Messari called DePIN a $10B sector with risk-adjusted revenues.
Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) have been written off as dead by many investors, but a new “State of DePIN 2025” report from Messari and Escape Velocity argues that the sector has steadily grown into a $10 billion market with $72 million in onchain revenue last year alone.
According to the report, “2018-2022 class” DEPIN tokens are down 94%-99% from their all-time high. However, with leading projects now generating verifiable recurring revenue and trading at 10 to 25 times revenue multiples, Mesari states that standards are not undervalued in terms of growth.
According to Masari, the transition marks a shift from subsidy-driven development to real-world use of networks, particularly in areas such as bandwidth, computing, energy and sensor data.
Marcus Levine, co-founder of XYO, Data and DePIN, which was founded in 2018, told Cointelegraph that the revenue in the DePIN sector is more valuable than the value of the token and as the market matures, “the values will start to reflect the real economic activity that will hold even if token prices are flat.”
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DePIN: From incentives to revenues
The authors compare “DePIN 2021” to “DePIN 2025” in which earlier cycles were dominated by pre-revenue networks due to high inflation, demand constraints and retail speculation.
Today's leaders, in contrast, are monetizing onchain, have little or no supply inflation, and see growth as driven by service and value advantages rather than subsidies.
Levine said the crypto sector is “fundamentally different” from the broader crypto industry because it provides “real-world utility for users.”
Success is “primarily seen in usage and cash flow, not in speculative price action,” he said.
Leaders of Mesari DP
The Mesari Depin Leaders Index highlights 15 projects in bandwidth, computing, energy and sensor networks that meet certain thresholds with annual revenue of at least $500,000 and fundraising of at least $30 million.
One of the headline findings of the report is that DeFi's revenue growth has proven to be more resilient in the current bear market for decentralized finance (DeFi) and Layer-1s.
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While Depin tokens such as Helium (HNT) and GeodNet (GEOD) decreased by 77% and 41% from December 2024 to December 2025, their onchain revenue increased by approximately 8 times and 1.7 times, respectively, in the same period, compared to a significant decrease in revenue in leading DeFi protocols and smart contracts.
Levin says the “big deal” on DPin's standings is “whether the network can make money from real customers without constantly relying on incentives.”
DPin said it is “not economically linked to a single market” and that some areas such as positioning, mapping and robotics are starting to show repeat use cases, while others are more constrained by “regulation and competitive pressure”.
Infrafi and Depin's new infrastructure business
Last year was an all-time high funding year for DePIN, with the sector raising nearly $1 billion, up from $698 million in 2024 and higher than previous cycles.
The report describes “InfraFi” as an emerging DePIN/DeFi hybrid model where stablecoin owners fund real-world infrastructure and profit from its assets.
USDai, Daylight and Dawn are cited as early examples of InfraFi in compute, energy and bandwidth USDai has grown to $685 million in user deposits to support its graphics processing unit fleet.
Messari argued that the best Deepin tokens are now on par with next-generation infrastructure businesses in terms of bandwidth, storage, computation and navigation, but are trading at a price that “has little chance of survival, let alone success.”
According to Levin, the networks that will “be the most capital” are the ones that can “reliably serve the areas of interest driven by enterprise and artificial intelligence.”
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