Summary
- CCI recently held its fourth decentralization and national security workshop, focusing on decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN).
- This is a part of a quarterly workshop series that bridges the gap between public and private sector stakeholders to consider how technology can support national security and privacy objectives.
- An interactive activity involving a hypothetical geostrategic crisis scenario highlighted DePIN’s potential for improving the resiliency of critical infrastructures.
- Read more about CCI’s workshop on MPCs
The Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) wrapped up another quarterly workshop, this time casting a spotlight on the critical intersection of decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) and national security. Solana provided an overview of DePIN, setting the stage for a deep dive into a practical application presented by the Render Network Foundation, which maintains the Render Network’s infrastructure for decentralized GPU cloud rendering. The workshop, aimed at gathering insights to address security and strategic competition issues while learning about the range of possibilities in the current technological landscape, facilitated a dynamic and interactive activity to foster collaborative problem-solving across industry and public-sector participants. Here are compelling discussions and insights that emerged.
What is DePIN ?
DePIN, or Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks, are an application of blockchain that extends the concept of decentralization to tangible infrastructure. It allows critical resources and services–such as energy, data storage, internet access, and computing–to be operated in a bottom-up, open, and decentralized manner. Individual contributors are responsible for building, maintaining, and operating portions of a DePIN network.
DePIN: a New Infrastructure Paradigm that can Challenge Monopolies
Most physical infrastructure–including telecommunications or network infrastructure for internet access, data centers and cloud storage services, and electric grids–operates on a distributed model. But creating such distributed physical infrastructure networks is hard. Not only are current models expensive–requiring immense capital investments that may take years before generating revenue, they are operationally complex given the geographic dispersion and the accompanying regulatory complexities. In local contexts, current models often result in monopolies or oligopolies.
DePIN provides a new playbook for creating these distributed infrastructure networks. Drawing inspiration from Bitcoin mining, individuals or disparate groups can contribute to a shared network by purchasing, operating, and managing portions of the network. The ground-up scalability of DePIN projects present an opportunity to challenge entrenched monopolies and oligopolies. DePIN models are cheaper to start, faster to scale, and fairer and more efficient to operate. By relying on token incentives, DePIN reduces the upfront costs of starting an infrastructure project. Projects can leverage the local knowledge of the decentralized contributor base, eliminating the need to navigate cross-regional regulatory and operational discrepancies. Because activities and governance are recorded on-chain, DePIN enables a greater degree of operational transparency.
DePIN in Action: Reducing Artists’ Rendering Time to 10 Minutes
One example of a DePIN project is Render, which facilitates GPU computing power via a decentralized platform. Artists with large, expensive rendering computers that are not in use are able to contribute their idle GPU power to the Render network. Others who seek the computing power to render a complex 3D artwork, animation, or video (or to process an artificial intelligence algorithm), can submit computing requirements to the network, which are encrypted prior to task distribution. The decentralized GPUs on Render then process the computation. With operations occurring on parallel nodes, the network can produce the rendering at speeds that are 10-100x faster than using a single set of GPUs, reducing the requisite rendering time from two months to 5-10 minutes.
How DePIN can Improve the Resiliency of Key Infrastructure
Following the insightful presentations on DePIN from Solana and Render, the workshop participants were split into groups for the hallmark interactive portion of the event. The activity set participants in the year 2035, in a world where generative AI has become the backbone of every critical sector, from education to law enforcement. The scenario laid out a geopolitical crisis precipitated by the malfunction of GPUs supplied by a fictitious dominant US firm, potentially due to cyber sabotage. With rising military tensions and a significant shift in market dynamics, the groups were tasked with devising immediate and long-term strategies to address the crisis and the future of GPU power in the US.
The teams represented either the US or a US adversary, ‘X-Country’. Groups representing the US were tasked to develop short-term, long-term, or contingency plans related to the ability to harness GPU power for the country’s economy or in the case of an invasion. Groups representing X-Country, on the other hand, represented the strategic opposition and were tasked with devising countermeasures to anticipate and neutralize US strategies. Through graphs, drawings, and charts, each team shared their novel ideas with the broader group. The exercise underscored the importance of collaborative problem-solving and the need for innovative approaches in leveraging decentralized networks for national security and economic resilience.
The conclusions drawn from the interactive activity are clear: DePIN offers a powerful potential solution for improving the resiliency of strategically key infrastructures. Additional questions arose regarding society’s reliance on GPU computing more broadly, the evolution of risk distribution and attack surfaces in distributed networks, as well as the importance of privacy and security in an increasingly data-centric world.
There was consensus among participants that more conversations between policymakers and technologists were needed–for the former to understand the technological frontiers and emerging capabilities, and for the latter to grasp the broader social, political, and geopolitical forces that may influence technological design choices. This workshop was the fourth in our quarterly series. If you or a colleague are interested in joining future workshops, please reach out to us at [email protected].
