Deep Dive: Solana DePIN - April 2025

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Syndica Deep Dive: Solana DePIN - April 2025

DePIN revenues hit a new YTD high. Helium, Render, Hivemapper, UpRock, and XNET are the only Solana DePIN protocols with verifiable on-chain revenue via token burns. Together, they generated $458k in total monthly revenue, a 33% MoM increase, and their highest performance of the year.

Active contributors across DePIN protocols tapered slightly. Helium, Hivemapper, Nosana, Render, Sallar, Sourceful, and XNET collectively maintained 87k active contributors.

Smaller DePIN protocols are seeing contributor growth. In April 2025, smaller DePIN protocols like Nosana experienced over 100% contributor growth, while larger protocols like Helium and Hivemapper experienced flat or contributor decline.

Part I: Wireless

Dabba Network doubled its data usage. From March to April, cumulative data consumed jumped to 8000 TB, a 2x increase, while total device sales grew 29%, expanding the network.

Helium Mobile posted its best month ever for new subscribers. In April, new subscribers surged 125% to 36k after their free mobile plan became available to all users.

Helium Mobile revenue hit a record $250k. April revenue, measured by data credits burned, rose 34% to a new high of $250k, with data offloading now making up 79%.

Helium Mobile data offloading set a fresh all-time high in April. Average daily offload subscribers increased 65%, while offload data grew 32%, both hitting all-time highs.

Helium active contributors have tapered slightly in recent months. Riding a 2025 downtrend, Helium’s active contributors stabilized in the 75k range.

XNET data offload has grown for eight straight months. April marked another milestone with a 16% rise in average daily data offload, continuing XNET's strong upward trend.

XNET contributors hit another ATH. Despite rewards decreasing by 6%, active contributors rose by 6% to 732 in April, hitting a new record.

Roam continued to see a large uptick in new WiFi setups. In April, Roam added 535k new WiFi setups (second-highest month ever) and 87k new users, edging closer to 4M nodes and 3M users of the protocol.

Roam hit 300M cumulative check-ins. Despite a 19% dip in monthly user check-ins in April, Roam’s milestone of over 300M total check-ins underscores its sustained user engagement.

Part II: Compute, AI, & Data

Shaga scaled to 297 nodes, powering cloud gaming. Shaga leverages idle GPU power for Web3 gaming. The protocol currently has 297 nodes and 74 GPU models with a robust 33.12 TB of storage and 15.27 Gbps throughput, showcasing its capability to handle high-performance computing for decentralized applications.

Shaga's interactive streaming hit 50k hours. Shaga enabled 4.5k interactive game streams with 50k hours in just two months, allowing viewers to control and play the streamer’s game.

Hivello surpassed 1M hours of daily uptime. Hivello is a DePIN aggregator platform for monetizing idle resources. April’s uptime doubled from March as more nodes joined the network and contributed.

The Nosana ecosystem has continued to gain momentum. Jobs completed and contributor rewards rose slightly as GPU operators held steady. A new Gaia AI partnership, allowing AI agents to run on Nosana’s infrastructure, likely drove job growth.

Sallar's USD rewards increased by 27% in April. Sallar is a protocol that allows users to earn tokens by sharing device computing power for AI tasks. USD rewards rose to $11.8k in April 2025, supported by a stable active wallet base.

Grass set another ATH at 34.5M GB of collected data.

Part III: Mapping

Wingbits boosts data tracking capabilities. Since November 2024, Wingbits enhanced its network, now tracking 150k flights and collecting 9B data points daily—up 7% and 29%, respectively. Their contributor count also grew by 43%, reaching a total of 3,000 live stations.

Hivemapper demand has come in waves. Demand measured in USD burned has seen a gradual monthly increase in 2025 while the team continues to iterate on the product side. Moving forward, 20-30% of monthly Beekeeper fees are set to burn $HONEY, likely driving further future growth.

Hivemapper’s monthly kilometers mapped held steady in April. While mapping stabilized, the public launch of Beekeeper, an AI-powered fleet management platform, is set to enhance mapping as more fleets join the network.

Hivemapper’s active map contributors remained stable. Since February, active contributors remained consistent at around 5k.

The NATIX ecosystem held steady in April. Users drove 11M kilometers for the third straight month, while $NATIX token burns from demand stabilized around 38M.

Part IV: Environment

Sourceful power production set another ATH. April saw a 30% rise in power output, with growth poised to continue as the new Zap smart device for energy insights secured 500 pre-orders.

Ambios surpassed 2M user check-ins. In April, check-ins by users sharing ecological data grew 12%, reaching over 2M, while the platform’s user base rose 2% to 45k.

Part V: News

WayFi, currently in beta, is building a decentralized WiFi network on Solana and has joined the Colosseum hackathon.

Go Cabs is building a decentralized and zero-commission EV ride-hailing platform.

GreenkWh is building a decentralized renewable energy network that aggregates clean energy from off-grid solar installations.

Staex is building a decentralized network for secure machine-to-machine communication.