Great points! Focus-wise, I'd start with making revenue. Decentralized sales teams are under-explored here (rare example: @POKTnetwork )
Investor relations transparency is generally weak in crypto, but if a protocol claims $10 M+ yet can't prove on-chain, that’s suspicious.
Some thoughts on restructuring DePIN revenue.
TLDR:
- Maximize onchain revenue transparency and route all payments through a verifiable treasury before covering offchain expenses.
- Delay buybacks and reinvest earnings into growth.
- Enable independent gateway organizations to drive demand side decentralization.
1. Maximize revenue transparency:
All revenue should be visible and verifiable onchain. Enterprise and consumer payments should route through a fiat onramp like Stripe and land in an onchain treasury in USDC or the native token.
This removes opaqueness and builds investor confidence that revenue is real. From the treasury, funds can be allocated to OpEx and offchain growth initiatives while preserving accountability. Even if this adds friction early on, the long-term benefit of transparent revenues outweighs the inconvenience.
2. Delay buybacks and reinvest in growth:
No DePIN currently generates enough verifiable revenue to justify buybacks.
Buybacks imply that reinvesting in growth is less worthwhile than distributing value. In high-growth environments, all earnings should go back into scaling the business. Even Web2 startups only consider dividends or buybacks well after IPO and profitability. Pump and Hyperliquid generate nine-figure annualized revenue. No DePIN is anywhere near that level yet. Focus on growing revenue and showing it onchain before needlessly buying back tokens in highly volatile markets.
3. Decentralize the demand side through independent gateway orgs:
Today most DePINs rely on the founding team or foundation to conduct enterprise sales and manage consumer distribution in order to capture demand.
This centralization bottleneck undermines transparency due to the reliance on a sole company to report revenue (even if directed onchain).
Protocols should enable independent 3rd parties to access protocol resources directly so they can conduct sales on the protocol’s behalf. Monopolizing demand side sales may benefit founding investors and equity holders but is not in token holder interests.
The presence of independent gateway orgs could both boost overall sales as well as provide transparency into sales economics, enabling token holders to assess whether the OpEx and revenue capture percentages disclosed by the founding labs or foundation are justified.
More thoughts soon.
3.77K
4
The content on this page is provided by third parties. Unless otherwise stated, OKX is not the author of the cited article(s) and does not claim any copyright in the materials. The content is provided for informational purposes only and does not represent the views of OKX. It is not intended to be an endorsement of any kind and should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell digital assets. To the extent generative AI is utilized to provide summaries or other information, such AI generated content may be inaccurate or inconsistent. Please read the linked article for more details and information. OKX is not responsible for content hosted on third party sites. Digital asset holdings, including stablecoins and NFTs, involve a high degree of risk and can fluctuate greatly. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you in light of your financial condition.