In 2025, the sector of decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) demonstrated strong growth, reaching a market capitalization of $10 billion and generating $72 million in on-chain revenue. The analytical report State of DePIN 2025 notes that the multipliers of leading DePIN networks currently range from 10 to 25 times revenue, significantly lower than the levels of over 1000 times recorded during the 2021 cycle.
This is reported by Business • Media
Three Scaling Models and Changes in the DePIN Sector
Experts highlight three main models for global scaling of DePIN:
- InfraFi — financing physical infrastructure through income-oriented capital in stablecoins, which opens new opportunities for attracting investments, albeit accompanied by credit and regulatory risks.
- Capex-light Infrastructure — projects with minimal capital expenditures and rapid monetization.
- Timing of the Bull Market — launching tokens during phases of high liquidity in the market.
In 2025, DePIN startups attracted a record $1 billion in private capital, mostly at early stages of development, indicating investor confidence in the long-term prospects of the industry even amid declining token values in the secondary market.
Revenue Dynamics and Competition Among DePIN Segments
According to the research, the revenues of leading DePIN projects are increasingly detached from the volatility of token prices, showing growth due to utility rather than speculation. Unlike 2021, when the industry suffered from unstable losses and excessive inflation, in 2025, DePIN projects are characterized by limited supply, stable profitability, and growth based on utility and efficiency.
“While in 2021 DePIN projects were constrained by demand, had unstable losses (high inflation), and were ‘incredibly overvalued (>1000x multipliers)’, by 2025 they are already generating revenue, limited in supply, consistently profitable, with minimal or no growth in supply, and have ‘growth driven by utility and efficiency rather than subsidies.’
Despite the gradual increase in revenues, analysts emphasize that only the leading players in the industry have miners that earn revenue from paid network usage, as well as provide benefits for token holders and stakers, demonstrating stable monthly growth in customer spending and access to cheap financing for infrastructure development.
Competition among DePIN segments is distributed as follows:
- Throughput: has the highest potential, but global scaling remains a challenging task.
- Energy Networks: the most capital-intensive, yet often provide high margin metrics.
- Sensor Networks: require less capital but face monetization challenges.
- Computational Segment: is the most competitive, with over 50 projects having low differentiation.
The report also highlights that the revenue growth of DePIN in a bear market has proven to be more resilient compared to DeFi and L1 networks. Meanwhile, major players in the crypto industry, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), note the potential of DePIN to aggregate unused computational resources — from gaming PCs to data centers — to create open markets that will foster the development of artificial intelligence.