Occasional
Published November 03 2023
DePIN's superpower is in its ability to coordinate fragmented physical networks, and we're only just beginning to witness its extraordinary impact. Perhaps most exciting—and indicative of the ecosystem's maturation—are the projects that leverage crypto simply as a piece of infrastructure to fulfill a product goal (that is often distinct from crypto itself). DIMO, an open connected vehicle platform, exemplifies this trend. At its core, the platform functions as a two-sided data marketplace; drivers earn rewards for sharing their connected car data, and developers use this information to create products that were previously impossible to build.
DIMO was born out of the founding team’s frustration with developing applications using OEM-specific APIs from automakers like Tesla, GM, and Ford. The problem had two components:
- Obtaining API access required navigating tedious approval processes unique to each OEM.
- The availability of API products was far from universal, resulting in incomplete OEM coverage (particularly problematic from a development perspective).
Their solution harnesses a combination of hardware and on-chain mechanisms to establish an OEM-complete, credibly neutral data union for connected car data. Here’s how it works:
Hardware
In partnership with AutoPi, DIMO created a plug-and-play hardware device, Macaron. Priced at $99, this device is engineered to be universally compatible with any car manufactured after 2008 via the car's OBD-II port (worth noting, certain OEMs don't require this device, as DIMO has software adapters for existing APIs). Once connected, the device seamlessly interacts with the car's CAN bus system, procuring a comprehensive dataset from the vehicle.
Cars On-chain
Every data retrieval is authenticated using the car’s unique identifier (VIN), which solves for counterfeit or fraudulent data streams (e.g., Sybil resistance). This information allows DIMO to generate an on-chain Vehicle ID (mapped to a user’s Ethereum wallet) and Ownership Key. The latter is represented by a dynamic NFT that evolves as data is fetched. Users can choose to enhance the NFT with personal attestations, such as vehicle title, insurance, or modifications.
To bootstrap complete OEM coverage, DIMO recently launched a rewards program. Drivers and fleet owners are awarded $DIMO (native ERC-20 tokens) for connecting their vehicles and streaming data. The more they drive, the more they earn—and they always have full control of their data. In addition, DIMO-based applications accrue additional $DIMO rewards as users transact with them. Apps leveraging this model today include DIMO Mobile (DIMO’s first-party app), Vehicle Genius, Tenet, and Caribou.
As more vehicles join connect, the data union's repository becomes richer; in turn, increasingly sophisticated applications can be created. To date, DIMO has over 26,000 connected cars across 70 OEMs, with nearly 2 million miles driven by users. Notably, many of these cars were linked before the activation of DIMO rewards, underscoring the power of the connected vehicle and car modder communities.
As more developers build on DIMO, consumers and business alike will realize tangible benefits, such as refined used car market pricing, more affordable insurance / financial products, and improved fleet management. Much like open-source experimentation spurred the evolution of general-purpose layer-1 blockchains, DIMO's foray into aggregating specialized and unique open data paves the way for extending on-chain solutions to millions of new users globally.
About Slow Burn
Weekly explorations into emerging crypto trends and how to navigate 2023 from the Slow Crypto Team, Sam Lessin, Clay Robbins, and Caroline Cline.
Published October 27 2023
At Slow, we conceive of crypto’s progression in three “eras”:
Era 1 marked the immaculate conception of Bitcoin post 2008, and the introduction of internet-native money.
Era 2 focused on “just making the infrastructure work” and enabling developers globally to begin experimenting on general-purpose blockchains, such as Ethereum and Solana.
Era 3, our current epoch, will be defined by “making the infrastructure useful,” which requires apps (and supporting infrastructure) that serve the real world and real users.
Our optimism about the utility of RWAs (real-world assets) and games is well-documented. In the next few weeks, we’d like to introduce and explore another theme we believe will be important to Era 3: decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN).
Framing DePIN's potential requires acknowledging how disjointed and uncoordinated real-world networks are today. For example, power grids consistently struggle with capacity limitations at peak hours, cellular & wi-fi coverage is spotty or non-existent in many areas, “IoT” networks require massive capital expenditure, and, in the age of AI, GPU inventory already constrains the speed of innovation. In the abstract, DePIN helps to connect, align, and catalyze the disparate fragments of physical networks through on-chain incentives and access points.
Early implementations of DePIN have shown progress in:
(1) Solving the cold start problem for capital-intensive networks where expensive specialty hardware is needed at scale.
(2) Mobilizing latent resources and coordinating them to augment existing networks.
If successful at scale, these efforts should, in theory, mature physical networks that struggle with economics at inception. Most importantly, DePIN can fortify physical networks that would benefit materially from the decentralization that secures their on-chain counterparts. Looking ahead, we’re excited to dive into learnings from DePIN experiments and investigate how they’re “making infrastructure useful.”
About Slow Burn
Weekly explorations into emerging crypto trends and how to navigate 2023 from the Slow Crypto Team, Sam Lessin, Clay Robbins, and Caroline Cline.
Published October 20 2023
This week, we're spotlighting several emerging and established teams dedicated to bringing more individuals on-chain through gaming. While there are now hundreds of independent developers, studios, modders, and infrastructure providers, we've limited our mapping to 20 significant contributors to the ecosystem.
AI Arena: AI Arena is a web PvP fighting game in which players design, train, and battle AI-powered NFTs in a global arena competition. The aim is to become the top AI Arena Master and secure valuable prizes.
Axie Infinity: Axie Infinity remains the preeminent play-to-earn game. Players breed, raise, and battle Axies (NFT creatures) to earn in-game currency, which can be exchanged for real-world money.
Dark Forest: Dark Forest is a ZK-enabled, real-time strategy game. Players construct and explore a boundless universe, and they strive to avoid detection by others, as discovery leads to instant annihilation.
OpenSea: OpenSea operates as a peer-to-peer marketplace for NFTs, enabling users to buy, sell, and trade digital assets—like art, music, and collectibles—using cryptocurrency.
Star Atlas: Star Atlas is a AAA space strategy metaverse that allows players to explore, construct, and battle within an expansive interstellar universe. Their objective is to establish the most dominant faction in the galaxy.
Unity: Unity is a versatile game development platform utilized for game creation across various platforms, including mobile, console, and PC. Alongside Unreal Engine, it is anticipated to significantly contribute to the development of on-chain games.
About Slow Burn
Weekly explorations into emerging crypto trends and how to navigate 2023 from the Slow Crypto Team, Sam Lessin, Clay Robbins, and Caroline Cline.
Published October 13 2023
If you've ever taken public transportation, you’re familiar with the ubiquity of mindless games like Candy Crush. That these simple games are incredibly addictive, despite their basic graphics and straightforward gameplay, is not a novel observation. And yet crypto has not leveraged them in its quest for the ever-elusive “mainstream adoption.”
Many Layer-1 foundations, the non-dilutive benefactors of developer ecosystems, are currently pursuing an enterprise sales approach that attracts Triple-A-quality games. However, this strategy does not drive immediate user adoption; best-in-class games are expensive and typically have a 3-5 year lead time (in fact, studios like Infinity Ward and Treyarch alternate production of Call of Duty). They also have significant downside risk because they often rely on new, crypto-enabled mechanics that aren’t guaranteed to spur user acquisition, increase engagement, or support sustainable in-game economies. Further, these new entrants must compete with the highly-refined, established platforms on major consoles, such as PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.
By contrast, simple games (think Flappy Bird) can be developed with much lower overhead. They have exceptional user acquisition characteristics, and are attractive to long-tail, independent developers—the backbone of any blockchain’s ecosystem. Low-barrier-to-entry games on mobile or web, with basic mechanics that demonstrate the potential for on-chain gaming, allow developers to experiment, iterate, and eventually find the right formula(s) for success.
AAA quality should eventually emerge on-chain, but large gaming studios can be understood as “the growth-stage investors” of the gaming world. Once outcomes are proven, they will begin to integrate the best mechanics from simple games into their expansive, monolithic platforms. In so doing, they will bring a new cohort of devoted gaming enthusiasts on-chain through their preferred medium.
About Slow Burn
Weekly explorations into emerging crypto trends and how to navigate 2023 from the Slow Crypto Team, Sam Lessin, Clay Robbins, and Caroline Cline.
Published October 06 2023
In the past few years, on-chain gaming has greatly benefitted from the establishment of standards and adoption of open-source fundamentals. This week, we’ll dive into the history of on-chain gaming and explore the core innovations that have driven its evolution.
- 2017: The draft of Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard gave rise to pioneering on-chain games (e.g., CryptoKitties). Though simplistic implementations, these games highlighted the potential for collectibles that could be evolved, bought, and sold.
- 2018: More complex game mechanics emerged with the advent of the play-to-earn (P2E) model—which was most effectively scaled by Axie Infinity. Combining entertainment with economic incentivization, P2E games popularized a novel user acquisition channel in offering the possibility of a material income stream. Even today, the design space for in-game economies with real-world earning potential remains largely untapped.
- 2020: The proliferation of NFTs ushered in “Metaverse games.” These virtual realms, where in-game economies exist on-chain, allow players to own land, build assets, and interact with others in a decentralized environment (with the added benefit of interoperability). While still largely aspirational, the promise of this gaming category swells as AR and VR mature alongside the blockchain substrate.
- 2021-present: The landscape today has seen relative diversification. Strategy games have come to the fore; for example, Gods Unchained recently launched in the Epic Games store after years of testing and development. Multiplayer games (e.g., Star Atlas) have also begun to flourish in earnest. And role-playing games (e.g., The Sandbox), which allow players to create characters and explore different worlds, have emerged and continue to be refined.
Looking forward, technical innovations—including more performant oracles, higher throughput smart contract platforms, and zero-knowledge proofs—will improve user experience, increase game fairness, and spur long-tail developer experimentation. These enhancements are likely to inspire waves of new games (like Dark Forest) that offer a more immersive and engaging gameplay experience. The influx of users they’ll bring on-chain will not only help cement crypto's place as a viable and diverse compute platform, but also introduce a meaningful use case not subject to the same level of regulatory oversight as financial applications.
About Slow Burn
Weekly explorations into emerging crypto trends and how to navigate 2023 from the Slow Crypto Team, Sam Lessin, Clay Robbins, and Caroline Cline.
