DePIN Explained 2026: How Networks Pay

Introduction

DePIN stands for decentralised physical infrastructure networks. A DePIN network is a blockchain network that pays its own token to people who supply something in the physical world: a radio on a windowsill, a rack of hard drives, a graphics card, or computing time spent on a machine-learning task. The token is the payment, the blockchain keeps the record, and a proof of some kind checks that the resource is real. What the network sells is the resource itself, to customers who want wireless coverage, storage or compute. If the way a blockchain keeps such records is new to you, our blockchain technology guide explains it first.

This guide uses four networks as worked cases, one for each kind of resource. Helium pays HNT to people who run Hotspots, small radios that provide wireless coverage; its documentation says that anybody can run a Hotspot and provide LoRaWAN coverage to the network (read 3 November 2026). Filecoin's documentation describes FIL rewards for storage providers who prove that they keep clients' data (read 3 November 2026). Render's documentation describes RENDER rewards for GPU operators supplying rendering and compute capacity (read 3 November 2026). Bittensor's documentation describes subnets as independent incentive markets and says their accumulated alpha tokens are distributed to participants, while newly minted TAO is injected into subnet pools (read 3 November 2026).

Bittensor sits at the edge of the category. Bittensor's network documentation describes miners doing off-chain work in subnets and validators scoring that work (read 3 November 2026). It is included because its token economics give a different answer to the question every DePIN network has to settle: who pays for the rewards once new tokens alone stop being enough.

There are two ways to be exposed to a DePIN network, and they carry different risks. The first is the token: you buy HNT, FIL, RENDER or TAO and hold it, which is a bet on the market price of that token. The second is the hardware: you buy a Hotspot, a storage server or a GPU rig, pay for its power and connection in pounds, and receive rewards in a token whose price and issuance you cannot set. The second exposure contains the first, because every reward you earn is paid in the token.

That is why this guide names the harm class at the start rather than at the end. There are three ways a participant's return gets cut: the reward rules change, the chain or token changes, or the token's price falls, including under the selling of rewards by contributors who pay their costs in ordinary money. A hardware payback projection rests on all three staying as assumed. The record further down gives dated protocol events as examples; it does not measure what participants actually lost, because this guide has read no source that does.

The guide works through the model in order. It explains what DePIN is and is not, then the loop every network runs: contribute a resource, prove it, earn tokens, and find someone who pays. It shows how each of the four networks checks the work, who pays on each, and how each issues new tokens. It then compares the token and the hardware as exposures, sets out three ways a participant's return gets cut, with dated protocol events as examples, gives the category's size with its date, and ends with what a UK reader should know about promotion rules and tax.

Every figure on this page carries the date it was read and its source beside it. Network sources were read on 3 and 4 November 2026 with our verification client, token prices come from DefiLlama's public price API read on 3 November 2026, and the category figures come from CoinGecko's category pages read on 5 November 2026. Where a source did not answer a question, the page says so rather than estimating. None of this is advice to buy a token or a device, and nothing here describes rewards as an income you can count on.

What DePIN Is, and What It Is Not

A resource, a proof and a token

Every DePIN network combines three parts. There is a resource that a customer could pay for: coverage, storage or compute. There is a proof, a way for the network to check that a contributor really supplied that resource rather than claiming it. And there is a token, which the network issues to contributors and which customers often need in order to buy the service. Remove any one of the three and the model stops working: without the resource there is nothing to sell, without the proof the rewards go to whoever can fake the claim best, and without the token there is no payment.

The token is what makes these networks different from a conventional company that rents out the same resources. A telecoms operator builds its own masts and pays its engineers in pounds. A DePIN network asks the public to build the masts, pays them in a token it creates, and hopes that customer demand grows fast enough to give that token a lasting value. The public carries the capital cost, and the token carries the promise.

Four resource classes, four networks

The table sets the four worked cases side by side. Each row gives the resource, the token, what a contributor supplies and the chain the network's token runs on, as each network's own documentation described it on 3 November 2026. Our comparison of Helium, Filecoin and Render sets three of them against each other on eleven questions, from supply rules to how a reader can take part.

A further group of networks pays for sensor readings. They follow the same loop, and the questions in this guide apply to them unchanged, but none of them is a worked case here, because each would need its own dated read before any figure about it could appear on this page.

Why it is not mining in the Bitcoin sense

DePIN contributors are often called miners, and Helium's own documentation still uses the word for Hotspot owners in places. The comparison misleads in one important way. A Bitcoin miner is paid for securing the chain: section 6 of the Bitcoin whitepaper gives a block's creator new coins and the block's transaction fees as an incentive to support the network. The work it does has no customer outside the network. A DePIN contributor is paid for supplying a resource that someone outside the network is supposed to use. If nobody uses it, the rewards are payments for capacity that sits idle, funded by new tokens rather than by customers.

The proofs differ for the same reason. Filecoin's documentation says each storage sector of 32 GiB or 64 GiB is verified once in every 24-hour period, and that a storage provider has a 30-minute deadline to answer the challenge with a zk-SNARK proof on the chain (read 3 November 2026). Bitcoin needs no such check, because the hashing is the service. DePIN needs one, because the service is out in the world where the chain cannot see it.

What DePIN does not change

A token does not change the cost of the hardware, the price of electricity or the rent on a rack. It changes who pays those costs up front and how they are paid back. In a conventional business, revenue from customers pays them back. In a DePIN network, the payback arrives in tokens, and the tokens are worth pounds only if someone buys them. That one fact sits under every risk in the rest of this guide.

The DePIN Loop: Contribute, Prove, Earn, Get Paid For

Every network in this guide runs the same four-step loop, and each step is a place where it can fail. The figure shows the loop, and the subsections below take each step in turn.

Step one: contribute

A contributor supplies a resource and pays for it in ordinary money. On Helium that means a Hotspot, its power and its internet connection; on Filecoin, storage hardware, power, bandwidth and the FIL that must be locked as collateral; on Render, a GPU and its electricity; on Bittensor, the computing work a subnet asks for. Filecoin's documentation is direct about the scale for storage providers: it says the initial hardware investment and the collateral in FIL are significant and will likely require financing from investors, venture capitalists or banks (read 3 November 2026).

Step two: prove

The network has to check that the resource is real, because rewards are paid automatically and anyone could claim to have supplied a service. The checks differ by resource, and the next section describes each one:

• Radio beacons heard by neighbouring Hotspots on Helium, until that mechanism was retired.
• Cryptographic storage proofs on Filecoin.
• Logged jobs on Render.
• Validators scoring miners on Bittensor.

A weak proof invites fake contributors, who dilute the rewards of honest ones without adding anything a customer could use.

Step three: earn

Contributors who pass the check receive new tokens. Each network issues them on a published schedule that shrinks over time: Helium through halvings every two years, Filecoin through a minting model with a six-year half-life on part of its supply, Bittensor through halvings set by how much TAO has already been issued, and Render through emissions allocated in epochs (documentation read 3 November 2026). Issuance sets a reward budget; a contributor's allocation also depends on the network's rules for scoring or sharing rewards.

Step four: someone pays

The last step decides whether the network is a business or a subsidy. Customers pay for the service, and on several networks they pay by buying the token and destroying it, which is the burn-and-mint model. If customer payments are large relative to new issuance, buying pressure from customers can balance the selling pressure from contributors. If they are small, the rewards are paid almost entirely in new tokens, and the token's value rests on buyers who expect the customers to arrive later.

How Each Network Checks the Work

The proof is the part of a DePIN network that a buyer of hardware hears least about, and it is the part that decides which hardware earns. Each of the four networks checks a different resource in a different way, and one of them has just retired the mechanism it was best known for.

Helium: radio beacons, now retired

Helium's proof of coverage worked through radio beacons. Helium Improvement Proposal 83 describes it: a Hotspot transmitted a beacon, nearby Hotspots that heard it reported as witnesses, and Proof-of-Coverage oracles collected the witnesses for each beacon and rewarded a selection of 14 of them. The proposal argued for rewarding the first 14 Hotspots to respond rather than a random selection, so that the network would favour fast, useful connections.

That mechanism is gone. Helium's documentation on oracle data says that Proof of Coverage has been removed from the Helium networks as of 6 July 2026, and that its beacon, witness and entropy data are kept only for historical reference (read 3 November 2026). The same documentation describes Hotspots earning rewards for data transfer: on the Mobile network, based on the amount of eligible data passed through the Hotspot, and on the Internet of Things network, credited to the Hotspots that forwarded a device's message. For a reader, the consequence is plain: a Hotspot sold today on the promise of coverage rewards is being sold on a mechanism the network has retired. Before buying any Helium hardware, read what Helium's current documentation says the device is rewarded for, and treat any seller's projection that predates July 2026 as describing a different network.

Filecoin: proofs that the data is still there

Filecoin checks storage with Proof-of-Spacetime, which its documentation describes as the mechanism the blockchain uses to validate that storage providers are continuously providing the storage they claim. Each sector of 32 GiB or 64 GiB is verified once in every 24-hour period, the period is split into 30-minute deadlines, and a provider must answer its challenge within its deadline with a zk-SNARK proof posted to the chain (read 3 November 2026).

Missing those proofs costs money. Filecoin's slashing documentation describes fault fees with exceptions for honest providers, including no penalty for a newly faulty sector in its current proving period after a missed WindowPoSt and no fees if the sector is successfully recovered in a later proving period (read 3 November 2026). A storage provider therefore needs reliable power and connectivity as well as disks, because the penalty for downtime is taken from the FIL it has locked up.

Render: jobs logged and rewarded by epoch

Render checks work through the jobs themselves. Its knowledge base says the protocol keeps a transparent log of these transactions, which forms the basis for rewards to contributors at the end of each epoch, and that emissions are allocated epoch by epoch, typically over a week, based on network usage (read 3 November 2026). Render's implemented RNP-015 also describes availability rewards based on proven uptime, intended to provide capacity in advance of demand and help cover operators' electricity and maintenance costs (read 4 November 2026).

Bittensor: validators score the miners

Bittensor's documentation says the work itself happens off-chain, inside subnets, while the chain records who participates, measures agreement about who is doing good work, and emits TAO accordingly (read 3 November 2026). The documentation says validators score miners in each subnet and Yuma Consensus determines how participants are evaluated and rewarded (read 3 November 2026). A miner's reward therefore depends on validators' judgement of its output, not on a fixed amount of hardware switched on. Bittensor also appears in our review of 2025's crypto trends.

The chain underneath is run more narrowly than the subnets above it. Bittensor's documentation on chain consensus says that a permissioned set of validator authorities produces and finalises blocks, and classifies the current mechanism as Proof of Authority (read 3 November 2026). That is a choice about who can stop or reorder the chain, and it is worth knowing before you hold TAO as a long-term position.

Who Pays: The Demand Side Behind Each Token

A DePIN token is worth what buyers will pay for it, and the most durable buyers are customers who need the service. Each network routes customer payments differently. Reading that route tells you what number to watch, because a network's own demand figure is a better guide to its future than its token price on any given day.

Helium: Data Credits and burn-and-mint

Helium customers pay with Data Credits. Helium's documentation fixes one Data Credit at $0.00001 and says the number of Data Credits produced by burning one HNT fluctuates with the US dollar price of HNT, as reported by an on-chain Pyth price feed (read 3 November 2026). Helium's documentation bills IoT data transfer in 24-byte increments and describes Data Credits as Mobile's sole billing and fee-management mechanism (read 3 November 2026).

Helium's token documentation says Net Emissions reissue HNT against a smoothed burn target, subject to a cap of 1,643.83561643 HNT per 24-hour epoch that is unaffected by the two-year halvings (read 3 November 2026). The documentation describes smoothing using six sevenths of the previous day's uncapped target and one seventh of the current day's burn before applying that cap (read 3 November 2026). Burning HNT and reissuing rewards therefore remain separate supply movements.

Helium Mobile adds a second kind of customer. Helium's documentation describes Helium Mobile Hotspots as low-cost Wi-Fi radios, and says that community-owned Hotspots and converted Wi-Fi networks connect to a common core that gives subscribers from various mobile carriers automatic access to the network (read 3 November 2026). Helium's Mobile documentation describes HNT rewards for existing Wi-Fi networks that enable carrier offload and service data on Helium (read 3 November 2026).

Filecoin: storage deals and DataCap

Filecoin's documentation describes client storage deals and a Filecoin Plus programme using DataCap (read 3 November 2026). Its documentation says notaries allocate a resource called DataCap to clients with valuable storage use cases, that DataCap cannot be sold or exchanged, and that a client spends it by making a verified deal with a storage provider (read 3 November 2026).

Filecoin's verified-deals documentation sets a 10x quality adjustment for storage in verified deals, which gives the provider a larger share of storage power and makes it more likely to be elected to produce blocks and earn FIL; it adds that the same multiplier applies to the collateral the provider must post and to the penalties if it fails its proofs (read 3 November 2026).

Render: Render Credits priced in US dollars

Render customers pay through a burn-and-mint model the network calls the Burn Mint Equilibrium. Its knowledge base says that, under RNP-001, artists burn RENDER tokens in exchange for Render Credits of an equivalent US dollar value, and that GPU computing work is paid for by burning RENDER SPL tokens for an equivalent amount of Render Credits (read 3 November 2026). The knowledge base describes token emissions as an incentive for GPU suppliers to serve network demand (read 3 November 2026).

Render's knowledge base describes fiat pricing and RENDER emissions to operators (read 3 November 2026). The fiat value of an operator's token reward depends on its token amount and the price at which it is valued or sold.

Bittensor: stake flowing into subnet pools

Bittensor's demand side works differently. The dTAO whitepaper describes subnet alpha tokens traded against TAO in subnet pools (read 3 November 2026). The whitepaper says the network uses the subnet token prices to guide the emission process (read 3 November 2026). Under this design the money that steers rewards is stake moving between subnet pools, which is a market judgement about each subnet rather than a customer invoice.

Bittensor's emission-weights documentation says new subnets begin with participant-side alpha weights of 18% for the owner, 41% for the validator bucket and 41% for miners, with root stakers' baseline paid from the validator bucket; owners can change the weights within chain-enforced bounds (read 3 November 2026).

TAO can also be staked without choosing a subnet. Bittensor's documentation describes netuid 0 as the root network, which has no miners, no alpha token and no validation work: it is the pool where TAO is staked directly, and root stake counts toward validator stake weight on every subnet and earns a share of each subnet's dividends (read 3 November 2026). Bittensor's network documentation describes direct TAO staking on root and TAO-to-alpha staking through individual subnet pools (read 3 November 2026). How staking works in general is covered in our crypto staking guide.

Token Economics: Emissions, Halvings and Who Sells

Every DePIN token is issued to contributors over time, and the issuance schedule is as important as the price. A halving reduces scheduled issuance; a network can also change the rules used to allocate rewards. The four networks publish their schedules, and each has changed in ways that affected participants.

Helium: halvings every two years

Helium Improvement Proposal 20 introduced halvings of net HNT issuance every two years on the anniversary of the network's genesis. It set the first halving for 1 August 2021, when net issuance fell to 2.5 million HNT a month, and gives a maximum supply of 223 million HNT (read 3 November 2026). Helium's token documentation says the network targeted 5,000,000 HNT a month at launch, and that the maximum supply had fallen to about 223,000,000 HNT by the time the proposal was approved (both read 3 November 2026).

For a Hotspot owner, each halving cuts the pool of new HNT available for rewards in half on a known date, unless the network's other mechanisms add to it. The schedule is published years ahead, so a payback calculation that ignores the next halving is wrong on the day it is made.

The rules around those rewards have been rewritten more than once. Helium Improvement Proposal 138, started on 8 November 2024 and listed as deployed in the HIP repository's index (read 4 November 2026), set out phasing out the subnetwork tokens IOT and MOBILE and returning to rewarding participants directly in HNT. It also set out ending the HNT emissions allocated to HST holders and adding them to the HNT issued to active Hotspot owners and network builders. A Hotspot owner has lived through several reward formulas in the network's life.

Filecoin: a two-billion cap and two minting tracks

Filecoin's documentation gives a 2 billion FIL supply cap and says most supply is minted as the network reaches growth and utility milestones (read 3 November 2026). It describes a dual minting model: baseline minting of up to 770 million FIL based on network performance, and simple minting of a further 330 million FIL on a six-year half-life schedule, with 97% of those tokens projected to be released over about 30 years (read 3 November 2026).

Block rewards also take time to reach a provider. Filecoin's documentation lists block rewards as a form of collateral that vests over time, and says a minimum of 10 TiB of storage power is required to be eligible to win blocks and earn block rewards (read 3 November 2026). A small provider below that threshold earns no block rewards at all, whatever its deals.

Filecoin's own guide to a storage provider's return on investment lists the inputs in order (read 3 November 2026). First come the hardware and the FIL collateral, which it says will likely need outside financing. Second come block rewards, which it says are subject to the volatility of the FIL price. Then come the cost of sales, the total cost of ownership, including backups and data preparation, and the growth of demand for storage, which it says can raise or lower the return. The network's own documentation, in other words, treats a provider's return as uncertain.

Bittensor: a 21 million cap with issuance-based halvings

Bittensor's documentation gives an initial base emission of 1 TAO per 12-second block and a 21 million TAO cap, and reports a current rate of 0.5 TAO per block after the first halving in December 2025 (read 3 November 2026). Halvings are triggered by total issuance rather than by block counts: emission halves each time issuance crosses the midpoint of the remaining supply, at 10.5 million, then 15.75 million TAO, and so on (read 3 November 2026). The documentation says recycled TAO is subtracted from total issuance and can be re-emitted, which delays reaching issuance-based halving thresholds (read 3 November 2026).

Render: emissions by epoch

Render's knowledge base describes predictable token emissions within the Burn Mint Equilibrium, allocated epoch by epoch, typically over a week, and says that epoch durations can be adjusted by a governance vote (read 3 November 2026). The knowledge base describes governance votes as a mechanism for adjusting epoch duration (read 3 November 2026).

Who sells the tokens

Contributors pay their costs in pounds, dollars or euros, and receive their rewards in tokens. A contributor who wants to cover electricity, hosting or a loan on the hardware has to sell some of what the network pays them. That is not a flaw in any one network; it is built into the model. It means a DePIN token faces steady selling from the very people the network depends on, and only customer demand, or buyers who expect it, absorbs that selling.

For a token holder, the useful comparison is between two flows: the value of new tokens issued to contributors over a period, and the value of tokens bought or burned by customers over the same period. When the first is much larger than the second, the token's price depends on new buyers arriving, not on the service being used.

Two Ways In: Holding the Token or Running Hardware

The two exposures share a token and differ in almost everything else. A token holding exposes its owner to the token's market price. The hardware exposure is a small business with fixed costs, a payback period and rewards paid in that same token.

Holding the token

Holding a DePIN token is a bet on its market price, and these prices have moved a long way. The table gives the four tokens' prices from DefiLlama's public price API, read at 08:31 UTC on 3 November 2026, with earlier prices from the same source for two dates.

DefiLlama's API gives an HNT price of $29.11 for 1 November 2021 and $0.338 for 3 November 2026 (read 3 November 2026). Those observations do not establish the price path between the two dates. The cells marked not read were not requested from the API, so the table makes no claim about those dates. How much of a portfolio to hold in one volatile token is a sizing question, which our risk management guide takes up.

Before assuming an exit, check the trading route, available liquidity and applicable costs for the holding. Helium's and Render's documentation identifies HNT and the RENDER SPL token as Solana tokens (read 3 November 2026); our comparison of non-custodial wallets covers the main options. Which exchanges list which DePIN tokens is a dated fact that changes; our guide to how DePIN tokens earn and who pays records a listing check with its date.

Running hardware

Running hardware adds three risks to the token's price risk. The reward schedule can halve or change. The proof can change, as Helium's did when Proof of Coverage was removed on 6 July 2026, according to its documentation (read 3 November 2026). And the hardware itself loses value, because the devices that earn on one version of a network's rules may earn less, or nothing, under the next.

The risk sentence for hardware is the one in this guide's lead: buying DePIN hardware is a bet on a token price and a reward schedule you do not control. A seller's payback chart assumes a token price, a reward rate and a level of competition from other contributors. Each of those three can move against you after you have paid for the device, and none of them is set by you or by the seller.

A payback estimate is worth reading only if it shows its inputs:

• The device's price and its power draw.
• The token price used, and the date it was read.
• The reward rate assumed, and the date that rate was read.
• The result again at half the token price and half the reward rate.

A chart that gives a single payback date without those inputs is a sales figure, not an estimate. Our guide to DePIN hardware economics lists the costs of running a device, works an illustrative payback at full and half token price, with and without a reward halving, and dates the rule changes that have already altered what owners earn.

Questions to ask before buying DePIN hardware

The record further down turns into a short list of checks. Each one can be answered from the network's own documentation, and a seller who cannot answer them is asking you to take the risk on trust.

• What is the device rewarded for today? Read the network's current documentation rather than the seller's page. Helium's removal of Proof of Coverage on 6 July 2026 shows how quickly that answer can change.
• When does the next cut in issuance fall? HIP 20 describes two-year HNT halvings, Bittensor's documentation describes issuance-threshold halvings, and Filecoin's documentation describes a six-year half-life for simple minting (read 3 November 2026).
• What has to be locked up? Filecoin's documentation describes FIL collateral and fault fees, with exceptions for honest providers who miss WindowPoSt, including newly faulty sectors in the current proving period (read 3 November 2026).
• Who are the customers, and how much do they pay? Find the network's demand figure, such as Data Credits burned, verified storage or credits burned for jobs, and set it against new issuance.
• Has the network changed its chain or token before? Helium completed its migration to Solana on 18 April 2023, while Render's RNP-006 describes a permissionless upgrade from RNDR to RENDER that holders can undertake when they choose (read 4 November 2026).
• Who is selling the device? Hardware offered in pre-sales, or by sellers the network's own documentation does not point to, adds a scam risk on top of the economic one; our crypto scam protection guide covers the warning signs.
• What are the costs in pounds? Price the device, power, connection and any hosting before counting any reward, and test the result at half the token price.

When both exposures meet

A hardware contributor holds the reward token and pays the costs of operating the device. If a reward contains the same number of tokens and the pounds price per token falls, its pounds value falls. Power, connectivity and other cash expenses remain separate inputs to the contributor's budget.

The Record: Three Ways a Participant's Return Gets Cut

A participant's return can be cut in three ways: the reward rules change, the chain or token changes, or the token's price falls. The table below gives four dated protocol events on Helium and Bittensor as examples of the first two. Each row gives the date, what changed, why it mattered to a participant, and the source it rests on. The HNT prices beside them are point observations on their dates, not a measure of what any participant lost.

What the record shows

The three ways, with the dated examples:

• Reward rules change. The table dates a scheduled halving of HNT issuance, the retirement of Proof of Coverage and Bittensor's move to subnet tokens.
• Chains and tokens change. Helium completed its migration to Solana on 18 April 2023, while Render's RNP-006 describes a permissionless upgrade from RNDR to RENDER that holders can undertake when they choose (read 4 November 2026).
• Token prices fall. The table's HNT prices are point observations in US dollars on their dates; they do not measure hardware purchase dates, operating earnings or realised losses.

If you want the background on the chain both networks moved to, our Solana guide explains it.

What the record does not show

This guide does not include an earnings-per-Hotspot or earnings-per-storage-provider time series from the cached primary sources. Helium's oracle-data documentation describes requester-pays files and also directs Mobile users to public Apache Iceberg tables at no cost per read wherever those tables cover the required data, with a switchover scheduled to complete on 1 November 2026 (read 3 November 2026). That access information does not establish which earnings series the tables contain. The record says what is sourced and stops there. Treat any chart of historical Hotspot earnings you meet elsewhere as a claim to check, and ask for its source and its dates.

How Big the DePIN Category Is

CoinGecko groups tokens into categories and reports a market capitalisation for each. On 5 November 2026, CoinGecko's DePIN category page, read in a browser at 12:57 UTC, put the category's market capitalisation at $9.32 billion, and its list of categories, sorted by market capitalisation, placed DePIN 44th. The ranking moves with prices, so it describes that day and no other.

What a category figure tells you

A category's market capitalisation is the sum of the market values of the tokens CoinGecko assigns to it. It measures what the market values those tokens at, not the revenue the networks earn from customers, and it depends on which tokens CoinGecko chooses to include. Two lists that draw the boundary differently will give different totals for the same day.

What it does not tell you

A large category figure says nothing about whether any one network's customers pay enough to support its rewards. For that question, the useful numbers are each network's own demand measures: Data Credits burned on Helium, storage under verified deals on Filecoin, credits burned for jobs on Render, and stake moving into subnet pools on Bittensor. The guide to how DePIN tokens earn takes each of those measures in turn, with its source and date.

UK Readers: Promotion Rules and Tax

Promotion rules

The FCA's public summary of PS23/6 describes a regime for promotions of qualifying cryptoassets and says it applies to firms marketing those cryptoassets to UK consumers, including firms based overseas, regardless of the technology used for the promotion (read 3 November 2026).

A hardware seller's pitch can include projected token rewards. Read such a projection as a promotion of a cryptoasset return, and apply the same scepticism you would to any other: who is making the claim, on what inputs, and dated when.

Tax

Tokens received for running hardware, and tokens sold later, can have tax consequences. This guide does not set out the UK treatment; our crypto tax guide covers how cryptoassets are taxed in the UK. Keep a record of every reward you receive, with its date and the pounds value on that date, from the first day the hardware runs.

Conclusion

DePIN networks pay the public in tokens to build infrastructure that customers are meant to pay for. Helium's documentation describes dollar-priced Data Credits, Render's documentation describes dollar-valued Render Credits, and Filecoin's documentation describes client storage deals (read 3 November 2026). It becomes a subsidy when customer payments are small next to new issuance, and then the token's value rests on buyers expecting growth.

The four worked cases show the moving parts a reader should check. The proof decides which hardware earns, and Helium's was retired on 6 July 2026. The networks' documentation describes issuance schedules alongside rules for allocating rewards among participants (read 3 November 2026). The chain can change: Helium completed its move to Solana on 18 April 2023, and Render's RNP-006 gave its token a Solana version that holders can upgrade to when they choose (read 4 November 2026). And the token price, which sets the pounds value of every reward, was lower on 3 November 2026 than on the earlier dates this guide uses, for every token it has an earlier price for (DefiLlama's price API).

For each of the four networks, the question to carry forward is different. On Helium, it is what a Hotspot is rewarded for after the removal of Proof of Coverage in July 2026, and how much customers spend in Data Credits. On Filecoin, it is whether verified storage deals and client fees grow faster than the FIL issued to providers, who lock that same token as collateral. On Render, it is how many jobs creators pay for in Render Credits against the RENDER emitted to operators each epoch. On Bittensor, it is how stake moves between subnet pools, because since February 2025 that movement steers where TAO emissions go.

None of those questions is answered by a token's price on a given day. A rising price can come from new buyers rather than from customers, and a falling one can hide a network whose customers are growing. The demand figures each network publishes, read with their dates, are the better guide, and the gap between them and new issuance is the number that tells you whether rewards are paid by customers or by dilution.

Two rules follow. If you hold a DePIN token, watch the network's own demand figure, not only its price. If you consider hardware, treat it as a bet on a token price and a reward schedule you do not control, and ask any seller for a payback estimate that shows its inputs and their dates.

Finally, the rules of these networks are still being rewritten. Helium moved to Solana in 2023, Render set out an upgrade to a Solana token the same year, Bittensor rebuilt its emissions around subnet tokens in 2025, and Helium retired Proof of Coverage in 2026. Every figure on this page will age, and the dates beside them are there so that you can tell how far. Before acting on any of them, read the network's own documentation again on the day you decide. If a network has changed a rule since the date shown here, the newer rule governs, and a decision made on the older figure is a decision about a network that no longer exists in that form.

Sources

Network sources below were read on 3 and 4 November 2026, the DefiLlama price requests on 3 November 2026, and CoinGecko's category pages on 5 November 2026. Each entry names the document and what it supports on this page.

• Helium Documentation, The Helium Network Token — halvings, the launch target of 5,000,000 HNT a month, the maximum supply of about 223 million HNT and the Net Emissions mechanism. docs.helium.com
• Helium Documentation, Data Credit — the fixed price of $0.00001, the Pyth price feed, 24-byte IoT billing and Data Credits as Helium Mobile's billing mechanism. docs.helium.com
• Helium Documentation, Helium Oracle Data — the removal of Proof of Coverage as of 6 July 2026 and the requester-pays data bucket. docs.helium.com
• Helium Documentation, Legacy Blockchain Data — the migration to Solana completed on 18 April 2023. docs.helium.com
• Helium Documentation, L1 Migration Tool — the wallet migration tool that the documentation still hosts. docs.helium.com
• Helium Documentation, LoRaWAN On Helium and The Mobile Network — who can run a Hotspot, LoRaWAN coverage and Wi-Fi Hotspots. docs.helium.com
• Helium Improvement Proposal 20, HNT Max Supply — the two-year halving schedule, the first halving on 1 August 2021 and the 223 million HNT maximum. github.com
• Helium Improvement Proposal 70, Scaling Helium — the proposal to move Helium's tokens, governance and emissions to Solana. github.com
• Helium Improvement Proposal 83, Restore First to Respond Witness Rewarding — how beacons, witnesses and Proof-of-Coverage oracles worked. github.com
• Filecoin Docs, Crypto-economics — the 2 billion FIL cap and the baseline and simple minting tracks. docs.filecoin.io
• Filecoin Docs, Storage proving — Proof-of-Spacetime, 24-hour proving periods and 30-minute deadlines. docs.filecoin.io
• Filecoin Docs, FIL collateral, Block rewards and Slashing — collateral, vesting block rewards, the 10 TiB eligibility threshold and daily fault fees. docs.filecoin.io
• Filecoin Docs, Verified deals and Return-on-investment — DataCap, the 10x quality adjustment and the cost of hardware and collateral. docs.filecoin.io
• Render Network Knowledge Base, Burn Mint Equilibrium and The RENDER SPL Token — burning RENDER for dollar-valued Render Credits, emissions by epoch and the move from ERC-20 RNDR to RENDER SPL. know.rendernetwork.com
• Render Network Proposal RNP-002, Layer 1 Network Expansion, created 20 March 2023 — the expansion to Solana. github.com
• Helium Improvement Proposal 138, Return to HNT — the proposal's start date and its token and reward changes. github.com
• Helium Improvement Proposals, repository index — HIP 138's deployed status (read 4 November 2026). github.com
• Render Network Proposal RNP-006, Solana Upgrade and Emission Schedule, created 2 November 2023 — upgrades from RNDR to RENDER at a holder's choice, and unupgraded RNDR in the supply (read 4 November 2026). github.com
• Render Network Proposal RNP-015, Availability Rewards — rewards for uptime, to provide capacity ahead of demand (read 4 November 2026). github.com
• Bittensor Docs, The network, Emissions, Emission weights and Chain consensus — subnets, the initial 1 TAO base emission, the 0.5 TAO per block rate reported after the December 2025 halving, and the 21 million TAO cap (read 3 November 2026), issuance-based halvings, the default emission split and Proof of Authority block production. bittensor.com
• Bittensor, dTAO Whitepaper — subnet tokens, subnet pools and emissions guided by subnet token prices. bittensor.com
• Opentensor, subtensor release v2.0.0 “DTAO”, published 13 February 2025 — the date dTAO shipped. github.com
• DefiLlama, price API — HNT, FIL, RENDER and TAO prices on 3 November 2026, and the earlier HNT, FIL and RENDER prices in the tables. coins.llama.fi
• CoinGecko, DePIN category page and list of crypto categories, read in a browser on 5 November 2026 (the category page at 12:57 UTC) — the category's market capitalisation and rank, and the expansion of the name DePIN. www.coingecko.com/en/categories/depin and www.coingecko.com/en/categories
• Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, section 6, Incentive — new coins and transaction fees as the reward to a block's creator. bitcoin.org
• Financial Conduct Authority, PS23/6: Financial promotion rules for cryptoassets — the scope of the UK promotion regime. fca.org.uk

Frequently Asked Questions

What is DePIN?

DePIN stands for decentralised physical infrastructure networks: blockchain networks that pay their own token to people who supply a real-world resource such as wireless coverage, storage space or graphics processing time. The networks' documentation describes HNT rewards for Helium Hotspot operators, FIL rewards for Filecoin storage providers, RENDER rewards for Render GPU operators and subnet alpha rewards for Bittensor participants (read 3 November 2026). Issued tokens can be sold to market buyers to fund contributors' costs; token issuance and customer payments are separate funding flows.

What is proof of coverage?

Proof of coverage was Helium's way of checking that a Hotspot really provided radio coverage where it claimed to. A Hotspot transmitted a beacon, nearby Hotspots that heard it reported as witnesses, and oracles collected the witness reports and rewarded a selection of them, as Helium Improvement Proposal 83 describes. Helium's documentation says that Proof of Coverage was removed from the Helium networks as of 6 July 2026, and describes Hotspots earning rewards for data transfer instead (read 3 November 2026), so a Hotspot sold today on the promise of coverage rewards is being sold on a retired mechanism.

What does burn-and-mint mean?

Burn-and-mint describes a network where customers pay for a service by destroying (burning) the network's token, while contributors are paid in newly created (minted) tokens. On Helium, burning HNT creates Data Credits, and Helium's documentation fixes one Data Credit at $0.00001 (read 3 November 2026). On Render, creators burn RENDER for Render Credits of an equivalent US dollar value, according to the Render Network knowledge base (read 3 November 2026). The design ties token demand to real usage, but only as far as that usage exists.

Who pays a DePIN network?

Two groups pay. The networks' documentation describes customer spending through Helium Data Credits, Filecoin storage deals and Render's burning of tokens for Render Credits (read 3 November 2026). The network also pays contributors in new tokens on an emission schedule, and those tokens are worth only what buyers on the market will give for them. Where customer payments are small, the rewards rest mostly on new issuance, and that is the point to check before you buy either the token or the hardware.

Is running DePIN hardware the same as crypto mining?

Not in the Bitcoin sense. A DePIN network rewards a resource that a customer can use, and it checks that resource with a proof designed for it. Filecoin's documentation says each storage sector is verified once in every 24-hour period through a Proof-of-Spacetime challenge (read 3 November 2026), while Bittensor's validators score the work done in each subnet. The word mining is still used for some of these roles, so read what a network actually checks before you rely on the label.

Do UK financial promotion rules cover DePIN tokens?

The FCA's public summary of PS23/6 describes a regime for promotions of qualifying cryptoassets and says it applies to firms marketing those cryptoassets to UK consumers, including overseas firms, regardless of the technology used for the promotion (read 3 November 2026). A DePIN category label does not establish whether a particular token meets that legal definition. Tax is a separate question, covered in our crypto tax guide.

What is a Helium Data Credit?

A Data Credit is the unit Helium customers spend to use the network. Helium's documentation fixes one Data Credit at $0.00001 and says burning HNT creates Data Credits at the US dollar price reported by an on-chain Pyth price feed (read 3 November 2026). The same documentation bills Helium IoT data transfer in 24-byte increments and describes Mobile data transfer at $0.10 per GB, or 10,000 Data Credits, with Data Credits used for Mobile billing and fee management (read 3 November 2026).

What happened when Helium moved to Solana?

Helium ran on its own blockchain until 18 April 2023, when, according to its documentation, it completed a migration to Solana (read 3 November 2026). Helium Improvement Proposal 70 had proposed moving the network's tokens, governance and emissions there. Helium's documentation hosts an L1 migration tool that can seed a Solana wallet from its Helium address (read 3 November 2026). The move is one of several chain and rule changes in the network's history.

What do Filecoin storage providers have to lock up?

FIL. Filecoin's documentation says storage capacity requires FIL collateral, including an initial pledge for each sector, and that block rewards also serve as collateral by vesting over time (read 3 November 2026). Its slashing documentation describes exceptions for honest providers, including no penalty for a newly faulty sector in its current proving period after a missed WindowPoSt and no fees if the sector is successfully recovered in a later proving period (read 3 November 2026). Its block-rewards documentation requires at least 10 TiB of storage power for eligibility to win block rewards (read 3 November 2026).

What is dTAO on Bittensor?

Bittensor's dTAO whitepaper describes subnet alpha tokens traded against TAO in pools, with subnet token prices guiding emissions (read 3 November 2026). The subtensor release that shipped it, v2.0.0, titled “DTAO”, was published on 13 February 2025 (GitHub, read 3 November 2026). Bittensor's emissions documentation describes subnet token prices as an input to allocation of TAO emissions (read 3 November 2026).

Financial Disclaimer

This content is not financial advice. All information provided is for educational purposes only. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant investment risk, and past performance does not guarantee future results. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions.