developers can focus on building their project logic while gaining valuable insights into performance at every stage of development.

What’s Next for DePINscan

DePINscan is a beta launch with immediate utility, and the IoTeX team will continue to work diligently to fix minor bugs and implement improvements to the user experience and interface. Over the next several quarters, the team will prototype zero-knowledge proofs on W3bstream to enhance trustlessness, as well as take feedback from the community for other updates.

It’s important that all DePIN projects and builders integrate their projects with W3bstream, which includes DePINscan. To integrate DePINscan, please follow this guide. We believe that tools like DePINscan will empower all builders to address society's pressing technological challenges more efficiently. By co-creating the DePIN ecosystem together, we can accelerate adoption, intertwining crypto's decentralized values with the physical world in a mutually enriching cycle.