Hello IoTeX community! With an exciting tailwind of growing interest in the DePIN sector, IoTeX has continued to innovate and grow in Q3 2024 as the leading DePIN-focused ecosystem. There has never been a more exciting time for DePIN, and this quarter was extremely productive for IoTeX with a huge influx of new users, products, partnerships, integrations, events and more. This past quarter was highlighted by our IoTeX 2.0 launch, which introduces our new vision for modular infrastructure to empower verifiable DePINs and also outlines our long-term vision to make IoTeX the quintessential DePIN layer for the entire crypto industry. IoTeX also made headlines with impressive partnerships with leading crypto players including OKX, Solana, Polygon, Circle, and more. Stemming from our fresh $50 million fundraising round in Q2, IoTeX has continued to grow our team and ecosystem to solidify our position as the leader of the DePIN industry.

We continue to devote our efforts day-in and day-out to bringing DePIN to the masses, and are excited to share the progress and milestones achieved by IoTeX in this Q3 In Review blog.

🔎 Key Metrics

The IoTeX Network has been buzzing with activity with 218 projects building on IoTeX, including 51 DePIN projects. The IoTeX L1 has now processed 122 million transactions and 32 million blocks, and hosts 105 tokens and 663,000 total wallet accounts, which you can browse on the iotexscan explorer. The staking and voting activity on IoTeX is also at peak levels with more than 3.8 billion $IOTX staked, worth $143 million at current prices, for security and governance, which accounts for ~41% of the total circulating supply.

In addition to an impressive growth in users and transactions in Q3, the number of builders and contributors to IoTeX now exceeds 2,000 developers and there are 112 registered Delegates validating the IoTeX blockchain. We have also seen incredible growth in DePINscan, the most data-rich and visited data aggregator for the DePIN industry. Since we started building DePINscan in late 2023 as a public utility for the DePIN sector, we've registered more than 280 DePIN projects and 18 million devices! As the DePIN sector continues to gain broad awareness, we are excited to see these metrics for the IoTeX Network and DePINscan grow throughout the rest of 2024 and into 2025.

🚀 IoTeX 2.0 Launch

A major highlight this past quarter was the official launch of IoTeX 2.0, which provides modular infrastructure to empower verifiable DePINs. Since 2017, IoTeX has pioneered the DePIN sector, working closely with various DePIN projects to understand the building blocks they need to succeed and even creating our own DePIN hardware (Pebble, Ucam) to explore first-hand what is required to connect real world devices to blockchains. The design of IoTeX 2.0 encapsulates our learnings over the years and presents an end-to-end platform that not only offers DePINs what they need today, but also provides innovations to propel DePINs into the future. Our ultimate goal is to make IoTeX the DePIN layer for the entire crypto universe, providing state-of-the-art infrastructure for DePINs that launch natively on IoTeX as well as DePINs on other chains.

The new design of IoTeX 2.0 brings new capabilities by expanding the IoTeX L1 blockchain with a layer of DePIN Infrastructure Modules (DIMs), which provide essential capabilities for DePINs. As part of the IoTeX 2.0 launch, we’ve partnered with leading Web3 infrastructure projects that will integrate with IoTeX 2.0: Filecoin & Irys for storage, NEAR (Nuffle) for data availability, Espresso for sequencer, The Graph for indexing, Risc0 for zero-knowledge proofs, Streamr for connectivity, and more. IoTeX 2.0 also introduces in-house protocols for on-chain device identity (ioID) and ZK-based verifiable compute (W3bstream) developed by IoTeX.

To learn more about how IoTeX 2.0 enables verifiable DePINs, please read:

• The official IoTeX 2.0 whitepaper.
• Our Head of Research Xinxin Fan’s research paper on ZK-anchored device identity.
• Our cofounder Qevan Guo’s recent op-ed on Verifiability for DePINs.

📈 Growth in IoTeX Ecosystem

As detailed in the Messari DePIN Sector Overview, IoTeX is now the third-largest DePIN ecosystem after Ethereum and Solana. As of August 1, there are 50+ DePIN projects and 200+ in total (including DeFi, GameFi, NFTs, etc.) currently building on IoTeX and many more in the pipeline. It’s incredibly exciting to see these DePIN projects planning their token launches on the IoTeX L1, while many others are utilizing DePIN Infrastructure Modules (DIMs) such as ioID & W3bstream as part of our new IoTeX 2.0 infrastructure stack. Even more impressive than the number of DePINs is the variety and strength of projects that now call IoTeX their home. For example, Network3 has raised a $5.5M pre-seed round and sold thousands of nodes, Nubila has raised a $2.5M pre-seed round and opened their device pre-sale, Inferix has opened their GPU node sale, Wayru has unveiled their WiFi miners, and PowerPod has launched RWA NFTs.

While the ecosystem of DePIN projects on IoTeX grows, the on-chain activity has also grown significantly in Q3 2024. As detailed in the Messari State of IoTeX report, the number of daily on-chain transactions surged to 26,100 showing a 107% growth quarter-over-quarter. The IoTeX L1 has now processed more than 120M transactions, commands a staking ratio of >40%, powers more than 100+ tokens, and hosts 100,000+ monthly active users.

Finally, the IoTeX ecosystem is expanding rapidly into other Layer 1 networks, which are integrating with the IoTeX 2.0 modular tech stack to bring DePIN capabilities to their own ecosystems. These monumental partnerships and integrations cement IoTeX as not only a home for native DePIN projects, but also a technology provider to other L1 networks, expanding our influence beyond the IoTeX L1 and across the entire crypto universe. In Q3 2024, we partnered with top-tier L1 ecosystems including Solana, Polygon, Telegram (TONX), Injective, Irys, and more:

• Solana: IoTeX launched a cross-chain bridge to Solana in September to aggregate DePIN liquidity between two of the largest DePIN ecosystems, as well as position IoTeX as a home for Solana DePINs to go multi-chain.
• Polygon: IoTeX has been integrated to Polygon’s AggLayer for cross-chain DePIN liquidity and opens up the opportunity for Polygon projects to leverage the DePIN modules introduced in IoTeX 2.0.
• Telegram (TONX): IoTeX has partnered with TONX to to bring DePIN to 950M Telegram users by co-building DePIN infrastructure for the TON ecosystem.
• Injective: IoTeX is now integrated with Injective, enabling the seamless transfer assets between the two chains and opening up novel DePIN + DeFi use cases.
• Irys: IoTeX has integrated with Irys to enable robust data integrity for DePIN builders.

🏄 DePIN Surf Accelerator

IoTeX launched our DePIN Surf Accelerator alongside prominent DePIN-focused VCs, FutureMoneyGroup and Foresight Ventures, back in Q1 2024. Our first cohort included 8 projects — Ator, NATIX, Inferix, Wayru, PowerPod, Network3, StarPower, DePHY — who after graduating from the accelerator have gone on to raise significant seed funding and are well on their way to becoming top-tier DePIN projects as part of the IoTeX ecosystem. In Q3 2024, we launched Cohort 2 of the DePIN Surf Accelerator with 9 projects that include 4 high-quality DePIN projects and 5 “DeFi for DePIN” projects:

• DePIN: Nubila (weather oracle), Qualoo (connectivity), Scannit (personal data), SweatTemple (healthcare)
• DeFi for DePIN: Loxodrome (perps), PinSwap (DEX), Magma (collateralized stablecoin), Bedrock (liquid staking), Quenta (derivatives)

Throughout August and September, these 9 projects have gone through an extensive set of workshops with top-tier VCs and builders, including Borderless Capital, SNZ Holdings, Escape Velocity Ventures (EV3), and more. Through our accelerator, these projects were able to refine their projects’ visions, design their tokenomics, and bootstrap their communities. We look forward to their official token launches on the IoTeX Network in the near future! To close out DePIN Surf Cohort 2, we will be hosting a demo day for investors to showcase our amazing projects on October 10.

🔗 Product Launches

As detailed earlier, this quarter was full of exciting integrations with Web3 infrastructure projects and Layer 1 blockchains, including integrations to Solana and Polygon. But that’s not all! IoTeX also made great strides this quarter by launching iotex-core-v2.0, updates to our flagship user-facing products, ioPay Wallet and DePINscan, as well as welcoming massive partners in OKX Wallet and Circle USDC.e to join the IoTeX ecosystem. We also upgraded the IoTeX L1 To Mainnet v2.0 and launched the new IoTeX Hub, which serves as a web-based one-stop shop for all things IoTeX!

• iotex-core-v2.0: the IoTeX L1 blockchain was upgraded to v2.0 in July with a variety of core updates, including a new NFT-based staking contract, Delegate ownership transders, enhanced transaction handling for web3js, failed transaction purging, EVM error handing, and much more. In a nutshell, the IoTeX L1 is more performant, secure, and flexible than ever with v2.0 and we have an exciting roadmap of upgrades already planned for v2.1.

• DePINscan: the best explorer for the DePIN sector is even better after launching fresh new features, including token launch calendars, direct links to purchase hardware, and more detailed profile pages for DePIN projects and L1 chains. To date, DePINscan tracks more than 250 DePIN projects and 18 million devices and has been referenced by leading media companies like CoinDesk, research organizations like Messari in their DePIN industry reports, and top-tier VCs in their DePIN sector overviews.

• OKX Wallet: the IoTeX Network was integrated with OKX Wallet, enabling millions of OKX users to manage and transfer $IOTX and IoTeX assets seamlessly. This is just the start of our collaboration with OKX — we have some exciting campaigns planned for Q4 2024 that will bring global OKX Wallet users to the IoTeX community, with participation from more than 50 DePIN and DeFi projects. Stay tuned!

• Circle USDC.e Stablecoin: the USDC.e stablecoin was added to the IoTeX network with support from Circle, which provides a secure and standardized method for any EVM blockchain to transfer USDC tokens to the IoTeX Network. This also paves the way for an upgrade to native USDC in the future!

• IoTeX Hub & ioPay Wallet: the new IoTeX Hub is a web-based tool for users to interact with the IoTeX Network. Users can connect their wallets via MetaMask/WalletConnect and stake IOTX, participate in governance votes, trade various assets, and much more. We also launched ioPay v2, which makes the “DePIN wallet of choice” even better with multi-chain capabilities, enhanced user experience, and native integration of DePINscan to explore the DePIN universe all in one mobile app.

🌎 Global Events & Media Coverage

As we were busy building and forming partnerships throughout Q3 2024, the IoTeX team was also busy hosting some of the largest DePIN events around the world. Our flagship event, R3al World Summit in Singapore, was co-hosted by Messari and was a huge success. This was our biggest event to-date, spanning two days with 2,000 live attendees. We had more than 50 DePIN projects showcase their devices and projects throughout the two-day event, making R3al World Summit undoubtedly the biggest DePIN event of the week. During the event, we had keynotes from IoTeX, Messari, Borderless Capital, and 1k(x), as well as panels with Dragonfly, CoinFund, Samsung NEXT, Solana, EV3, and OKX Ventures (just to name a few). One of the hottest sessions was a fireside chat with IoTeX cofounder Raullen and Polygon cofounder Sandeep, where the two announced live our new partnership to bridge our ecosystems. If you weren’t there in person, you can catch the full livestream replays here: Day 1, Day 2.

IoTeX also brought the R3al World event series to ETH CC in Brussels for our first R3al World DePIN House (co-hosted by FutureMoneyGroup), as well as Korea Blockchain Week in Seoul for a R3al World VC Networking Party (co-hosted by LECCA). Overall, our events this quarter set a new standard for DePIN events and we look forward to hosting more globally to bring DePIN investors, builders, and users under one roof and evangelize the DePIN sector!In addition to IRL coverage, IoTeX received loads of digital coverage from top tier media in Q3 2024. Some highlights include:

• Media Mentions & Op-Eds: the IoTeX 2.0 launch received widespread media coverage from top publications like CoinDesk and CoinTelegraph, our partnership with Polygon was covered by The Block, and we published op-eds in CoinDesk and CCN
• Podcasts: IoTeX cofounders joined some of the largest DePIN podcasts — Raullen was featured on the Proof of Coverage podcast by EV3, while Jing was featured on the DePIN Hub podcast by Hotspotty
• Research Reports: IoTeX was included in DePIN sector overviews as the leading DePIN ecosystem, including Messari’s DePIN sector overview and The Block’s GMCI DePIN Index

👫 Growing Team

The IoTeX continued to expand in Q3 2024, with a focus on bringing on more regionally focused talents and specialists. We are excited to welcome Jayne Kim, who was previously at Theta, to drive APAC & Korea Growth as well as Ralph Sun, who was previously at CoinTelegraph, to drive Public Relations & Communications efforts. In addition, we have been actively onboarding engineering and marketing contractors to expedite our development efforts and global reach. We are actively hiring, so please keep us in mind if you hear from top talents that want to join the DePIN sector.

🔮 What’s Coming Next

The coming months for IoTeX will be extremely exciting as we gear up for major product launches and anticipate the official token launches of some of our most promising native DePIN and DeFi projects. Following the success of our Get GOATed Season 1, which brought 30,000 new community members to IoTeX, we are going to launch an even bigger Get GOATed Season 2 campaign with 100M $IOTX incentives for new community members and projects that join the IoTeX Network. We are also diligently planning the official launches of two of our core products that been under development for over a year, ioID and W3bstream. ioID will be the world's first on-chain verifiable identity for DePIN devices, while W3bstream will bring zero-knowledge proofs to DePIN builders for verifiable "proofs of real world activity". We can't stress how excited we are to finally bring these products to life -- thank you for your support and get ready for the next chapter of IoTeX!