Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks, or DePINs, are making the headlines today.
A DePIN is a network where the physical location of the hardware powering it plays a key role in the value of the service it provides.
Initially coined by Messari towards the end of 2022, several types of DePINs exist today such as Helium and Filecoin.
If you wish to learn more about DePINs and how they are evolving today, this link gives some really helpful explanations on the subject.
The Internet knows no national borders.
Alan Dershowitz
Except it does Alan. Unfortunately, it very much does.
What started out as a great idea to unite the entire world on the same grid of information has now turned into a battlefield of disinformation, misinformation and manipulation.
You may have already heard about this one. We talked about is in a previous article but essentially what this means is that certain social networks or forums may be inaccessible within your country. Some platforms’ access are blocked for legal compliance reasons like Threads, X’s competitor, which’s access was forbidden from the E.U. Other examples exist of geo-blocking exist due to suspected foreign intervention on the platform as was the case for Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent to Facebook. Fun fact in the case of Vkontakte:
In January 2016, China banned VKontakte, claiming that it was manipulating web content and cooperating with the Kremlin. According to Russia’s media watchdog, the network estimates around 300,000 users based in China.[63] As of 14 February 2018, China authorities unblocked VKontakte and it was fully accessible in the country.
In some cases geo-blocking is intentional, as it is the case for Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social network aimed exclusively at residents of North America.
It’s not mystery that governments monitor the Internet, or parts of it, today. That’s not to say that they don’t have your best interests in mind in doing so, but nothing is ever black and white is it?
Governments will request some content be pulled off from search engines from time to time. Here’s the link to Google’s page of government requests to remove content since 2011: https://transparencyreport.google.com/government-removals/government-requests
Additionally, certain countries posses very powerful systems to prevent inbound/outbound navigation from their country as well as outright censorship of parts of the Internet.
You may have already heard about a few of them such as North Korea, Russia, China, Iran. The reality is that everyone monitors online activity nowadays, but some are much stricter in how they do it, sometimes overlapping with individual freedom and leading to outright censorship.
Time to put on that tin foil hat. Is the most popular search engine today, Google, really giving you the best results for your search? Is the USA-based behemoth holding back on information, or distorting search results?
It’s not the first time these concerns are raised, but here’s an article mentioning a trial initiated against Google for having manipulated search results dating back from 2019 and still ongoing to this day.
The problem with such trials is that it is extremely difficult to prove anything. The only point of reference that we can use to compare Google’s results are other competing search engines and that is a long and tedious process no one really has any time for.
At any rate, Google is known for being opaque on the way they deliver their search results, citing:
Extreme transparency has historically proven to empower bad actors in a way that hurts our users and website owners who play by the rules
Google spokesperson Lara Levin
How does DePIN solve any of the aforementioned issues and how does Exorde solve them?
Today the Internet is one big soup of information. And just as you would expect in a big soup, it can be really hard to find exactly what you are looking for.
We did a whole bit on why Exorde is proposing a novel approach to the problem of misinformation and disinformation today. You can read more about it here: https://medium.com/@ExordeLabs/the-most-trustworthy-data-in-the-world-be1e90702d9e
DePIN essentially provides all the necessary elements to answer the obstacles linked to geo-blocking, government-based censorship of the Internet and lack of trust in traditional browser engines.
Through its collaborative, transparent and open nature, a DePIN system like Exorde can link public information around the world in real time, ensuring a much better experience for all internet users who want to know what the world is talking about, without resorting to doom scrolling.
Such Decentralized Phyiscal Infrastructure Networks can be the future into creating and maintaining more trust on the Internet as a whole, and helping us better understand each other’s points of view.