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Part 4: A Cooperative Future for Public LoRaWAN

The dream of a global, public LoRaWAN network is a powerful one. While private LoRaWAN networks thrive for specific industrial and agricultural applications, the vision of a ubiquitous, low-cost network for tracking, sensing, and connecting the physical world remains just out of reach. We’ve seen two major attempts to build this future, each a fork in the road leading to a dead end. First came The Things Network (TTN), a noble, grassroots effort built on altruism. It did an admirable job, proving the power of a community-built network. But without a sustainable incentive model, it relied on the goodwill of gateway operators, a foundation that proved too fragile for global scale.

Part 3: From Degenerative to Regenerative

The Principles Are Sound After dissecting the broken models of the DePIN space, it would be easy to become cynical and dismiss the entire concept as a failed experiment. But that would be a mistake. The foundational principles of DePIN—of community-owned infrastructure, aligned incentives, and open access—are more powerful and necessary than ever. The failure is not in the vision; it is in the execution. The degenerative patterns I’ve observed are not inevitable. They are choices. They are the choices that lead down a path of techno-feudalism, where technology is used to centralise power, enforce scarcity, and ultimately render communities into surplus populations. It is time to choose a different path.

Part 2: DePIN's Fork in the Road

A Pattern Emerges The story of Helium, as I detailed in my first post, is not an anomaly. The slide from a grand vision of a “People’s Network” into a centrally-controlled system that primarily benefits its founders and a small handful of insiders is, unfortunately, a well-trodden path in the DePIN space. The issues of opaque governance, extractive tokenomics, and a disregard for the actual community that builds the network are not bugs; they are features of a flawed and deeply ingrained model.