Andrena Secures $18M to Expand Decentralized Internet Services
Andrena, a crypto-based decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) project, and wireless internet provider, has recently concluded its Series A funding round with an extra $18 million from the th Investors of this round are Dragonfly, CMT Digital, Castle Island Ventures, and Wintermute Ventures, in particular.
Funding Details and Future Plans
The new cash is given in a SAFE agreement with the token warrant as Andrena’s third round of investment (equity with shadow future option – SUFO). It has been a series in chief with the phenomenal period being six months only. In, fact the chief investor then was Dragonfly.
Democratizing Internet Access
Andrena started out in 2023 to make the internet affordable, starting at $30 per month. The fresh funding will facilitate the pilot-version development and roll-out of DAWN. This open-source protocol involves harnessing spare mobile phone power. Employing applications on mobile or satellite posts is what Andrena is working on, devices have LTE technology for mobile or Wi-Fi communication for satellite.
What are DePINs?
DePINs are the endowment of revenue streams for individuals by sharing with each other physical infrastructure resources, such as computing, transmission, and storage to name a few. Akin to the way DePINs suave:o:pemy2aaid to the P2P transaction of the renewable energy, they also democratize the internet by sharing bandwidth and giving the router managers some subsidy in return.
DAWN Protocol: A New Paradigm
DAWN, a presentation developed by the Andrena platform, works through the goals of the ATON network decentralization of the internet. Unlike the conventional internet, these decentralized services found on DAWN technology allow buyers, sellers, and peers to interact enabling the sharing of internet bandwidth among themselves and thereby obviate centralized providers.
“We couldn’t be prouder to develop the first DePIN protocol that provides decentralized broadband with multi-gigabit wireless technology on Solana”, Andrena exclaimed in an August 7 post on X.
“By empowering users to become network operators, providing and for the network, we will be capable of changing the internet to a consumer-owned model. Like those homes can generate their power through solar panels and sell their surplus back to the grid, DAWN will do the same with the internet.
Technical Innovations
DAWN uses a “proof of backhaul” mechanism to validate and quantify the throughput of each participating node. This solution was created with the assistance of Pramod Viswanath, who is the main contributor to the open-source technology Sentient and is a professor at Princeton University, and Polygon (MATIC) Sandeep Nailwal, a co-founder. Currently, DAWN operates in a testnet environment ahead of its launch on Solana (SOL).
Explosive Growth in the DePIN Market
The DePIN sector is currently witnessing a rapid surge, with the fundraising volume increasing by 296% on a yearly basis. The first wave of this growth, which also resulted in a 400% surge in market capitalization up to $20 billion, was caused by the influx of funds, which were reported by the market research firm Messari.
Solana, which outperforms other DePIN technologies through its fast and cheap transaction costs, usually has the highest DePIN count. As of now, it is the most used blockchain through which 78 solutions are developed. Meanwhile, Ionetworks and Peaq blockchains are also doing their part in expanding their ecosystems for DePINs.
